The Preservation of the Woods. 99 



expense of hiring labor in New England.^ In June, 1728, an 

 order was passed in council that the surveyor of the woods 

 should reside in one of the plantations and be allowed two or 

 more salaried deputies, one of whom was to be a ship carpen- 

 ter.2 The new incumbent was directed to instruct the inhab- 

 itants in the culture of hemp and to lose no time in setting apart 

 a royal reservation in Nova Scotia.^ Dunbar was prevented 

 by illness from sailing for New England on the appointed date, 

 but he sent his brother to superintend the deputies, Armstrong 

 and Slade, who were marking trees in New Hampshire and 

 Maine.* Jeremiah Dunbar and the deputies wrote continually 

 of the evils of waste, the impossibility of securing judgments in 

 favor of the king in the prosecutions for illegal cutting, and of 

 the difficulty of securing the masts after they had been seized 

 in the king's name.^ 



Dunbar was displaced in 1744 by Benning Wentworth, son of 

 the late lieutenant-governor.*' Wentworth got the post of gov- 

 ernor of New Hampshire, and that of surveyor-general at the 

 same time, through the personal influence of Tomlinson, the 

 agent for New Hampshire. It is said that the second appoint- 

 ment was assisted by the offer of a consideration of £2,000 

 sterling to Dunbar." If this is true, it would seem that the office 

 was considered to be lucrative. The strenuous but inelTectual 

 efforts of William Vaughan to obtain the posts of collector of 

 customs and the surveyor of the woods, as being ''the most ben- 

 eficial in the province (Massachusetts Bay) except the gover- 

 norship,"^ point to the same conclusion. But as the salary was 

 neither munificent nor, as a rule, paid without urgent solicita- 



iMr. Dunbar to the Board of Trade, B. T. Plants. Gen., L: 84. 



^Order in Council, B. T. Plants. Gen., L: 100. 



^Ibid. 



*Mr. Dunbar to the Board of Trade, B. T. New Eng., Z: 36, and 

 Mr. Dunbar to Temple Stanyan, America and West Indies, I: 146. 



'Letters to Mr. Dunbar from one of his deputies, B. T. New Eng., 

 Z: 46, 49. 



*N. H. Records of Council, p. 12. 



^Palfrey, "History of New England," Vol. V, p. 180. 



^Palfrey, "History of New England," Vol. V, p. 183, n. 



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