122 Industrial Experiments in Colonial America, 



ber at Exeter. While they were regahng themselves at a public 

 house and boasting what they intended to do next day, a num- 

 ber of persons, disguised as Indians, attacked and beat them; 

 others cut the rigging and sails of their boat and made a hole in 

 the bottom. The discomfitted party fled to the boat and made 

 off, but, of course, began to sink. They regained the shore 

 with difficulty and hid till morning, when they returned on foot 

 to Portsmouth. Dunbar, to avenge this insult, summoned the 

 Council, to whom he described the riotous proceedings at Ex- 

 eter as a "conspiracy against his life by some evil-minded per- 

 son, who had hired Indians to destroy him." He requested the 

 governor to issue a proclamation commanding all magistrates 

 to assist in the discovery of the rioters. Somehow the rumor 

 got abroad that the governor's pretense to favor the surveyor 

 was deceitful, and that the rioters were the governor's best 

 friends ; so that, by a well-managed delay in issuing the procla- 

 mation, the culprits escaped. Belknap thinks that Belcher did 

 all he could, but that the disguise of the men was so complete 

 and their understanding with one another so good that no proof 

 could be obtained. It is further related that Dunbar went to 

 Dover to seize some boards belonging to one Paul Gerrish. 

 Dunbar threatened with death the first man who should ob- 

 struct his intention ; Gerrish retorted with a similar threat 

 against the first man who should remove his boards. The sur- 

 veyor's prudence appears to have got the better of his courage, 

 for he retired without further parley.^ In 1759, one of the dep- 

 uties of Benning Wentworth, who was then surveyor, com- 

 plained to the Board of Trade that he had been "thrown into 

 the water with intent to kill," by Dan and Seth Whitmore, in 

 the execution of his office, and unlawfully imprisoned by Wil- 

 liam Pipkins.^ From this it is evident that the struggle be- 

 tween the surveyors and the lumbermen went on unabated. 



Whether the government persisted in their efforts to enforce 

 the acts of Parliament, during the next fifteen years, I am un- 



^Belknap, "History of New Hampshire," Ch. XVI. 

 '"Petition of Daniel Blake, late Deputy Surveyor," B. T. Plants. 

 Gen., P: 10. 



