ated the conduct and measures of myself and the gentlemen of the Coun- cil.” MacDonald’s criticisms were embodied in a series of letters directed to the Council, in which he charged that the administration was in the hands of a “Levelling Party” which had as its object the escheat or con- fiscation of the estates of the proprietors and the destruction of the entire proprietory class. One gathers that Glenalladale regarded John Stewart as the Prince of the Levellers. Of Stewart he declared, “there has been no peace in it (the Island) since his father’s family arrived in it, and there will be no peace in it While they are employed in public offices in it. He has been and is detested for being at the bottom of all the troubles on the Island, which are at the point of ruining it.”

Now, while it was the Council’s opinion “that MacDonald’s actions in all of this most pointedly declare himself to be the greatest malcontent on the face of the earth,” his allegations did give rise to the celebrated duel between himself and Stewart on the streets of Charlottetown. Mac— Donald described the encounter in this manner:

“Last Winter being wearied with his many fold falsehoods, I hap— pened unguardedly to express myself with such opprobrium respecting him (that) . . . a friend of his announced to me his intention to inform him and did it accordingly: very well, I expected his message and waited long enough in vain. At last I resolved to proceed home . . . When I was actually stepping into the carriage bound up in two heavy watch coats and loaded with other defenses from the cold, so as to be scarcely able to move, . . . . he insulted me in the public streets in the presence of spec— tators. I instantly made him turn his back and fly to a distance. When seeing that I was unable to follow after . . ., provided only with a sidearm dirk 14 inches long and without a guard, he drew a prodigious long cut- and-thrust sword and, coming down, put me on my defence for a consid- erable time which I could not have effected if his sword arm had not trembled. At last Major Lyons, who is a Justice of the Peace, and another such interfered.”

In 1804 John Stewart was appointed Paymaster General of His Majesty’s forces in Newfoundland, a position which he held until the office was abolished in 1817. Residing mainly at St. John’s and London during this period, he rarely visited the Island. It was nevertheless at this time that he rendered the Province a great service in publishing, in 1806, An Account of Prince Edward Island. In sending a copy of this first his- tory of the Island to Lord Castlereagh, he explained that it was written “with the hope of enabling those upon whose judgement and determina— tion its (the Island’s) future progress and prospects must depend to ac- quire more accurate information on the subject than is elsewhere to be met with in print.” It was his considered opinion that the political affairs of the Island, under the administration of Fanning’s successor, J. F. W. DesBarres, were in a very sorry state, and he said so. However, the book’s chief value today is the glimpse it gives us of the social life and customs of an era in the Province’s history which is long past. A group of selected glignettes from the volume’s pages will be sufficient to demonstrate its

avour - — - -

Of the blueberry: “a gallon of spirits resembling gin in flavour has

been distilled from a bushel of them. In some districts they are in such pleanty as to furnish the swine with their chief food for several weeks.”

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