A Canadian officer, Villebon, was specially deputed to take charge of Acadia, and organize war-parties against the English settlers. He reoccupied Port Royal, and at the beginning of 1692 the work of massacre was taken seriously in hand. The first point of attack was the border settlement of York on the sea-coast of Maine: it was laid waste early in February, with all the usual horrors of Indian warfare. In June, another seaside settlement--Wells, about twenty miles to the north of York--was attacked by a large party; but some thirty militiamen, headed by a determined officer, Convers by name, made a stubborn defence, and beat off the assailants. Two years later the settlement at Oyster River was surprised, and its inhabitants killed or carried off. [Sidenote: _Backwardness of the New Englanders in self-defence._] There was one way, and one only, to put a stop to this {136} destructive warfare; to build strong forts in advanced positions; to give them adequate garrisons under competent officers; to patrol the frontier constantly with bodies of armed border police, and to harry the Indian marauders by land and sea. New England--and New England meant Massachusetts--was perfectly able to adopt and to maintain such a policy. The New Englanders were many against comparatively few; they had as a rule command of the sea; but the colonists did not like the expense or the personal service which was involved; the Boston citizens did not feel the full force of the blows which struck the outlying farms and homesteads; and the petifogging Government too often employed men to command who knew little or nothing of soldiering. [Sidenote: _Fort Pemaquid._] [Sidenote: _Chubb's treachery._] There was one point, in particular, which should have been strongly fortified and strongly garrisoned. This was Fort Pemaquid, on the sea-coast between the mouths of the Kennebec and the Penobscot. It was to New England, and to the Abenakis, what Fort Frontenac was to Canada and to the Iroquois, an advanced post covering the English colonies and menacing the Indians. In 1689, most of the English garrison having been withdrawn, it had been surprised and taken by the Abenakis. In 1692, Phipps, then Governor of Massachusetts, acting under orders from the King, rebuilt and regarrisoned it. Iberville, sent by Frontenac in the following year, with two ships of war, reconnoitred the fort but did not venture to attack it. In 1696, it was in charge of an incompetent commander, Chubb, who made himself odious to the Indians by a gross act of treachery. Some Abenaki chiefs had been invited to the fort under pledge of personal safety, to exchange prisoners; and, acting under instructions from Stoughton, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, Chubb laid an ambush for them, killed some and kidnapped others. [Sidenote: _Surrender of Pemaquid._]