[78] Carleton’s account of the above, given in a letter to Dartmouth, dated Montreal, June 7, 1775, is that on May 19 he received news from Gage of the outbreak of hostilities, i.e. the fight at Lexington, coupled with a request that he would ‘send the 7th Regiment with some companies of Canadians and Indians to Crown Point, in order to make a diversion and favour his (Gage’s) operations’. The next morning news reached Quebec ‘that one, Benedict Arnold, said to be a native of Connecticut, and a horse jockey, landed a considerable number of armed men at St. John’s: distant from this town (Montreal) eight leagues, about eight in the morning of the 18th, surprised the detachment of the 26th doing duty there, consisting of a sergeant and ten men, and made them prisoners, seized upon the King’s sloop, batteaus, and every other military store, and a few hours after departed, carrying off the craft, prisoners, and stores they had seized. From this party we had the first information of the rebels being in arms upon the lakes, and of their having, under the command of said Arnold, surprised Ticonderoga, Crown Point, the detachment of the 26th doing duty at these two places, and all the craft employed upon those lakes’.... ‘The same evening another express brought an account of the rebels having landed at St. John’s a second time, in the night, between the 18th and 19th.’ Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5. [79] This seems to have been an under-estimate. There were apparently at the time three British regiments in Canada, the 7th, the 8th, and the 26th. [80] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5. [81] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775. Shortt and Doughty, pp. 456-9. [82] Chief Justice Hey saw what a strong position Canada held, from a military point of view, in regard to the other North American colonies. In his letter to the Lord Chancellor of August 28, 1775, he wrote, ‘It appears to me that while England has a firm hold of this country, which a good body of troops and nothing else will give her, her cause with the colonies can never be desperate, though she should not have an inch of ground in her possession in any one of them: from this country they are more accessible, I mean the New England people (paradoxical as it may seem), than even from Boston itself.’ Shortt and Doughty, p. 457. [83] ‘A few of the gentry, consisting principally of the youth, residing in this place (Montreal) and its neighbourhood, formed a small corps of volunteers under the command of Mr. Samuel Mackay, and took post at St. John’s.’ (Letter from Carleton to Dartmouth as above. Shortt and Doughty, p. 454.) [84] Shortt and Doughty, p. 459.