In the year 1764 the British Government resolved to have a survey of North America executed, and with that view the continent was divided into two districts,—a northern and southern,—and a Surveyor General appointed for each, to act under instructions from the Lords’ Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. Captain Samuel Holland was appointed to superintend the survey of the northern district, which comprehended all the territory in North America “lying to the north of the Potowmack River, and of a line drawn due west from the head of the main branch of that river as far as His Majesty’s dominions extend.” Captain Holland received his commission in March, and was instructed to proceed immediately to Quebec, in order to make arrangements for the survey. He was instructed to begin with the Island of Saint John. The government vessel in which Captain Holland had left sighted the Island of Cape Breton on the eleventh of July, 1764. A thick fog having come on, the vessel had approached too near to the land, when the crew heard a musket shot, and the alarming cry of breakers ahead, which had proceeded from a fishing boat. The ship barely escaped the rocks. Contrary winds were subsequently encountered, and Captain Holland resolved to proceed in a rowing boat to Quebec. He accordingly left the ship on the nineteenth of July, and arrived in Quebec on the second of August. In Quebec Captain Holland met Captain Dean, of the _Mermaid_, who had visited the Island of Saint John during the summer, and who advised him to take “all sorts of material and provisions with him, as there was nothing left on the island but a detachment posted at Fort Amherst, who were indifferently provided, and could not furnish himself and his staff with lodgings.” Captain Holland arrived on the island in October, 1764. He describes Fort Amherst “as a poor stockaded redoubt, with barracks scarcely sufficient to lodge the garrison,—the houses near it having been pulled down to supply material to build it.” “I am obliged,” he adds, “to build winter quarters for myself. I have chosen a spot in the woods, near the sea shore, properly situated for making astronomical observations, where I have put up an old frame of a barn, which I have covered with what material I brought with me, and some boards that we collected from the ruins of some old houses. I fear that it will not be _too_ comfortable.” The vessel in which Captain Holland was conveyed to North America was called the _Canceaux_, and had been fitted out by the government with the view of aiding him in his professional operations; but on applying to Lieutenant Mowatt, her commander, for boats and men, he was coolly told that such aid could not—according to instructions—be granted. Having complained to Lord Colville, then in command of the naval force in North America, instructions were at once issued to Lieutenant Mowatt to give the required assistance; and Governor Wilmot instructed Captain Hill, the