70 OVER ON THE ISLAND

same year Callbeck, Surveyor-General Wright, and David Higgins, the naval officer, were carried off by American rebels. Chief Justice Duport died January 29, 1774, and his successor was not appointed until June 25, 1776. William Allanby, the provost-marshal and collector of revenue, left Isle St. John on leave of absence early in the spring of 1775 and did not return until 1779. For many months of 1775, apparently, the only government officials attending to their duties were John Budd, Clerk of the Crown and Coroner, and John Webster, Commissary of Stores.

Patterson certainly must have liked Prince Edward Island. He sank his whole fortune into it. And it was not because he derived much monetary return from it either, for officials had a difficult time trying to collect their salaries. As Chief Justice Duport wrote so piteously:

The failure of a regular payment must reduce us to the utmost distress in a place Where ready money is expected for every necessary of life. I have grown old in the public service, having been an assiduous and faithful servant of the crown for upwards of twenty- two years.

The reply to this appeal stated that his salary must depend upon the payment of the quit-rents. Later in the year he tried again.

I have stretched my credit to the utmost in procur- ing salt pork and brown biscuits to support me through the winter. I trust that I shall not be left here destitute in my old age. I am informed that there is a vacancy for a chief justice in South Carolina, and I humbly hope that your lordship will not think me too presuming in requesting that I may be appointed to that vacancy.