In her waters the ' Fire ship '° glared amid the darkness ; her phantom crew, like red hot statues, standing at their quarters, as rushing -onwards, in the furious storm, she passed the shuddering mariner, leaving cometlike long streams of flame behind. Beneath her sands the red-shirted buccaneers did hide their ill-gotten, blood-bespotted treasure. Ay! and 'twas on her broad bosom that with iron-seared conscience, sailed that pirate, fierce and bold -- old Robert Kidd ; and to this very day his golden hoards, with magic mark and sign, still crowd her wooded shores."6

Capt. Kidd, the . notorious freebooter, whose name is so inseparably connected with these shores, appears to have been employed by the government in 1696 to suppress the buccaneers, (at that time very numerous on our coast,) " from the knowledge he possessed of their numbers, strength, and places of resort." In 1699 he "returned from the East Indies, whither he had sailed after making several unsuccessful cruises on the American coast ; during his absence, having been engaged in the very practices he had engaged to prevent. This result appears to have been, in a measure, foreseen by the provincials. Governor F'.etcher, writing to the board of trade, June 22, 1697, says: "One Captain Kidd lately arrived here, and produced a commission, under the great seal of England for suppressing of piracy. When he was here many flocked to him from all parts -- men of desperate fortunes and necessitous, in expectation of getting vast treasures." " He sailed from hence with 150 men, as I am informed; a great part of them are of this province. It is generally believed, here, they would have money per fas a nt fief as -- that if he miss of the design intended for which he has commissioned, it will not be in Kid's poK'cr to govern snch a horde of men under no pay.