CHAPTER 17
1665-1672.  

THE NEW HOME.

WE have seen the settler landed and married; let us follow him to his new home.  At the end of Talon's administration, the head of the colony that is to say, the island of Montreal and the borders of the Richelieu  was the seat of a peculiar colonization, the chief object of which was to protect the rest of Canada against Iroquois incursions.  The lands along the Richelieu, from its mouth to a point above Chambly, were divided in large seigniorial grants among several officers of the regiment of Carignan, who in their turn granted out the land to the soldiers, reserving a sufficient portion as their own.  The officer thus became a kind of feudal chief, and the whole settlement a permanent military cantonment admirably suited to the object in view.  The disbanded soldier was practically a soldier still, but he was also a farmer and a landholder.  

Talon had recommended this plan as being in accordance with the example of the Romans.  "The practice of that politic and martial people," he wrote, "may, in my opinion, be wisely adopted in a country a thousand leagues distant from its monarch.  And as the peace and harmony of peoples depend above all things on their fidelity to their sovereign, our first kings, better statesmen than is commonly supposed, introduced into newly conquered countries men of war, of approved trust, in order at once to hold the inhabitants to their duty within, and repel the enemy from without."

The troops were accordingly discharged, and settled not alone on the Richelieu, but also along the Saint Lawrence, between Lake Saint Peter and Montreal, as well as at some other points.  The Sulpitians, feudal owners of Montreal, adopted a similar policy, and surrounded their island with a border of fiefs large and small, granted partly to officers and partly to humbler settlers, bold, hardy, and practised in bush fighting.  Thus a line of sentinels was posted around their entire shore, ready to give the alarm whenever an enemy appeared.  About Quebec the settlements, covered as they were by those above, were for the most part of a more pacific character.

To return to the Richelieu.  The towns and villages which have since grown upon its banks and along the adjacent shores of the Saint Lawrence owe their names to these officers of Carignan, ancient lords of the soil,  Sorel, Chambly, Saint Ours, Contrecneur, Varennes, Vercheres.  Yet let it not be supposed that villages sprang up at once.  The military seignior, valiant and poor as Walter the Penniless, was in no condition to work such magic.  His personal possessions usually consisted of little but his sword and the money which the King had paid him for marrying a wife.  A domain varying from half a league to six leagues in front on the river, and from half a league to two leagues in depth, had been freely given him.  When he had distributed a part of it in allotments to the soldiers, a variety of tasks awaited him,  to clear and cultivate his land; to build his seigniorial mansion, often a log hut; to build a fort; to build a chapel; and to build a mill.  To do all this at once was impossible.  Chambly, the chief proprietor on the Richelieu, was better able than the others to meet the exigency.  He built himself a good house, where, with cattle and sheep furnished by the King, he lived in reasonable comfort.  The King's fort, close at hand, spared him and his tenants the necessity of building one for themselves, and furnished, no doubt, a mill, a chapel, and a chaplain.  His brother officers, Sorel excepted, were less fortunate.  They and their tenants were forced to provide defence as well as shelter.  Their houses were all built together, and surrounded by a palisade, so as to form a little fortified village.  The ever active benevolence of the King had aided them in the task, for the soldiers were still maintained by him while clearing the lands and building the houses destined to be their own; nor was it till this work was done that the provident government despatched them to Quebec with orders to bring back wives.  The settler, thus lodged and wedded, was required on his part to aid in clearing lands for those who should come after him.

It was chiefly in the more exposed parts of the colony that the houses were gathered together in palisaded villages, thus forcing the settler to walk or paddle some distance to his farm.  He naturally preferred to build when he could on the front of his farm itself, near the river, which supplied the place of a road.  As the grants of land were very narrow, his house was not far from that of his next neighbor; and thus a line of dwellings was ranged along the shore, forming what in local language was called a cote,  a use of the word peculiar to Canada, where it still prevails.

The impoverished seignior rarely built a chapel.  Most of the early Canadian churches were built with funds furnished by the seminaries of Quebec or of Montreal, aided by contributions of material and labor from the parishioners.  Meanwhile mass was said in some house of the neighborhood by a missionary priest, paddling his canoe from village to village, or from cote to cote.

The mill was an object of the last importance.  It was built of stone and pierced with loopholes, to serve as a blockhouse in case of attack.  The great mill at Montreal was one of the chief defences of the place.  It was at once the duty and the right of the seignior to supply his tenants, or rather vassals, with this essential requisite; and they on their part were required to grind their grain at his mill, leaving the fourteenth part in payment.  But for many years there was not a seigniory in Canada where this fraction would pay the wages of a miller; and, except the ecclesiastical corporations, there were few seigniors who could pay the cost of building.  The first settlers were usually forced to grind for themselves after the tedious fashion of the Indians.

Talon, in his capacity of counsellor, friend, and father to all Canada, arranged the new settlements near Quebec in the manner which he judged best, and which he meant to serve as an example to the rest of the colony.  It was his aim to concentrate population around this point, so that, should an enemy appear, the sound of a cannon shot from the Chateau Saint Louis might summon a numerous beefy of defenders to this the common point of rendezvous.  He bought a tract of land near Quebec, laid it out, and settled it as a model seigniory, hoping, as he says, to kindle a spirit of emulation among the new made seigniors to whom he had granted lands from the King.  He also laid out at the royal cost three villages in the immediate neighborhood, planning them with great care, and peopling them partly with families newly arrived, partly with soldiers, and partly with old settlers, in order that the new comers might take lessons from the experience of these veterans.  That each village might be complete in itself, he furnished it as well as he could with the needful carpenter, mason, blacksmith, and shoemaker.  These inland villages, called respectively Bourg Royal, Bourg la Reine, and Bourg Talon, did not prove very thrifty.  Wherever the settlers were allowed to choose for themselves, they ranged their dwellings along the watercourses.  With the exception of Talon's villages, one could have seen nearly every house in Canada, by paddling a canoe up the Saint Lawrence and the Richelieu.  The settlements formed long thin lines on the edges of the rivers,  a convenient arrangement, but one very unfavorable to defence, to ecclesiastical control, and to strong government.  The King soon discovered this; and repeated orders were sent to concentrate the inhabtants and form Canada into villages, instead of cotes.  To do so would have involved a general revocation of grants and abandonment of houses and clearings,  a measure too arbitrary and too wasteful, even for Louis XIV., and one extremely difficult to enforce.  Canada persisted in attenuating herself, and the royal will was foiled.

As you ascended the Saint Lawrence, the first harboring place of civilization was Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, where the company had its trading station, where its agents ruled supreme, and where, in early summer, all was alive with canoes and wigwams, and troops of Montagnais savages, bringing their furs to market.  Leave Tadoussac behind, and, embarked in a sail boat or a canoe, follow the northern coast.  Far on the left, twenty miles away, the southern shore lies pale and dim, and mountain ranges wave their faint outline along the sky.  You pass the beetling rocks of Mai Bay, a solitude but for the bark hut of some wandering Indian beneath the cliff, the Eboulements with their wild romantic gorge and foaming waterfalls, and the Bay of Saint Paul with its broad valley and its woody mountains, rich with hidden stores of iron.  Vast piles of savage verdure border the mighty stream, till at length the mountain of Cape Tourmente up heaves its huge bulk from the bosom of the water, shadowed by lowering clouds, and dark with forests.  Just beyond, begin the settlements of Laval's vast seigniory of Beaupre’, which had not been forgotten in the distribution of emigrants, and which, in 1667, contained more inhabitants than Quebec itself.  The ribbon of rich meadow land that borders that beautiful shore was yellow with wheat in harvest time; and on the woody slopes behind, the frequent clearings and the solid little dwellings of logs continued for a long distance to relieve the sameness of the forest.  After passing the cataract of Montmorenci, there was another settlement, much smaller, at Beauport, the seigniory of the exphysician Giffard, one of the earliest proprietors in Canada.  The neighboring shores of the Island of Orleans were also edged with houses and clearings.  The promontory of Quebec now towered full in sight, crowned with church, fort, chateau, convents, and seminary.  There was little else on the rock.  Priests, nuns, government officials, and soldiers were the denizens of the Upper Town; while commerce and the trades were cabined along the strand beneath.  From the gallery of the chateau, you might toss a pebble far down on their shingled roofs.  In the midst of them was the magazine of the company, with its two round towers and two projecting wings.  It was here that all the beaver skins of the colony were collected, assorted, and shipped for France.  The so called Chateau Saint Louis was an indifferent wooden structure planted on a site truly superb,  above the Lower Town, above the river, above the ships, gazing abroad on a majestic panorama of waters, forests, and mountains.  Behind it was the area of the fort, of which it formed one side.  The governor lived in the chateau, and soldiers were on guard night and day in the fort.  At some little distance was the convent of the Ursulines, ugly but substantial, where Mother Mary of the Incarnation ruled her pupils and her nuns; and a little farther on, towards the right, was the Ho’tel Dieu.  Between them were the massive buildings of the Jesuits, then as now facing the principal square.  At one side was their church, newly finished; and opposite, across the square, stood and still stands the great church of Notre Dame.  Behind the church was Laval's seminary, with the extensive enclosures belonging to it.  The se’n’echaussee or court house, the tavern of one Jacques Boisdon on the square near the church, and a few houses along the line of what is now Saint Louis Street comprised nearly all the civil part of the Upper Town.  The ecclesiastical buildings were of stone, and the church of Notre Dame and the Jesuit College were marvels of size and solidity in view of the poverty and weakness of the colony.

Proceeding upward along the north shore of the Saint Lawrence, one found a cluster of houses at Cap Rouge, and, farther on, the frequent rude beginnings of a seigniory.  The settlements thickened on approaching Three Rivers, a fur trading hamlet enclosed with a square palisade.  Above this place, a line of incipient seigniories bordered the river, most of them granted to officers,  Laubia, a captain; Labadie, a sergeant; Moras, an ensign; Berthier, a captain; Raudin, an ensign; La Valterie, a lieutenant.  Under their auspices, settlers, military and civilian, were ranging themselves along the shore, and ugly gaps in the forest thickly set with stumps bore witness to their toils.  These settlements rapidly extended, till in a few years a chain of houses and clearings reached with little interruption from Quebec to Montreal.  Such was the fruit of Tracy's chastisement of the Mohawks, and the influx of immigrants that followed.

As you approached Montreal,   the fortified mill built by the Sulpitians at Point aux Trembles towered above the woods; and soon after the newly built chapel of the Infant Jesus.  More settlements followed, till at length the great fortified mill of Montreal rose in sight; then the long row of compact wooden houses, the Hotel Dieu, and the rough masonry of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice.  Beyond the town, the clearings continued at intervals till you reached Lake Saint Louis, where young Cavelier de la Salle had laid out his seigniory of La Chine, and abandoned it to begin his hard career of western exploration.  Above the island of Montreal, the wilderness was broken only by a solitary trading station on the neighboring Isle Pe’rot.

Now cross Lake Saint Louis, shoot the rapids of La Chine, and follow the southern shore downward.  Here the seigniories of Longueuil, Boucherville, Varennes, Verche'res, and Contrecoeur were already begun.  From the fort of Sorel one could visit the military seigniories along the Richelieu or descend towards Quebec, passing on the way those of Lussaudieire, Becancour, Lotbiniere, and others still in a shapeless infancy.  Even far below Quebec, at Saint Anne de la Pocatie're, River Ouelle, and other points, cabins and clearings greeted the eye of the passing canoeman.

For a year or two the settler's initiation was a rough one; but when he had a few acres under tillage he could support himself and his family on the produce, aided by hunting, if he knew how to use a gun, and by the bountiful profusion of eels which the Saint Lawrence never failed to yield in their season, and which, smoked or salted, supplied his larder for months.  In winter he hewed timber, sawed planks, or split shingles for the market of Quebec, obtaining in return such necessaries as he required.  With thrift and hard work he was sure of comfort at last; but the former habits of the military settlers and of many of the others were not favorable to a routine of dogged industry.  The sameness and solitude of their new life often became insufferable; nor, married as they had been, was the domestic hearth likely to supply much consolation.  Yet, thrifty or not, they multiplied apace.  "A poor man," says Mother Mary, " will have eight children and more, who run about in winter with bare heads and bare feet, and a little jacket on their backs, live on nothing but bread and eels, and on that grow fat and stout." With such treatment the weaker sort died, but the strong survived; and out of this rugged nursing sprang the hardy Canadian race of bush rangers and bush fighters.