CHAPTER 23
1640-1763.  

MORALS AND MANNERS.

THE mission period of Canada, or the period anterior to the year 1663, when the King took the colony in charge, has a character of its own.  The whole population did not exceed that of a large French village.  Its extreme poverty, the constant danger that surrounded it, and, above all, the contagious zeal of the missionaries, saved it from many vices, and inspired it with an extraordinary religious fervor.  Without doubt an ideal picture has been drawn of this early epoch.  Trade as well as propagandism was the business of the colony, and the colonists were far from being all in a state of grace; yet it is certain that zeal was higher, devotion more constant, and popular morals more pure, than at any later period of the French rule.

The intervention of the King wrought a change.  The annual shipments of emigrants made by him were, in the most favorable view, of a very mixed character, and the portion which Mother Mary calls canaille was but too conspicuous.  Along with them came a regiment of soldiers fresh from the license of camps and the excitements of Turkish wars, accustomed to obey their officers and to obey nothing else, and more ready to wear the scapulary of the Virgin in campaigns against the Mohawks than to square their lives by the rules of Christian ethics.  " Our good King," writes Sister Morin, of Montreal, "has sent troops to defend us from the Iroquois, and the soldiers and officers have ruined the Lord's vineyard, and planted wickedness and sin and crime in our soil of Canada." Few, indeed, among the officers followed the example of one of their number,  Paul Dupuy, who, in his settlement of Isle aux Oies, below Quebec, lived, it is said, like a saint, and on Sundays and fe’te days exhorted his servants and habitants with such unction that their eyes filled with tears.  Nor, let us hope, were there many imitators of Major La Fredie’re, who, with a company of the regiment, was sent to garrison Montreal, where he ruled with absolute sway over settlers and soldiers alike.  His countenance naturally repulsive was made more so by the loss of an eye; yet he was irrepressible in gallantry, and women and girls fled in terror from the military Polyphemus.  The men, too, feared and hated him, not without reason.  One morning a settler named Demers was hoeing his field, when he saw a sportsman gun in hand striding through his half grown wheat.  " Steady there, steady!" he shouted in a tone of remonstrance; but the sportsman gave no heed.  " Why do you spoil a poor man's wheat?" cried the outraged cultivator.  "If I knew who you were, I would go and complain of you." "Whom would you complain to?" demanded the sportsman, who then proceeded to walk back into the middle of the wheat, and called out to Demers, " You are a rascal, and I’ll thrash you." "Look at home for rascals," retorted Demers, " and keep your thrashing for your dogs." The sportsman came towards him in a rage to execute his threat.  Demers picked up his gun, which, after the custom of the time, he had brought to the field with him, and, advancing to meet his adversary, recognized La Fredie’re, the commandant.  On this he ran off.  La Fredie’re sent soldiers to arrest him, threw him into prison, put him in irons, and the next day mounted him on the wooden horse, with a weight of sixty pounds tied to each foot.  He repeated the torture a day or two after, and then let his victim go, saying, "If I could have caught you when I was in your wheat, I would have beaten you well."

The commandant next turned his • quarters into a dram shop for Indians, to whom he sold brandy in large quantities, but so diluted that his customers, finding themselves partially defrauded of their right of intoxication, complained grievously.  About this time the intendant Talon made one of his domiciliary visits to Montreal, and when, in his character of father of the people, he inquired if they had any complaints to make, every tongue was loud in accusation against La Fredie’re.  Talon caused full depositions to be made out from the statements of Demers and other witnesses.  Copies were deposited in the hands of the notary, and it is from these that the above story is drawn.  The tyrant was removed, and ordered home to France.

Many other officers embarked in the profitable trade of selling brandy to Indians, and several garrison posts became centres of disorder.  Others of the regiment became notorious brawlers.  A lieutenant of the garrison of Montreal named Carion, and an ensign named Morel, had for some reason conceived a violent grudge against another ensign named Lormeau.  On Pentecost day, just after vespers, Lormeau was walking by the river with his wife.  They had passed the common and the seminary wall, and were in front of the house of the younger Charles Le Moyne, when they saw Carion coming towards them.  He stopped before Lormeau, looked him full in the face, and exclaimed, " Coward! " "Coward yourself," returned Lormeau; "take your self off!" Carion drew his sword, and Lormeau followed his example.  They exchanged a few passes, then closed, and fell to the ground grappled together.  Lormeau's wig fell off; and Carion, getting the uppermost, hammered his bare head with the hilt of his sword.  Lormeau's wife, in a frenzy of terror, screamed murder.  One of the neighbors, Monsieur Beletre, was at table with Charles Le Moyne and a Rochelle merchant named Baston.  He ran out with his two guests, and they tried to separate the combatants, who still lay on the ground foaming like a pair of enraged bull dogs.  All their efforts were useless.  "Very well," said Le Moyne in disgust, "if you won't let go, then kill each other if you like." A former military servant of Carion now ran up, and began to brandish his sword in behalf of his late master.  Carion's comrade, Morel, also arrived, and, regardless of the angry protest of Le Moyne, stabbed repeatedly at Lormeau as he lay.  Lormeau had received two or three wounds in the hand and arm with which he parried the thrusts, and was besides severely mauled by the sword hilt of Carion, when two Sulpitian priests, drawn by the noise, appeared on the scene.  One was Fremont, the curd; the other was Dollier de Casson.  That herculean father, whose past soldier life had made him at home in a fray, and who cared nothing for drawn swords, set himself at once to restore peace,  upon which, whether from the strength of his arm, or the mere effect of his presence, the two champions released their gripe on each other's  throats,  rose,  sheathed their weapons, and left the field.

Montreal, a frontier town at the head of the colony, was the natural resort of desperadoes, offering, as we have seen, a singular contrast between the rigor of its clerical seigniors and the riotous license of the lawless crew which infested it.  Dollier de Casson tells the story of an outlaw who broke prison ten or twelve times, and whom no walls, locks, or fetters could hold.  "A few months ago," he says, "he was caught again, and put into the keeping of six or seven men, each with a good gun.  They stacked their arms to play a game of cards, which their prisoner saw fit to interrupt to play a game of his own.  He made a jump at the guns, took them under his arm like so many feathers, aimed at these fellows with one of them, swearing that he would kill the first who came near him, and so, falling back step by step, at last bade them goodbye, and carried off all their guns.  Since then he has not been caught, and is roaming the woods.  Very likely he will become chief of our banditti, and make great trouble in the country when it pleases him to come back from the Dutch settlements, whither they say he is gone along with another rascal, and a French woman so depraved that she is said to have given or sold two of her children to the Indians." 

When the governor, La Barre, visited Montreal, he found there some two hundred reprobates gambling, drinking, and stealing.  If hard pressed by justice, they had only to cross the river and place themselves beyond the seigniorial jurisdiction.  The military settlements of the Richelieu were in a condition somewhat similar, and La Barre complains of a prevailing spirit of disobedience and lawlessness.  The most orderly and thrifty part of Canada appears to have been at this time the cdte of Beaupre, belonging to the seminary of Quebec.  Here the settlers had religious instruction from their cure's, and industrial instruction also if they wanted it.  Domestic spinning and weaving were practised at Beaupre" sooner than in any other part of the colony.

When it is remembered that a population which in La Barre's time did not exceed ten thousand, and which forty years later did not much exceed twice that number, was scattered along both sides of a great river for three hundred miles or more; that a large part of this population was in isolated groups of two, three, five, ten, or twenty houses at the edge of a savage wilderness; that between them there was little communication except by canoes; that the settlers were disbanded soldiers, or others whose lives had been equally adverse to habits of reflection or self control; that they rarely saw a priest, and that a government omnipotent in name had not arms long enough to reach them,  we may listen without surprise to the lamentations of order loving officials over the unruly condition of a great part of the colony.  One accuses the seigniors, who, he says, being often of low extraction, cannot keep their vassals in order.  Another, dwells sorrowfully on the " terrible dispersion" of the settlements where the inhabitants "live in a savage independence." But it is better that each should speak for himself, and among the rest let us hear the pious Denonville.

"This, Monseigneur," he says, "seems to me the place for rendering you an account of the disorders which prevail not only in the woods, but also in the settlements.  They arise from the idleness of young persons, and the great liberty which fathers, mothers, and guardians have for a long time given them, or allowed them to assume, of going into the forest under pretence of hunting or trading.  This has come to such a pass, that, from the moment a boy can carry a gun, the father cannot restrain him and dares not offend him.  You can judge the mischief that follows.  These disorders are always greatest in the families of those who are gentilshommes, or who through laziness or vanity pass themselves off as such.  Having no resource but hunting, they must spend their lives in the woods, where they have no curds to trouble them, and no fathers or guardians to constrain them.  I think, Monseigneur, that martial law would suit their case better than any judicial sentence.  Monsieur de la Barre suppressed a certain order of knighthood which had sprung up here, but he did not abolish the usages belonging to it.  It was thought a fine thing and a good joke to go about naked and tricked out like Indians, not only on carnival days, but on all other days of feasting and debauchery.  These practices tend to encourage the disposition of our young men to live like savages, frequent their company, and be forever unruly and lawless like them.  I cannot tell you, Monseigneur, how attractive this Indian life is to all our youth.  It consists in doing nothing, caring for nothing, following every inclination, and getting out of the way of all correction."

He goes on to say that the mission villages governed by the Jesuits and Sulpitians are models of good order, and that drunkards are never seen there except when they come from the neighboring French settlements; but that the other Indians, who roam at large about the colony, do prodigious mischief, because the children of the seigniors not only copy their way of life, but also run off with their women into the woods.  "Nothing, "he continues, "can be finer or better conceived than the regulations framed for the government of this country; but nothing, I assure you, is so ill observed as regards both the fur trad and the general discipline of the colony.  One great evil is the infinite number of drinking shops, which makes it almost impossible to remedy the disorders resulting from them.  All the rascals and idlers of the country are attracted into this business of tavern keeping.  They never dream of tilling the soil; but, on the contrary, they deter the other inhabitants from it, and end with ruining them.  I know seigniories where there are but twenty houses, and more than half of them dram shops.  At Three Rivers there are twenty-five houses, and liquor may be had at eighteen or twenty of them.  Villemarie (Montreal) and Quebec are on the same footing."

The governor next dwells on the necessity of finding occupation for children and youths,  a matter which he regards as of the last importance.  "It is sad to see the ignorance of the population at a distance from the abodes of the cure's, who are put to the greatest trouble to remedy the evil by travelling from place to place through the parishes in their charge."

La Barre, Champigny, and Duchesneau write in a similar strain.  Bishop Saint-Vallier, in an epistolary journal which he printed of a tour through the colony made on his first arrival, gives a favorable account of the disposition of the people, especially as regards religion.  He afterwards changed his views.  An abstract made from his letters for the use of the King states that he "represents, like M.  Denonville, that the Canadian youth are for the most part wholly demoralized."

" The bishop was very sorry," says a correspondent of the minister at Quebec, " to have so much exaggerated in the letter he printed at Paris the morality of the people here." He preached a sermon on the sins of the inhabitants and issued a pastoral mandate, in which he says, "Before we knew our flock we thought that the English and the Iroquois were the only wolves we had to fear; but God having opened our eyes to the disorders of this diocese, and made us feel more than ever the weight of our charge, we are forced to confess that our most dangerous foes are drunkenness, luxury, impurity, and slander."

Drunkenness was at this time the most destructive vice in the colony.  One writer declares that most of the Canadians drink so much brandy in the morning that they are unfit for work all day.  Another says that a canoe man when he is tired will lift a keg of brandy to his lips and drink the raw liquor from the bung hole, after which, having spoiled his appetite, he goes to bed supperless; and that, what with drink and hardship, he is an old man at forty.  Nevertheless the race did not deteriorate.  The prevalence of early marriages, and the birth of numerous offspring before the vigor of the father had been  wasted, insured the strength and hardihood which characterized the Canadians.  As Denonville describes them, so they long remained.  " The Canadians are tall, well made, and well set on their legs (bien plantes sur leurs jambes), robust, vigorous, and accustomed in time of need to live on little.  They have intelligence and vivacity, but are wayward, light minded, and inclined to debauchery."

As the population increased, as the rage for bush ranging began to abate, and, above all, as the cures multiplied, a change took place for the better.  More churches were built, the charge of each priest was reduced within reasonable bounds, and a greater proportion of the inhabitants remained on their farms.  They were better watched, controlled, and taught by the Church.  The ecclesiastical power, wherever it had a hold, was exercised, as we have seen, with an undue rigor, yet it was the chief guardian of good morals; and the colony grew more orderly and more temperate as the Church gathered more and more of its wild and wandering flock fairly within its fold.  In this, however, its success was but relative.  It is true that in 1715 a well informed writer says that the people were "perfectly instructed in religion;" but at that time the statement was only partially true.

During the  seventeenth  century, and some time after its close, Canada swarmed with beggars, a singular feature in a new country where a good farm could be had for the asking.     In countries intensely Roman Catholic begging is not regarded as an unmixed evil, being supposed to promote two cardinal virtues,  charity in the giver, and humility in the receiver.  The Canadian officials nevertheless tried to restrain it.  Vagabonds of both sexes were ordered to leave Quebec, and nobody was allowed to beg without a certificate of poverty from the cure" or the local judge.  These orders were not always observed.  Bishop Saint-Vallier writes that he is overwhelmed* by beggars, and the intendant echoes his complaint.  Almshouses were established at Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec; and when Saint-Vallier founded the General Hospital, its chief purpose was to serve, not as a hospital in the ordinary sense of the word, but as a house of refuge, after the plan of the General Hospital of Paris.  Appeal, as usual, was made to the King.  Denonville asks his aid for two destitute families, and says that many others need it.  Louis XIV.  did not fail to respond, and from time to time he sent considerable sums for the relief of the Canadian poor.

Denonville  says,   "The   principal  reason  of   the poverty of this country is the idleness and bad conduct of most of the people.  The greater part of the women, including all the demoiselles, are very lazy." Meules proposes as a remedy that the King should establish a general workshop in the colony, and pay the workmen himself during the first five or six years.  "The persons here," he says, "who have wished to make a figure are nearly all so overwhelmed with debt that they may be considered as in the last necessity." He adds that many of the people go half naked even in winter.  " The merchants of this country," says the intendant Duchesneau, "are all plunged in poverty, except five or six at the most; it is the same with the artisans, except a small number, because the vanity of the women and the debauchery of the men consume all their gains.  As for such of the laboring class as apply themselves steadily to cultivating the soil, they not only live very well, but are incomparably better' off than the better sort of peasants in France."

All the writers lament the extravagant habits of the people; and even La Hontan joins hands with the priests in wishing that the supply of ribbons, laces, brocades, jewelry, and the like might be cut off by act of law.  Mother Juchereau tells us, that, when tlie English invasion was impending, the belles of  Canada were scared for a while into modesty in order to gain the favor of Heaven; but, as may be imagined, the effect was short, and Father La Tour declares that in his time all the fashions except rouge came over regularly in the annual ships.

The manners of the mission period, on the other hand, were extremely simple.  The old governor, Lauzon, lived on pease and bacon like a laborer, and kept no man servant.  He was regarded, it is true, as a miser, and held in slight account.  Magdeleine Bochart, sister of the governor of Three Rivers, brought her husband two hundred francs in money, four sheets, two table cloths, six napkins of linen and hemp, a mattress, a blanket, two dishes, six spoons and six tin plates, a pot and a kettle, a table and two benches, a kneading trough, a chest with lock and key, a cow, and a pair of hogs.  But the Bocharts were a family of distinction, and the bride's dowry answered to her station.  By another marriage contract, at about the same time, the parents of the bride, being of humble degree, bind themselves to present the bridegroom with a barrel of bacon, deliverable on the arrival of the ships from France.

Some curious traits of this early day appear in the license of Jean Boisdon as innkeeper.  He is required to establish himself on the great square of Quebec, close to the church, so that the parishioners may conveniently warm and refresh themselves between the services; but he is forbidden to entertain anybody during high mass, sermon, catechism, or vespers.  Matters soon changed; Jean Boisdon lost his monopoly, and inns sprang up on all hands.  They did not want for patrons, and we find some of their proprietors mentioned as among the few thriving men in Canada.  Talon tried to regulate them, and, among other rules, ordained that no innkeeper should furnish food or drink to any hired laborer whatever, or to any person residing in the place where his inn was situated.  An innkeeper of Montreal was fined for allowing the syndic of the town to dine under his roof.

One gets glimpses of the pristine state of Quebec through the early police regulations.  Each inhabitant was required to make a gutter along the middle of the street before his house, and also to remove refuse and throw it into the river.  All dogs, without exception, were ordered home at nine o'clock.  On Tuesdays and Fridays there was a market in the public square, whither the neighboring habitants, male and female, brought their produce for sale, as they still continue to do.  Smoking in the street was forbidden, as a precaution against fire; householders were required to provide themselves with ladders, and when the fire alarm was rung all able bodied  persons were obliged to run to the scene of danger with buckets or kettles full of water.  This did not prevent the Lower Town from burning to the ground in 1682.  It was soon rebuilt, but a repetition of the catastrophe seemed very likely.  " This place," says Denonville, " is in a fearful state as regards fire; for the houses are crowded together out of all reason, and so surrounded with piles of cord wood that it is pitiful to see." Add to this the stores of hay for the cows kept by many of the inhabitants for the benefit of their swarming progeny.  The houses were at this time low, compact buildings, with gables of masonry, as required by law; but many had wooden fronts, and all had roofs covered with cedar shingles.  The anxious governor begs, that, as the town has not a sou of revenue, his Majesty will be pleased to make it the gift of two hundred crowns' worth of leather fire buckets.  Six or seven years after, certain citizens were authorized by the council to import from France, at their own cost, " a pump after the Dutch fashion, for throwing water on houses in case of fire."

How a fire was managed at Quebec appears from a letter of the engineer, Vasseur, describing the burning of Laval's seminary in 1701.  Vasseur was then at Quebec, directing the new fortifications.  On a Monday in November, all the pupils of the seminary  and most of the priests went, according to their weekly custom, to recreate themselves at a house and garden at Saint Michel, a short distance from town.  The few priests who remained went after dinner to say vespers at the church.  Only one, Father Petit, was left in the seminary, and he presently repaired to the great hall to rekindle the fire in the stove and warm the place against the return of his brethren.  His success surpassed his wishes.  A firebrand snapped out in his absence and set the pine floor in a blaze.  Father Boucher, cure" of Point Levi, chanced to come in, and was half choked by the smoke.  He cried fire ! the servants ran for water; but the flames soon mastered them; they screamed the alarm, and the bells began to ring.  Vasseur was dining with the intendant at his palace by the Saint Charles, when he heard a frightened voice crying out, " Monsieur, you are wanted! you are wanted!" He sprang from table, saw the smoke rolling in volumes from the top of the rock, ran up the steep ascent, reached the seminary, and found an excited crowd making a prodigious outcry.  He shouted for carpenters.  Four men came to him, and he set them at work with such tools as they had to tear away planks and beams, and prevent the fire from spreading to the adjacent parts of the building; but when he went to find others to help them, they ran off.  He sent new men in their place, and these too ran off the moment his back was turned.  A cry was raised that the building was to be blown up, on which the crowd scattered for their lives.  Vasseur now gave up the seminary for lost, and thought only of cutting off the fire from the rear of the church, which was not far distant.  In this he succeeded, by tearing down an intervening wing or gallery.  The walls of the burning building were of massive stone, and by seven o'clock the fire had spent itself.  We hear nothing of the Dutch pump, nor does it appear that the soldiers of the garrison made any effort to keep order.  Under cover of the confusion, property was stolen from the seminary to the amount of about two thousand livres, which is remarkable, considering the religious character of the building, and the supposed piety of the people.  " There were more than three hundred persons at the fire," says Vasseur; "but thirty picked men would have been worth more than the whole of them."

August, September, and October were the busy months at Quebec.  Then the ships from France discharged their lading, the shops and ware houses of the Lower Town were filled with goods, and the habitants came to town to make their purchases.  When the frosts began, the vessels sailed away, the harbor was deserted, the streets were silent again, and like ants or squirrels the people set at work to lay in their winter stores.  Fathers of families packed their cellars with beets, carrots, potatoes, and cabbages ; and, at the end of autumn, with meat, fowls, game, fish, and eels, all frozen to stony hardness.   Most of the shops closed, and the long season of leisure and amusement began.  New Year's day brought visits and mutual gifts.  Thence till Lent dinner parties were frequent, sometimes familiar and sometimes ceremonious.  The governor's little court at the chateau was a standing example to all the aspiring spirits of Quebec, and forms and orders of precedence were in some houses punctiliously observed.  There were dinners to the military and civic dignitaries and their wives, and others, quite distinct, to prominent citizens.  The wives and daughters of the burghers of Quebec are said to have been superior in manners to women of the corresponding class in France.  "They have wit," says La Potherie, "delicacy, good voices, and a great fondness for dancing.  They are discreet, and not much given to flirting; but when they undertake to catch a lover, it is not easy for him to escape the bands of Hymen."

So much for the town.  In the country parishes, there was the same autumnal stowing away of frozen vegetables, meat, fish, and eels, and unfortunately the same surfeit of leisure through five months of the year.  During the seventeenth century, many of the people were so poor that women were forced to keep at home from sheer want of winter clothing.  Nothing, however, could prevent their running from house to house to exchange gossip with the neighbors, who all knew one another, and, having nothing else to do, discussed each other's affairs with an industry which often bred bitter quarrels.  At a later period, a more general introduction of family weaving and spinning served at once to furnish clothing and to promote domestic peace.

The most important persons in a parish were the cure", the seignior, and the militia captain.  The seignior had his bench of honor in the church.  Immediately behind it was the bench of the militia captain, whose duty it was to drill the able bodied men of the neighborhood, direct road making and other public works, and serve as deputy to the intendant, whose ordinances he was required to enforce.  Next in honor came the local judge, if any there was, and the church wardens.

The existence of slavery in Canada dates from the end of the seventeenth century.  In 1688 the attorney general made a visit to Paris, and urged upon the King the expediency of importing negroes from the West Indies as a remedy for the scarcity and dearness of labor.  The King consented, but advised caution, on the ground that the rigor of the climate would make the venture a critical one.  A number of slaves were brought into the colony; but the system never nourished, the climate and other circumstances being hostile to it.  Many of the colonists, especially at Detroit and other outlying posts, owned slaves of a remote Indian tribe, the Pawnees.  The fact is remarkable, since it would be difficult to find another of the wild tribes of the continent capable of subjection to domestic servitude.  The Pawnee slaves were captives taken in war and sold at low prices to the Canadians.  Their market value was much impaired by their propensity to run off.

It is curious to observe the views of the Canadians taken at different times by different writers.  La Hontan says: " They are vigorous, enterprising, and indefatigable, and need nothing but education.  They are presumptuous and full of self conceit, regard themselves as above all the nations of the earth, and, unfortunately, have not the veneration for their parents that they ought to have.  The women are generally pretty; few of them are brunettes; many of them are discreet, and a good number are lazy.  They are fond to the last degree of dress and show, and each tries to outdo the rest in the art of catching a husband."

Fifty years later, the intendant Hocquart writes: " The Canadians are fond of distinctions and attentions, plume themselves on their courage, and are extremely sensitive to slights or the smallest corrections.  They are self interested, vindictive, prone to drunkenness, use a great deal of brandy, and pass for not being at all truthful.  This portrait is true of .many of them, particularly the country people: those of the towns are less vicious.  They are all attached to religion, and criminals are rare.  They are vola  tile, and think too well of themselves, which prevents their succeeding as they might in farming and trade.  They have not the rude and rustic air of our French peasants.  If they are put on their honor and governed with justice, they are tractable enough; but their natural disposition is indocile."

The navigator Bougainville, in the last years of the French rule, describes the Canadian habitant as essentially superior to the French peasant, and adds, "He is loud, boastful, mendacious, obliging, civil, and honest; indefatigable in hunting, travelling, and bush ranging, but lazy in tilling the soil."

The Swedish botanist, Kalm, an excellent observer, was in Canada a few years Taefore Bougainville, and sketches from life the following traits of Canadian manners.  The language is that of the old English translation: "The men here (at Montreal) are extremely civil, and take their hats off to every person indifferently whom they meet in the streets.  The women in general are handsome; they are well bred and virtuous, with an innocent and becoming freedom.  They dress out very fine on Sundays, and though on the other days they do not take much pains with the other parts of their dress, yet they are very fond of adorning their heads, the hair of which is always curled and powdered and ornamented with glittering bodkins and aigrettes.  They are not averse to taking part in all the business of housekeeping; and I have with pleasure seen the daughters of the better sort of people, and of the governor (of Montreal) himself, not too finely dressed, and going into kitchens and cellars to look that everything be done as it ought.  What I have mentioned above of their dressing their heads too assiduously is the case with all the ladies throughout Canada.  Their hair is always curled, even when they are at home in a dirty jacket and short coarse petticoat that does not reach to the middle of their legs.  On those days when they pay or receive visits, they dress so gayly that one is almost induced to think their parents possess the greatest honors in the state.  They are no less attentive to have the newest fashions, and they laugh at one another when they are not dressed to one another's fancy.  One of the first questions they propose to a stranger is, whether he is married; the next, how he likes the ladies of the country, and whether he thinks them handsomer than those of his own country; and the third, whether he will take one home with him.  The behavior of the ladies seemed to me somewhat too free at Quebec, and of a more becoming modesty at Montreal.  Those of Quebec are not very industrious.  The young ladies, especially those of a higher rank, get up at seven and dress till nine, drinking their coffee at the same time.  When they are dressed, they place themselves near a window that opens into the street, take up some needlework and sew a stitch now and then, but turn their eyes into the street most of the time.  When a  young fellow comes in, whether they are acquainted with him or not, they immediately lay aside their work, sit down by him, and begin to chat, laugh, joke, and invent double entendres; and this is reckoned being very witty.  In this manner they frequently pass the whole day, leaving their mothers to do the business of the house.  They are likewise cheerful and content, and nobody can say that they want either wit or charms.  Their fault is that they think too well of themselves.  However, the daughters of people of all ranks without exception go to market and carry home what they have bought.  The girls at Montreal are very much displeased that those at Quebec get husbands sooner than they.  The reason of this is that many young gentlemen who come over from France with the ships are captivated by the ladies at Quebec and marry them; but as these gentlemen seldom go up to Montreal, the girls there are not often so happy as those of the former place." 

Long before Kalm's visit, the Jesuit Charlevoix, a traveller and a man of the world, wrote thus of Quebec in a letter to the Duchesse de Lesdiguie’res: "There is a select little society here which wants nothing to make it agreeable.  In the salons of the wives of the governor and of the intendant, one finds circles as brilliant as in other countries." These circles were formed partly of the principal inhabitants, but chiefly of military officers and government  officials, with their families.  Charlevoix continues: "Everybody does his part to make the time pass pleasantly, with games and parties of pleasure, drives and canoe excursions in summer, sleighing and skating in winter.  There is a great deal of hunting and shooting, for many Canadian gentlemen are almost destitute of any other means of living at their ease.  The news of the day amounts to very little indeed, as the country furnishes scarcely any, while that from Europe comes all at once.  Science and the fine arts have their turn, and conversation does not fail.  The Canadians breathe from their birth an air of liberty, which makes them very pleasant in the intercourse of life, and our language is nowhere more purely spoken.  One finds here no rich persons whatever, and this is a great pity; for the Canadians like to get the credit of their money, and scarcely anybody amuses himself with hoarding it.  They say it is very different with our neighbors the English; and one who knew the two colonies only by the way of living, acting, and speaking of the colonists would not hesitate to judge ours the more flourishing.  In New England and the other British colonies there reigns an opulence by which the people seem not to know how to profit; while in New France poverty is hidden under an air of ease which appears entirely natural.  The English colonist keeps as much and spends as little as possible; the French colonist enjoys what he has got, and often makes a display of what he has not got.  The one labors for  his heirs; the other leaves them to get on as they can, like himself.  I could push the comparison further, but I must close here; the King's ship is about to sail, and the merchant vessels are getting ready to follow.  In three days, perhaps, not one will be left in the harbor."

And now we, too, will leave Canada.  Winter draws near, and the first patch of snow lies gleaming on the distant mountain of Cape Tourmente.  The sun has set in chill autumnal beauty, and the sharp spires of fir trees on the heights of Sillery stand stiff and black against the pure cold amber of the fading west.  The ship sails in the morning; and before the old towers of Rochelle rise in sight there will be time to smoke many a pipe, and ponder what we have seen on the banks of the Saint Lawrence.