rous; more than sixty of these poor children died during the
voyage. The king was startled at such negligence, and the three hundred
colonists who embarked the following year, in small detachments, arrived
in excellent condition. Moreover, they had made the voyage without
expense, but had in return hired to work for three years with the
farmers, for an annual wage which was to be fixed by the authorities.
"It will seem to you perhaps strange," wrote M. de Villeray, to the
minister Colbert, "to see that we make workmen coming to us from France
undergo a sort of apprenticeship, by distribution among the inhabitants;
yet there is nothing more necessary, first, because the men brought to
us are not accustomed to the tilling of the soil; secondly, a man who is
not accustomed to work, unless he is urged, has difficulty in adapting
himself to it; thirdly, the tasks of this country are very different
from those of France, and experience shows us that a man who has
wintered three years in the country, and who then hires out at service,
receives double the wages of one just arriving from the Old Country.
These are reasons of our own which possibly would not be admitted in
France by those who do not understand them."

The Sovereign Council recommended, moreover, that there should be sent
only men from the north of France, "because," it asserted, "the Normans,
Percherons, Picards, and people from the neighbourhood of Paris are
docile, laborious, industrious, and have much more religion. Now, it is
important in the establishment of a country to sow good seed." While we
accept in the proper spirit this eulogy of our ancestors, who came
mostly from these provinces, how inevitably it suggests a comparison
with the spirit of scepticism and irreverence which now infects,
transitorily, let us hope, these regions of Northern France.

Never before had the harbour of Quebec seen so much animation as in the
year 1665. The solicitor-general, Bourdon, had set foot on the banks of
the St. Lawrence in early spring; he escorted a number of girls chosen
by order of the queen. Towards the middle of August two ships arrived
bearing four companies of the regiment of Carignan, and the following
month three other vessels brought, together with eight other companies,
Governor de Courcelles and Commissioner Talon. Finally, on October 2nd,
one hundred and thirty robust colonists and eighty-two maidens,
carefully chosen, came to settle in the colony.

If