skill in these fortunate times! This
abundance of pigeons at a period when our ancestors were not favoured in
the matter of food as we are to-day, recalls at once to our memory the
quail that Providence sent to the Jews in the desert; and it is a fact
worthy of mention that as soon as our forefathers could dispense with
this superabundance of game, the wild pigeons disappeared so totally and
suddenly that the most experienced hunters cannot explain this sudden
disappearance. There were found also about Ville-Marie many partridge
and duck, and since the colonists could not go out after game in the
woods, where they would have been exposed to the ambuscades of the
Iroquois, the friendly Indians brought to market the bear, the elk, the
deer, the buffalo, the caribou, the beaver and the muskrat. On fast days
the Canadians did not lack for fish; eels were sold at five francs a
hundred, and in June, 1649, more than three hundred sturgeons were
caught at Montreal within a fortnight. The shad, the pike, the wall-eyed
pike, the carp, the brill, the maskinonge were plentiful, and there was
besides, more particularly at Quebec, good herring and salmon fishing,
while at Malbaie (Murray Bay) codfish, and at Three Rivers white fish
were abundant.

At first, food, clothing and property were all paid for by exchange of
goods. Men bartered, for example, a lot of ground for two cows and a
pair of stockings; a more considerable piece of land was to be had for
two oxen, a cow and a little money. "Poverty," says Bossuet, speaking
of other nations, "was not an evil; on the contrary, they looked upon it
as a means of keeping their liberty more intact, there being nothing
freer or more independent than a man who knows how to live on little,
and who, without expecting anything from the protection or the largess
of others, relies for his livelihood only on his industry and labour."
Voltaire has said with equal justice: "It is not the scarcity of money,
but that of men and talent, which makes an empire weak."

On the arrival of the royal troops coin became less rare. "Money is now
common," wrote Mother Incarnation, "these gentlemen having brought much
of it. They pay cash for all they buy, both food and other necessaries."
Money was worth a fourth more than in France, thus fifteen cents were
worth twenty. As a natural consequence, two currencies were established
in New France, and the _livre tournois_ (French franc) was distinguished
from the fr