anc of the country. The Indians were dealt with by exchanges,
and one might see them traversing the streets of Quebec, Montreal or
Three Rivers, offering from house to house rich furs, which they
bartered for blankets, powder, lead, but above all, for that accursed
firewater which caused such havoc among them, and such interminable
disputes between the civil and the religious power. Intoxicating liquors
were the source of many disorders, and we cannot too much regret that
this stain rested upon the glory of New France. Yet such a society,
situated in what was undeniably a difficult position, could not be
expected to escape every imperfection.

The activity and the intelligence of Mgr. de Laval made themselves felt
in every beneficent and progressive work. He could not remain
indifferent to the education of his flock; we find him as zealous for
the progress of primary education as for the development of his two
seminaries or his school at St. Joachim. Primary instruction was given
first by the good Recollets at Quebec, at Tadousac and at Three Rivers.
The Jesuits replaced them, and were able, thanks to the munificence of
the son of the Marquis de Gamache, to add a college to their elementary
school at Quebec. At Ville-Marie the Sulpicians, with never-failing
abnegation, not content with the toil of their ministry, lent themselves
to the arduous task of teaching; the venerable superior himself, M.
Souart, took the modest title of headmaster. From a healthy bud issues a
fine fruit: just as the smaller seminary of Quebec gave birth to the
Laval University, so from the school of M. Souart sprang in 1733 the
College of Montreal, transferred forty years later to the Chateau
Vaudreuil, on Jacques Cartier Square; then to College Street, now St.
Paul Street. The college rises to-day on an admirable site on the slope
of the mountain; the main seminary, which adjoins it, seems to dominate
the city stretched at its feet, as the two sister sciences taught
there, theology and philosophy, dominate by their importance the other
branches of human knowledge.

M. de Fenelon, who was already devoted to the conversion of the savages
in the famous mission of Montreal mountain, gave the rest of his time to
the training of the young Iroquois; he gathered them in a school erected
by his efforts near Pointe Claire, on the Dorval Islands, which he had
received from M. de Frontenac. Later on the Brothers Charron established
a house at Montreal wit