in a year; the record for the year of grace
1750 is "4 or 6 oxen; 25 sheep, 2 or 3 cows, 1200 pounds of pork, 1400
to 1500 pounds of butter, one barrel of lard,"--certainly not much to
help a paternal government. The salmon fishery should be developed, says
Coquart. Now the farmers get their own supply and nothing more. Nets
should be used and great quantities of salmon might be salted down in
good seasons. Happily, conditions are mending. The previous farmer had
let things go to rack and ruin but now one sees neither thistles nor
black wheat; all the fences are in place. Joseph Dufour has a special
talent for making things profitable. If he can be induced to continue
his services, it will be a benefit to his employer. But he is not
contented. Last year he could not make it pay and wished to leave.
Nearly all his wages are used in the support of his family. He has three
grown-up daughters who help in carrying on the establishment, and a boy
for the stables. The best paid of these gets only 50 livres (about $10)
a year; she should get at least 80 livres, M. Coquart thinks. Dufour has
on the farm eight sheep of his own but even of these the King takes the
wool, and actually the farmer has had to pay for what wool his family
used. Surely he should be allowed to keep at least half the wool of his
own sheep! If it was the policy of the Crown to grant lands along the
river of Malbaie there are many people who would like those fertile
areas, but there is danger that they would trade with the Indians which
should be strictly forbidden. So runs M. Coquart's report. It was
rendered to one of the greatest rascals in New France, the Intendant
Bigot, but he was a rascal who did his official tasks with some
considerable degree of thoroughness and insight. He knew what were the
conditions at Malbaie even if he did not mend them.

After 1750 the curtain falls again upon Malbaie and we see nothing
until, a few years later, the desolation of war has come, war that was
to bring to Canada, and, with it, to Malbaie, new masters of British
blood. After long mutterings the war broke out openly in 1756. In those
days the farmer at Malbaie who looked out, as we look out, upon the
mighty river would see great ships passing up and down. Some of them
differed from the merchant ships to which his eye was accustomed. They
stood high in the water. Ships came near the north shore in those days
and he could see grim black openings in their sides which m