es" on the site of the present _Place
d'Armes_. Here they dwelt for about ten years in the same uncertain
security enjoyed by Quebec itself. Then they removed to Ste. Foye,
four miles west of the city, and again changing their abode six years
later, they founded the village of Old Lorette.

Standing to-day on Dufferin Terrace, the observer sees spread beneath
him the picturesque Cote de Beaupre, a graceful upland losing itself
in the Laurentian foot-hills. A shining spire in the middle distance
arrests the eye. It marks the village of Ancient Lorette, a nine
miles' drive from Quebec, where a pitiful moiety of Canada's noblest
Indian tribe ekes out an existence by the making of baskets and beaded
moccasins, and by that nonchalant culture of the soil which still
marks the primitive man.

CHAPTER V

ROYAL GOVERNMENT

In the year 1660 the French population of Quebec numbered something
over six hundred. The fur company continued to drive a fair trade in
peltries, but the prosperity of the city itself was woefully retarded
by the constant menace of the Iroquois. The Baron d'Avaugour held the
office of Governor, and his strong sense of military authority brought
him into conflict with the Church, by this time become the real
controller of the State. This revered power was still further to
impose its authority and influence through and by the person of
Francois-Xavier Laval, the first Bishop of Canada, a man of as great
ability as piety, an ecclesiastical statesman trained in the school of
Mazarin. His career gives significance to a later epoch.

The fur traders had always found brandy their most attractive
commodity in dealing with the thirsty savage; and Pere Lalement gives
a sad picture of the misery entailed. "They have brought themselves
to nakedness," he writes, "and their families to beggary. They have
even gone so far as to sell their children to procure the means of
satisfying their raging passion. I cannot describe the evils caused by
these disorders to the infant Church. My ink is not black enough to
paint them in proper colours. It would require the gall of the dragon
to express the bitterness we have experienced from them. It may
suffice to say that we lose in one month the fruits of the toil and
labour of thirty years." Accordingly, the Church now decided to
prohibit it entirely, and a law was passed making it a capital
offence. Two men paid the extreme penalty; and a woman also was
condemned to the