Even when he knows only rude frontier life the French Canadian often retains something of the politeness and deference in manner of the nation from which he springs. But, unlike them, he has retained little sense of what is artistic. No thought of beauty of situation seems to determine his choice of the site for his dwelling. What he has in mind is protection from the prevailing wind, if this is possible, and, for the rest, convenience. So he puts his house close to the highway, in many cases even abutting upon it. He shows no taste in grouping his farm buildings. He plants few trees and his house stands bare and unattractive by the road side. The absence of trees near his dwelling is sometimes accounted for by the need, in earlier times, of clearing away everything that might offer a chance of ambush to his Indian enemies. If this is the true origin of the habit, an instinct survives long after the need which developed it has disappeared. The houses are persistent in type and nearly always of wood. The principle doorway opens into the living room, usually of a good size. It is kitchen, diningroom, parlour, often even workshop. In this chamber cooking, sewing, repairing of tools, all the varied family activities, take place. One large guest chamber or two small bedrooms open off it. In the corner there is a rude staircase and up under the sloping roof are two more rooms; one a bed-room probably with three or four beds, the other a general lumber room. Often there are two families in a household. As always with the French, family feeling is very strong. As soon as they are old enough the elder sons may go out into the world; it is usually a younger son whom the father selects to remain with him on the family property. This son is free to marry and to him, when the old father dies, the land goes on condition that he will always keep the door open to members of the family who may seek its refuge. It is not easy to see how so small a cottage can discharge these hospitable functions; in addition to adults there are often, in a French Canadian family, from ten to fifteen, sometimes twenty or twenty-five children. Through the long winters, doors and windows remain closed. The family gets on without fresh air and it gets on also without baths.

Since there are often many hands to do the work habitant farming is greatly diversified. But improvements come only slowly. Some of the most fertile areas in Quebec have been half ruined because the habitant would not learn the proper rotation of crops. Of the value of fertilizing he has had only a slight idea. His domestic animals are usually of an inferior breed, except perhaps the horses. Of these he is proud and, no matter how poor, usually keeps two, an extravagance for which he was rebuked by successive Intendants under the French regime. In recent times the French Canadian farmer has been making great progress. He is pre-eminently a handy man. Though his versatility is lessening, to this day, in some of the remoter villages, he buys almost nothing; he is carpenter, farmer, blacksmith, shoemaker; and, if not he, his wife is weaver and tailor. The waggon he drives is his handiwork; so is the harness; the home-spun cloth of his suit is made by his wife from the wool of his own sheep: it is an excellent fabric but, alas, the young people now prefer the machine-made cottons and cloths of commerce and will no longer wear homespun. Sometimes the habitant makes his own boots, the excellent bottes sauvages of the country. The women make not only home-spun cloth, but linen, straw hats, gloves, candles, soap. When there are maple trees, the habitant provides his own sugar; he makes even the buckets in which the sap of the maple tree is caught. Tobacco grows in his garden, for the habitant is an inveterate smoker: sometimes the boys begin when only five years old or less. The women and the girls, indeed, do not smoke and an American visitor, who declares that he saw pretty French Canadian brunettes of sixteen puffing clouds of smoke as they worked in the harvest field, is solemnly rebuked by a French Canadian writer; the brunettes must have been Indian women.[28]

Though nearly all the children now go to school, yet reading can hardly be considered one of the amusements of the habitant. In the neighbourhood of Malbaie, at least, rarely does one see other than books of devotion in a habitant household; the book-shelf is conspicuous by its absence. Of course newspapers are read but many of the habitants are still illiterate, or nearly so, and read nothing. Not less gay are they for this deprivation. They are endless talkers, good story tellers, and fond of song and dance. They have preserved some of the popular songs of France,—Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, En roulant ma Boule roulant, A la Claire Fontaine, and others—and these airs simple, pleasing, a little sad, have become characteristic of French Canada. Nearly every house has its violin, often home-made, and though this music is rude it suffices for dancing. But some of the bishops are as severe in regard to dancing as is the Methodist "Book of Discipline" and in their dioceses the practise is allowed only under narrow restrictions. The short Canadian summer makes that season for the habitant one of severe labour. Winter, though it has its own labours, such as cutting wood, is the great season of social intercourse. For a long time the habitant would not consider a mechanic his social equal; perhaps, still, the daughters of a farmer would spurn the advances of the village carpenter. But whatever the social distinctions, baptisms, marriages, anniversaries, are made the occasions for festivity. There are corvees recreatives, such as parties gathered for taking the husks off Indian corn, when there is apt to be a good deal of kissing as part of the game. At New Year, the jour de l'an, the feasting lasts for three days. Hospitality is universal and it is almost a slight not to call at this time upon any acquaintance living within a distance of twenty miles. Every habitant has his horse and sleigh and thinks little of a long drive.

Often in the foreground of the habitant's life, always in the background at least, stand the Church and the priest. Malbaie, like a hundred other populous, present-day Roman Catholic parishes, was nursed in the first instance by the travelling missionary. In winter he could go on snow shoes but his usual means of travel in a country, covered by forests, but with a net-work of lakes and rivers, was by canoe. Malbaie could be reached either from Tadousac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, one of the earliest mission stations in Canada, or from Baie St. Paul in the other direction. The St. Lawrence was oftentimes a perilous route. Its waves rise at times huge as those of Ocean itself; a frail canoe could only hug the shore and at times would be storm bound for days. The missionary travelled usually with an attendant. They carried a portable chapel with the vessels necessary for the celebration of the mass. We have a description of the arrival of one of these missionaries, the Abbe Morel, as long ago as in 1683, at Riviere Ouelle where one now takes the ferry to cross to Murray Bay. A group of people stand on the shore watching a small black object round a distant point. As it comes nearer they see it is a birch bark canoe, paddled by two men. In a short time the bow of the canoe has touched the sandy beach where stands the waiting group. As the figure in the bow rises a long black cassock falls down to his feet; he is the long expected missionary come to celebrate mass. With the sun sinking behind the mountains of the north shore, a kind of triumphal procession escorts the missionary to one of the neighbouring houses. The evening is spent in preparation for the service of the morrow. The priest hears confessions and imposes penances. At daybreak on the following morning the people begin to gather, some coming by land from the neighbouring clearings, others, in birch bark canoes, from points more distant. Perhaps fifty persons gather before the house. Meanwhile in its best room the portable altar has been arranged. Silence falls upon the people as they enter the door. The mass begins; after the gospel the priest preaches a practical sermon with impressive solemnity. The mass over, a second service, vespers, soon follows. Then the people separate. Before the priest leaves he says the office of the dead over a grave made, it may be, many weeks ago, he baptizes children born since his last visit, and perhaps marries one or more bashful couples. "How beautiful upon the mountains," says a Canadian historian of the work of these devoted men, "are the feet of those who bring the gospel of peace."[29] Such a scene we may be sure was enacted many a time for the benefit of the scattered sheep at Malbaie before and after the arrival of Colonel Nairne.

It was not until 1797 that these occasional services ceased and Murray Bay secured a resident priest. Then was fully established in the parish the imposing church system that to-day probably retains its original vigour more completely in the Province of Quebec than in any other country in the world. At its head is the diocesan bishop. Subject only to the distant authority of the Pope he reigns supreme. With one or two exceptions, such as that of the cure of Quebec, he appoints and he can remove any and every priest in his diocese, a right, it is said, almost never exercised arbitrarily. He fixes the tariff to be paid for masses. It is he who determines whether such a practise as, for instance, dancing shall be permitted in the diocese. He watches over the Church's rights and gives the alarm when a political leader proposes anything that seems to menace them. If a newspaper adopts a course dangerous to the Church it has often happened that the bishop gives it one or two warnings; in case of continued obstinacy his last act is to forbid the faithful to read the paper; and since most of them will obey, this involves ruin for the recalcitrant journal.

The bishop visits each parish at least every third year and sometimes even annually. A mounted cavalcade will probably meet him as he crosses its boundary. A procession is formed. The roads have been cleared and decorated with boughs of ever-green trees stuck in the ground. The people watch the cavalcade from their doors and all kneel as the procession passes. The bishop goes at once to the church where he gives his benediction and holds confirmation. He remains for some days. There is daily communion and spiritual instruction. He inspects everything—the church and its furnishings, the registers, the accounts, the inventory of effects, the cemetery. He has already given notice that he is ready to hear any complaints or grievances even against the cure. We may be sure that when he comes there is a general clearing up of parochial difficulties. A wise bishop is a great peacemaker; an arbitrary one commands an authority not lightly to be disregarded.

The church that towers over the humble cottages of a French Canadian village invariably seems huge. But we need to remember how large are the parishes and how few in number relatively are the churches; it is probable that in English-speaking Canada there are half a dozen churches, or more, to every one in the Province of Quebec. In all Canada, rural and urban, there is probably not a Protestant parish to which are attached as many, or perhaps half as many, people as the five thousand who dwell in the parish of St. Etienne de la Malbaie, one of secondary importance in the Province of Quebec. In a whole diocese there are often not more than forty or fifty parishes. In the country the churches are usually built at intervals of not more than three leagues (nine miles) so that no one may have to travel more than a league and a half to mass. The life of the people centres in the Church. In its registers, kept with great accuracy, is to be found the chief record of the village drama, the story of its births, marriages and deaths. True to the tastes of old France the French Canadian has an amazing interest in family history, and genealogies, based upon these ample records, are closely studied. In the olden days the habitant brought his savings to be kept in the Church's strong chest. The church edifice, its pictures and its other furnishings, are things in which to take pride. Each village aspires to have its own chime of bells. To chronicle baptisms, marriages, burials, anniversaries, the chimes are rung for a longer or shorter time according to the fee paid. Every day one hears them often and a considerable revenue must come from this source. Whatever the habitant knows of art, painting, sculpture, music, he learns from the Church and it is all associated with religious hopes and fears. "Dwellers in cities," says a French Canadian writer, "have concerts, theatres, museums; in the rural communities it is the Church that provides all this. During her services the most fervent among the faithful taste by anticipation the joys of heaven and murmur, enchanted: 'Since here all is so beautiful in the house of the Lord how much more so will it be in his paradise!'"[30]

Thus it happens that here the parish and its church have a significance not felt where, as now in practically all English speaking countries, each community represents a variety of religious beliefs. At Malbaie, as in dozens of other parishes, there is not, except in summer, a single Protestant. So strong is the pressure of religious and social opinion, that even persons with no belief in Christianity are constrained to join outwardly at least in the church services. In the villages, at least, nearly every one confesses and partakes of the communion many times in the year; at Easter there are practically no abstentions from the sacrament. With this unanimity it has been possible to establish by legislation a most elaborate system providing for the support of the priests, for keeping up cemeteries and other parish needs. Elsewhere left largely to voluntary action, in Quebec such duties become a tax on the community as a whole. Whether a parishioner likes it or not, he must, if the taxpayers so determine, pay his share for building a church or for other similar expenditure decided upon.

We will suppose that a new residence for the priest is desired. A majority of ratepayers must address to the bishop of the diocese a petition with a plan of what is proposed. The commission of five members which exists in every diocese then gives ten days' public notice in order that objectors may have every opportunity to express their views. When, in the end, a decision to build is reached, the commissioners announce this by public proclamation. The next step is for the ratepayers of the parish to meet and vote the necessary money. Trustees are then appointed to carry out the work with power to collect the required funds from the Catholic ratepayers. This assessment is a first charge on the land; it must be divided into at least twelve equal instalments and the payments are spread over not less than three, or more than eight, years. To be quite safe the trustees levy fifteen per cent. more than the estimated cost. If ready money is not on hand for the work the church property may be mortgaged. When the building is completed the trustees render their accounts with vouchers and take oath that they are correct. All is precise, clearly defined, business-like.

No expenditure of money can be made for building without the consent of the people. Always in French Canada a trace of old Gallican liberties has remained, in the power over Church finances left in the hands of churchwardens (marguillers) elected by the people. But in the old days when the habitant was more ignorant and less alert than now he is, no doubt the voice in this respect might be the voice of the churchwarden, but the hand was the hand of the cure. No doubt, also, it is still true that any project upon which the cure sets his heart he will in the end probably get a majority of the parishioners to adopt. But he must persuade the people. Sometimes they oppose his plan strenuously and feeling runs high. Then when a churchwarden is elected, as one is annually, the cure may have his candidate, the opposing party theirs. At Malbaie recently there was a sharp difference of opinion between the cure and the people on a question relating to the cemetery. The parties divided on the choice of a churchwarden and the cure's candidate was defeated.

Yet the cure's position is one of great strength and authority. He has his own income uncontrolled by the fabrique, which is master of the rest of the church finances. The cure's tithe consists of one twenty-sixth of the cereals produced by the parishioners. A further tithe he has: the twenty-sixth child born to any pair of his parishioners is by custom brought to the priest and he rears it; sometimes, strange to say, this tithe is offered! From his tithe on cereals the income is not large; at Malbaie it is probably never more than from $1000 to $1200 a year; sometimes much less. The average income of a cure is not more than $600. It is the custom for the parishioner to deliver duly at the priest's house one twenty-sixth of his grain and in the autumn a great array of vehicles may be seen making their way thither. Usually there is considerable variety in the grain thus brought but sometimes the cure is almost overwhelmed by a single product such as peas; one of their number, thus paid, the neighbouring clergy christened the "cure des pois." The French Canadian farmer is often narrowly penurious and if he will not pay, as sometimes happens, the cure rarely presses him or takes steps to recover what the law would allow. In any case a bad harvest is likely to leave the cure poor. Changes in the type of farming may also curtail his income. Of the products of dairy farming he gets no share, yet it is a creditable fact that many priests have urged their people to adopt this kind of farming. Fees for weddings which, in Protestant Churches, go usually to the minister, are in the Province of Quebec handed over to the general church fund. Of course the priest has sources of income other than the tithe. He receives fees for masses but the sums chargeable for these ceremonies are determined by the bishop; the priest himself has no power of undue exaction. There is indeed no evidence of a desire for such exaction. Whatever personal differences may arise, the French Canadian cure is usually one in thought and aim with his people. Wherever he goes he is always respectfully saluted. To him the needy turn and there are heavy calls upon his charity. Few cures have any surplus income. They keep up a large house and have constant need of one or more horses. Most cures, it is said, die poor.

It is the complaint in Great Britain and the United States that, rather than enter the Christian ministry, the best intellects are seeking secular pursuits. This is not the case in the Province of Quebec. The cures watch the promising boys in the schools. The Church has many boarding schools where boys are led on step by step to the final one of entering the priesthood. A promising boy, if he needs it, is given a scholarship. When the time comes he is sent to complete his education at Rome or elsewhere. The Church has selected him, trained him in her service, and, for the rest of his life, his best powers are at her call. Every family is ambitious to have a representative in the priesthood and this becomes the most notable thing not merely in the family but also in the parish. The Province of Quebec has many parish histories. These volumes are rather dreary reading, it must be admitted, consisting chiefly of the record of the building or improvement of the church and of the coming and the going of the cures. But one chief record is always found—that of the sons of the parish who have entered the priesthood. They are its glory. Not merely pride in the success of their offspring leads parents to wish for a son in the priesthood. He may bring to them more substantial benefits. He is the interpreter of sacred mysteries, the intercessor in some respects between God and man, and he will plead for them in the court of Heaven.

This ambition to get sons into the priesthood has made it possible now for the Church to rely wholly upon priests Canadian in origin. Not always was this the case. After the British conquest it was not easy to get priests. The British government frowned upon the introduction of priests from France, still Britain's arch-enemy. Irish priests were thought of, but they could not speak French and, besides, the Bishop of Quebec did not find in them the submissive obedience of the Canadian priest. For a time it was seriously proposed to supply Canada with priests from Savoy, since of them Britain could have no political fears. But for the time the French Revolution solved the question. Emigre priests, driven from France, could be in Canada no political danger to Great Britain since, like her, they desired the overthrow of the existing French government. So a good many emigre priests were brought out, among them Mr. Le Courtois, so long the cure of Malbaie. This movement soon spent itself. In time the Church in Canada had a number of seminaries for training priests and it now levies a heavy tithe upon the best intellects of the country. Recently a new emigration of French priests to Canada has taken place. But they have not been wholly welcome; their tone is not quite that of the Canadian priesthood; sometimes they assume patronizing airs and they are felt to be foreigners. I have even heard a French Canadian priest say in broken English to a Protestant from the Province of Ontario: "I feel that I have more in common with you than I have with the French priests who are flocking into this country."

The Canadian cure is the priest always. Unlike the clergy in other parts of Canada he wears his cassock even when he goes abroad; one sees dozens of these black robes in the streets, on the steamers and trains. He does not share in the amusement of other people. In Quebec Anglican clergymen play golf and tennis; probably if a cure did so he might be called to account by the bishop. Occasionally priests ride bicycles, but even this is looked upon with some suspicion. Into general society the priests go but little. They come together in each other's presbyteries for mutual counsel and to celebrate anniversaries, such as the 25th year of the ordination of one of their number. The large presbyteries, which one sees even in remote parishes, are necessary to house the visiting clergy on such occasions. They assist each other when their parishes have special fetes. But their social intercourse is chiefly with each other. The courtly abbe of old France, a universal guest in salons and at dinner tables, is hardly found at all in the Province of Quebec. Nor is the scholar usual. Even in small parishes there are rarely less than 500 or 600 communicants and the calls upon the cure's time are heavy. There are, of course, priests of literary tastes; as there are those with a taste for art, to whom are due the occasional good pictures found in the parish churches. Some priests interest themselves in agriculture and give wise guidance to their people. But behind everything is the solemn, severe, exacting, conception of the priest's high function as the medium of God's speech to man. He is almost sexless—a being apart consecrated to an awe-inspiring office. A mother will sometimes quiet an unruly child by threatening the portentous intervention of the cure.

Yet he is the universal friend. His relation to his people is not merely official; it is affectionate, personal. The confessional makes him familiar with the intimate details of nearly every one's life. On all the joyous and sad crises, at births, marriages, and deaths, he is at hand with sympathy, comfort and support. When he goes on a journey he looks up not merely his own but his parishioners' friends and is welcome everywhere. He is the general counsellor, the reconciler of family quarrels, the arbitrator in differences, the guardian of morals. The seigneur at Malbaie found the priest enquiring as to the manner in which the male and female servants of the Manor were lodged.

Colonel Nairne thought that the Church was too willing to see the people remain ignorant; with her the primary virtue is obedience. But it is not less true that on moral questions, such as sobriety and purity, the Church has always shown great vigilance and zeal. In the old days there was a mighty struggle between the Bishop of Quebec and the governor Frontenac as to the sale of intoxicating liquors, and the Church is still keen for temperance. It is due to her that public drinking places are unknown in most Canadian villages. At Murray Bay it happened recently that, by some lapse in vigilance, the party favourable to the granting of licenses got the upper hand. The results were immediate and deplorable. Summer visitors frequently found their drivers under the influence of liquor and the habitant, usually courteous and respectful, was now often rude and quarrelsome. The sudden fall made one realize how slight might be the strength of virtue due merely to the absence of temptation. The Church saw the danger. In the following winter she began a systematic temperance campaign. For some ten days daily services were held at which eloquent denunciations of intemperance roused the people. Every effort was made to ensure attendance at these services and the parish church, a great structure, was well filled daily. Hundreds signed the pledge and by the next summer all was changed. No one was licensed to sell liquor and the community was sober. If the relapse had been rapid it must be admitted that the recovery was not less so.

The cure and his assistants do their work with the precision and regularity of a business man in his office. They watch education, and have their own educational ideals. In the public schools of the English-speaking world in America, manners and religion receive, alas, but slight attention. But in Quebec one need only pass along a country road to see that the children are taught respect and courtesy. The chief subject of instruction is religion and to prepare the children for the first communion seems to be the main aim of education. In the parish the priest is never far away. Nearly always one or other of the clergy is at the presbytery to answer calls of urgency, and their duties begin at an early hour. "I am very busy until nine o'clock in the morning," a cure once said to me. My comment was that most of us are only beginning the serious duties of the day at that hour. "But I am tired by that time," he said, rather sadly, "for already, so early in the day, I have heard much of human sin." The people come early in the morning to confess and by nine o'clock the cure was weary of the tale of man's frailty. Thursday is his day of recreation. Only on that day usually does he leave his parish and then he always arranges that a neighbouring priest shall be within call. This oversight is not spasmodic; it is persistent, alert, universal, and hardly varies with the individual cure. In human society there is no institution more perfectly organized than the Roman Catholic Church and in Quebec her traditions have a vitality and vigour lost perhaps in communities more initiated. Of course not every one accepts or heeds the cure's ministry. Many a mauvais sujet is careless or even defiant but, when his last moments come, at his bedside stands the priest to show to the repentant sinner the path of blessedness, and, when he is gone, his wayward course will give ground to call the living to earlier obedience.

In the Canadian parishes faith is simple, with a pronounced taste for the supernatural. In the year 1907 a Jesuit priest, M. Hudon, published at Montreal the life of Marie Catherine de Saint Augustin, 1632-1668, a Quebec nun. This devout lady lived in an atmosphere charged always with the supernatural. She knew of events before they happened; with demons who tempted her she had terrific combats; she read the thoughts of others with divine insight. Perhaps the climax of her experiences is found when she has regularly, as confessor and mentor, the Jesuit father and martyr Breboeuf, dead for some years. M. Hudon declared that he had submitted the evidence for these wonders to all the tests that modern scientific canons could require and that they were undoubtedly true. The Archbishop of Quebec, Mgr. Begin, wrote a prefatory note approving of the teaching of the book, and adding that Mother Marie Catherine's life could not fail to be an inspiration to young girls to live nobly. This simple belief in the constant occurrence of the supernatural is not found only in the remoter parishes of the Province of Quebec as a French Canadian writer seems to indicate;[31] it appears everywhere. All Christians believe in a God who shapes human events and hears and answers prayer. But many, Catholic and Protestant alike, believe that the energy of God, in response to man's appeal, is applied through the ordinary machinery of nature's laws. Modern thought is pervaded with the conception of nature's rigour. I have seen good Catholics shrug their shoulders at the wonders narrated by Marie Catherine de Saint Augustin. But others, and these not only the ignorant, think that this attitude shows the lack of a deeper faith. Must God and his saints, they ask, be confined within the narrow framework of nature's laws? Cannot He do all things?

So it is not strange that the Canadian peasant dwells in a world charged with the supernatural. Night furnishes the opportunity for goblins to be abroad; the flickering lights on the marshes are goblin fires. Then, too, the vagrant dead wander about restlessly, sinful souls refused entrance to Heaven until they have sought and secured adequate prayers for their pardon and relief. To cross a cemetery at night might attract the fatal vengeance of the dead thus disturbed. The grumbling mendicant at the door may really be an evil spirit bent on mischief. With a few, magic and the gift of the evil eye are still dreaded forces and it is well to know some charm by which evil may be averted. Since night is the time of danger, if abroad then be watchful; if at home close doors and windows, ere you go to sleep. I was once on a fishing expedition with habitant guides when we had to share the same cabane. The air becoming insufferable, I got up quietly, opened the door and went back to bed. Presently I heard one of the guides steal softly to the door and close it. When I thought he was asleep I opened it again. But in vain; once more it was closed. In the morning nothing was said about it. Certainly not cold was what he feared, for the weather was hot. I do not think it was the mosquitoes. Was it the goblins?

A simpler and touching faith is common. Every one has noticed in the Province of Quebec the numerous crosses by the way side. These Calvaires are of rough wood, usually eight or ten feet high; sometimes with the cross are the dread implements of Christ's pain—the crown of thorns, the hammer and nails, the executioner's ladder, the Roman soldier's spear. Often at the foot is a box for alms to help the forgotten dead who are in purgatory. As the habitant passes them he usually lifts his hat. The Calvaires are a kind of domestic altar to which the people come. In the summer evenings one may see a family grouped about them in prayer. When there is need for special prayers, several families will come across the fields to meet at the Calvaire. Dr. Henry, of whom more later, tells how at Malbaie some eighty years ago he found in the cottages social family worship night and morning. It is to be feared that the present generation at Malbaie is less devout, corrupted it may be by the heretic visitors' bad influence and example. But still the guide with whom one goes camping rarely neglects his evening devotions. In some families prayer sanctifies all the actions of the day. There is prayer at rising, prayer at going to bed. Though here, as in France, women are spoken of as only creatures, the mother is usually better educated than the father and often leads these devotions, the others joining in the responses. Before meals is recited a prayer, usually the Benedicite. There is often a family oratory and here at the appropriate seasons, in the month consecrated to the special family saint and guardian, in May, the Virgin's month, in June, that of the Sacred Heart, in November, "the month of the dead," special prayers are said. On Sunday evenings the family chant the Canticles. The Church's feasts are marked by festal signs such as the laying of the best rugs on the floor. If there is drought groups gather frequently at the Calvaires to pray for rain. Occasionally such supplications have a curiously commercial basis in frugal minds. A habitant's wife, learning that a near neighbour had made an offering to the cure for prayers for rain, declared that she would give nothing, since if rain fell on the neighbour's farm it would not stop there: "S'il mouille chez les Pierrot Benjamin, il mouillera ben icitte."[32]

In each year, if he chooses, the habitant has a good many chances to cast his vote. The Church, the greatest institution of the village has its annual election—that for a churchwarden; of the three churchwardens one retires every year. An annual election there is also for the municipal council, two or three of whose members retire each year. This body looks after the highways, the granting of licenses to sell spirituous liquors and so on. Annually also are elected school commissioners, who have charge of education. The municipal council and the school commission are comparatively new institutions in the Province of Quebec. They have been borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon world, but the habitant takes kindly to the elector's privileges and struggles are sometimes keen. The innovation of the ballot not having been adopted, as yet, in municipal elections, the voting is open. Every voter must thus show his preferences and when a moral question, such as the licensing of drinking places, is before the electors this open voting aids the Church's influence. Usually the cure is an ardent temperance man and to vote for a license against his wishes, made known perhaps from the pulpit, needs great strength of conviction. It thus happens that a very large number of parishes in the Province of Quebec have no licensed drinking places.

Of offices in the gift of the village voter those in the Church are the most highly esteemed. To be a municipal councillor or a school commissioner is indeed all very well. But the village council is not really very important. It spends only a few hundred dollars a year and to keep up the roads is not an exciting task. The village council rarely has even the "town hall" usual in other communities; it meets in the "salle publique," or the vestry, of the Church, or in the school house. The school commissioners too have no very dazzling work to do. The cure is sometimes their chairman and thus in some degree they come under the control of the Church. The commissioners appoint the teachers in the schools and keep up the school buildings, but their outlay is also very small, for the salaries of teachers, usually women, are appallingly low. The really important elective office in the parish is that of churchwarden (marguiller). In the church the churchwardens have a special seat of honour assigned to them. They control the temporalities and may beard even the cure himself. Large sums of money pass through their hands. They receive the pew rents,—and every habitant has a pew; they receive the voluntary offerings. It often happens that the Church accumulates large sums of money and that, if the building of a presbytere or parish church is decided upon, there is enough on hand to pay for it outright. The municipal council and the schoolboard, on the other hand, are always poor. The habitant watches their taxation with a parsimonious scrutiny and it is a thankless task to carry on their work.

Municipal interests represent of course only a part of the village's political thought. In provincial politics, federal politics, there is often in Quebec an interest keener even than in other parts of Canada. It would be too much to say that the habitant has a wide outlook on public questions; but the village notary and the village doctor are likely to have political ambitions and rivalry becomes acute; often indeed the curse of the village is the professional politician. At times in Quebec politics have been closely associated with religion and always the bishops are persons to be reckoned with. Their attitude has ever been that, if the policy of one or the other party seems to be inimical to the Church, they have the right to direct Catholic electors to vote against such a party. From the point of view of British supremacy in French Canada it would be a mistake to say that the bishops in a political role have always been mischievous. After the conquest they soon became the most staunch supporters of the authority of George III and through the Church the British conqueror was able to reach the people. When the American Revolution began, the bishops were strenuous for British connection and from the pulpits came solemn warnings against the Americans. Again in Britain's war on Revolutionary France the Canadian bishops were with her, heart and soul. They ordered Te Deums when Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the battle of the Nile, and over Trafalgar there were great rejoicings. After Waterloo we find in French Canada perhaps the most curious of all the thanksgivings; at Malbaie, as elsewhere, a Te Deum was sung and the people were told in glowing terms of the victory of the "immortal Wellington" which had covered "our army" with glory and ended a cruel war. Later, in the days of Papineau, the Church opposed rebellion; she has since opposed annexation to the United States. She has also helped to preserve order. If a crime was to be detected, the cure read from the pulpit a demand that any one, who could give information to further this end, should do so. Solemn excommunication was pronounced against offenders; to make the warning impressive the priest would drop to the ground a lighted candle and put it out with his foot; so would God extinguish the offenders thus denounced, and those who abetted their crimes.

Since the Church has aided the state, not unnaturally she expected some special favours in return. She got them in the days of the early British governors of Canada. Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, secured for the Church the legal power to levy the tithe on Catholics and practically all the other privileges she had enjoyed under the old regime. The bishops tended to become more and more active in politics and this reached a climax in 1896. With great heat the bishops threw themselves into the attack on the Liberal party, because it would not support the Church's demands for her own separate schools in Manitoba, supported by taxes levied on Roman Catholics by the state. Some of the bishops went too far in denunciation; an appeal against their action was carried by Catholics to the Pope and the offenders were rebuked. The incident showed that in politics the habitant knows his own mind, for he gave an overwhelming support to the party on which the bishops were warring. Since then many a habitant draws a sharp distinction between the spiritual and the political claims of the bishops. Their full spiritual authority he does not doubt; in politics he thinks his own opinion as good as theirs.

If in spiritual matters the Church led it was intended that in temporal affairs too the habitants should always have guidance. An old world flavour seems to pervade the relations between seigneur and vassal in a French Canadian parish. The seigneur was himself the vassal of the crown, bound to do humble homage at the capital when he received his grant. We have a detailed account of the ceremony as performed, perhaps for the first time under British rule. On December 23rd, 1760, in the morning one Jacques Noel, a seigneur, accompanied by royal notaries, proceeded to the government house in Quebec. He knocked at the principal entrance and, when a servant appeared, Noel asked if His Excellency James Murray, the Governor, was at home. The servant replied that His Excellency was within and that he would give him notice. On being admitted to the presence of the Governor, Noel with head uncovered, and, to symbolize his humble obedience, wearing neither sword nor spur, fell on his knees before him and declared that he performed faith and homage for the seigniory to which, on his father's death, he had become the heir. He then took an oath on the gospels to be faithful to the king and to be no party to anything against his interests; to hold his own vassals to the same obedience; and to perform all other duties required by the terms of his holding.

The Crown required very little of the seigneur and so, in truth, did the seigneur of his tenants. Their annual payment of cens et rentes rarely amounted to more than a very few dollars. When it fell due in the autumn they were given abundant notice. Still in the Canadian parishes, when the Sunday morning mass is over, the crier stands on a raised platform near the church door, the people gather round, and the announcement is made of tithes and taxes due, of articles lost or found, of anything indeed of general interest to the community. It was in this way that as St. Martin's day, November 11th, approached the people were reminded of the falling due of the cens et rentes. The meaning of the two terms is somewhat obscure. The cens was a trifling payment by the censitaire in recognition of the seigneur's position and rights as landowner; while the rentes represented a real rental based in some degree on the supposed value of the land. But the rate was usually conventional and very small. In early Canada the river was the highway and upon it therefore every settler desired to have a frontage. There was, also, greater safety from Indian attacks in having the houses close together at the front of the farms. So these became long narrow strips, with the houses built so close together that the country side often seems like a continuous village. The habitant paid usually in cens et rentes twenty sols (about twenty cents) for each arpent (192 feet) of frontage; instead of cash usually he might pay in kind—a live capon or a small measure (demi-minot) of grain for each arpent. He paid also about one cent of rent for each superficial acre. Thus for a farm of 100 acres, with two arpents of frontage, a habitant might pay $1.00 in cash and two capons. If each of 400 such tenants paid for their frontage in capons, 800 of these fowls would he brought to the seigneur's barn-yard each autumn!

Though payment was due on November 11th, the habitants usually waited for the first winter days when the sleighing had become good. In many of the sleighs, hastening with the merry sound of bells over the wintry roads to the manor house, there would be one or two captive capons or a bag or two of grain. M. de Gaspe has described how on such an occasion the seigneur, or some member of his family for him, would be found by the tenant "seated majestically in a large arm chair, near a table covered with green baize cloth." Here he received the payments, or in many cases only excuses for non-payment. The scene outside was often animated, for the fowls brought in payment of the rent, with legs tied but throats free, would not bear their captivity in silence. Rent day was a festal occasion, but the great day in the year at the manor house was New Year's Day. Then the people came to offer their respects to the seigneur and Nairne speaks of the prodigious consumption of whiskey and cakes at such a time. The seigneur was usually god-father to the first-born of the children of his tenants. It is a pretty custom among French Canadians for the children to go on New Year's Day, which is a great festival, to the chamber of their parents in the early morning and kneel before the bed for their benediction. To the seigneur as to a parent came on this day his god-children and we have it from M. de Gaspe, an eye witness, that on one occasion he saw no less than one hundred of these come to call upon the seigneur at the manor house! In the old days the people came also on the first day of May to plant the May-pole before his door and to dance round it.

Some of the seigneurs were as poor as their own censitaires and, like them, toiled with their hands. But usually there was a social gulf between the cottage and the manor house. Even the Church marked this. The seigneur had the right to a special pew; he was censed first; he received the wafer first at the communion; he took precedence in processions, and was specially recommended from the pulpit to the prayers of the congregation. Caldwell, who was seigneur of Lauzon opposite Quebec, used to drive through his great seigniory in state, half reclining on the cushions of his carriage and with a numerous following. If on a long drive he stopped at a farm house, even for the light refreshment of a drink of milk, he never paid the habitant with anything less than a gold coin. I once asked a habitant, who remembered the old days, whether the seigneur really was such a very great man in the village. He replied, with something like awe in his voice, "Monsieur, il etait le roi, l'empereur, du village."

The ministrations of the manor house were often patriarchical and beneficent; the seigneur's wife was like the squire's wife in an English village. In time this relation aroused resentment. Some villager's son with a taste for business or letters made his way in the world, got into touch with more advanced thought, and when he came back to the village was not so willing as formerly to touch his hat to the seigneur and accept an inferior social status as a matter of course. M. de Gaspe tells how he often accompanied Madame Tache, in her own right co-seigneuress of Kamouraska, opposite Malbaie, in her visits to the people on the seigniory. She took alms to the poor, and wine, cordials, delicacies to the sick and convalescent. "She reigned as sovereign in the seigniory," he says, "by the very tender ties of love and of gratitude." When she left the village church after mass on Sunday the habitants, most of whom drove to church in their own vehicles, would wait respectfully for her to start and then follow her in a long procession, none of them venturing to pass her on the road. At the point where she turned from the high-way up the avenue leading to the manor house, each habitant, as he passed, would raise his hat, although only her back was in view disappearing in the direction of the house.

But early in the 19th century this spirit was changing:

One day I was myself witness, says M. de Gaspe, of a violation of this universal deference. It was St. Louis's day, the festival of the parish of Kamouraska. As usual Madame Tache, at the close of mass, was leading the long escort of her censitaires, when a young man, excited by the frequent libations of which in the country many are accustomed to partake during the parish fetes,—a young man, I say, breaking from the procession passed the carriage of the seigneuress as fast as his horse would go. Madame Tache stopped her carriage and turning round towards those who followed her cried in a loud voice:

"What insolent person is this who has passed before me?"

An old man went up to her, hat in hand, and said with tears in his voice:

"Madame, it is my son who unfortunately is tipsy, but be sure that I shall bring him to make his apologies and meanwhile I beg you to accept mine for his boorishness."

I ought to add that the whole parish spoke with indignation of the conduct of the young man. The delinquent had committed a double offence. He had been rude to their benefactress, and besides, violating a French Canadian custom, he had passed a carriage without asking permission.[33]

This must have been before 1813 for in that year this good Madame Tache died: even so early was youth restive under the old traditions of deference and subordination. Already some even of the seigneurs were saying that the system retarded settlement. It would have suited the seigneurs to have their holdings converted into freehold, for then they could have held the unsettled land as their own property instead of being under obligation to grant it for a nominal rental to censitaires. But to make this conversion would have been too kind to the seigneurs; so the matter dragged on for a long time.

The grievances of the habitant against the seigneurs were numerous, some of them real, some fanciful. It seemed anomalous that, in a British colony in the nineteenth century, there should be men holding great tracts of land with rights over their tenants, as some authors have seriously claimed, extending from the power of trying them for petty offences to that of inflicting the death penalty. This last right was, in any case, only nominal and was never exercised by any seigneur in Canada; but even the claim that it existed shows how high were the authority and privilege of the seigneur. A right like the corvee had a sinister meaning. One of the greatest hardships of the old regime, in France it meant that, on demand, the peasant must drop his own work to join in making highways, in carrying from one place to another the effects of a regiment, and other unwelcome tasks, all without pay. In Canada it was milder. The seigneur levied a corvee of so many days' labour, which he employed on the useful task of improving the highway. Some seigneurs required that at the times they chose, the habitants should work for them a certain number of days, usually six, in each year. They could even make the habitants work without pay at building a manor house; a few of the massive stone mansions still fairly numerous in the Province of Quebec were constructed by such labour. Not unnaturally the habitant came to feel it odious and humiliating to be obliged thus to give his labour at another's order.

The seigneuries too were often broken up. In Canada there is no law of primogeniture and, at a seigneur's death, the land went to daughters as well as to sons. Few of the old seigniorial families remained on their original estates. In time those who held the property came to think that a rental of about a cent an acre was not enough. In the days of French rule they could not have increased it; but the old custom, they claimed, did not apply under British sovereignty. So these charges were often increased; in time instead of a penny the habitant had to pay three-pence, six-pence, and even eight-pence, an acre; the seigneurs, as a judge put it, showed an excellent knowledge of arithmetical progression. Thus the cens et rentes began to bring in a real income. So did the lods et ventes, the tax of one-twelfth of the price of whatever land the habitant sold. In early days land was rarely sold. But when towns and villages had grown up on seigniorial estates, a good deal of buying and selling took place and there stood always the seigneur demanding in every transaction his share of the selling price. If the land was sold two or three times in a year, as might well happen, each time the seigneur got his share of one-twelfth. If the occupier had built on the land a house at his own cost, none the less did the seigneur, who had done nothing, get his large percentage on the selling value of these improvements. This was a real grievance. To avoid paying the seigneur's claim a price, lower than that really paid, was sometimes named in the deed, and this led to perjury. To protect themselves the seigneur used his droit de retrait the right for forty days of himself taking the property at the price named. This involved vexation and delay and increased discontent. Moreover the seigneur's right to lods et ventes stood in the way of a ready transfer of property between members of the same family.

There were other causes of discontent. The seigneur had the droit de banalite, the banal rights, under which in France the habitant must use the seigneur's wine-press, his oven and his mill. In Canada no wine was made, so the seigneur's winepress did not exist. Some attempts were made to force the habitant to bake his bread in the seigneur's oven but what would do in a compact French village, where fuel was scarce, became absurd in Canada; the picture is ludicrous of a habitant carrying a dozen miles, over rough roads, to the seigneur's oven, unbaked dough which might be hard frozen en route. Moreover new inventions made ovens common and cheap so that the habitant could afford to have his own. The seigneur's oven thus caused no grievance. Not so however the seigneur's mill. In the early days when the seigneur had the sole right to build a mill this became for him, in truth, a duty sometimes burdensome; for, whether it would pay or not, the government forced him to build a mill or else abandon the right. But in time the mill proved profitable and to it the peasant must bring his wheat. There might be a good mill near his house, while the seigneur's mill might be a dozen miles away and even then might give poor service; yet to the seigneur's mill he must go. If it was a wind-mill, nature, by denying wind, might cause a long delay before the flour should be ready. As time went on, some seigneurs claimed or reserved a monopoly in regard to all mills; grist mills, saw mills, carding mills, factories of every kind. Canada in time exported flour, but the seigneur's rights stood in the way of the free grinding of the wheat for this trade. The habitant might have on his land an excellent mill site with water power convenient, but he could not use it without the seigneur's consent. More than this the seigneur often reserved the right to take such a site to the extent of six arpents for his own use without any compensation to the habitant.

In many cases the seigneur might freely cut timber on the habitant's land to erect buildings for public use,—church, presbytery, mill, and even a manor house. The rights to base metals on the property he also retained. The eleventh fish caught in the rivers was his. He might change the course of streams or rivers for manufacturing purposes; he alone could establish a ferry; his will determined where roads should be opened. Some seigneurs were even able to force villages and towns to pay a bonus for the right to carry on the ordinary business of buying and selling. So it turned out that if the habitant's crop failed he had little chance to do anything else without the seigneur's consent; he is, says the report of a Commission of Enquiry in 1843, "kept in a perpetual state of feebleness and dependence. He can never escape from the tie that forever binds to the soil him and his progeny; a cultivator he is born, a mere cultivator he is doomed to die." No doubt this plaint is pitched in a rather high key. But in time the burden of grievances was generally felt and then the seigniorial system was doomed.

In the days of the last John Nairne political agitation became an old story at Malbaie. We get echoes of meetings held in the village to support the cause of the idol of habitant radicalism, Louis Joseph Papineau; in 1836 ninety-two resolutions drawn up by him and attacking the whole system of government in Canada appear to have met with clamorous approval from the assembled villagers. Papineau was himself a seigneur and did not assail the system. But after his unsuccessful rebellion in 1837-38 the attack on the seigneurs intensified. We know little of what happened at Malbaie but the end came suddenly. In 1854, after an election fought largely on this issue, the Parliament of Canada swept away the seigniorial system. The habitants then became tenants paying as rent the old cens et rentes. They could not be disturbed as long as this trifling rent was paid. Moreover at any time they might become simple freeholders by paying to the seigneur a sum of money representing their annual rent capitalized on a six per cent, basis. The term seigneur is still used but is now a mere honorary title. No longer does his position give him the authority of a magistrate; no longer must the habitants grind their corn at his mill; no longer can he claim lods et ventes when land is sold. For the loss of these rights he was paid compensation out of the public treasury.[34]

With the abolition of the seigniorial system ends too the story of the Nairne family. In 1861, exactly one hundred years after Colonel Nairne first visited Malbaie, died his grandson and the last of his descendants, John McNicol Nairne, son of Colonel Nairne's eldest daughter Magdalen. This last Nairne left the property absolutely to his widow, tied only by the condition that it was to go to her male issue if she had such, even by a second marriage. In 1884, she too died childless, and bequeathed the property to an old friend, both of herself and of her husband, Mr. W.E. Duggan. Had Mr. Duggan not survived Mrs. Nairne the property was to go to St. Matthew's Church, Quebec. Mr. Duggan occupied it, until his death in 1898, when it passed by will to his half-brother, Mr. E.J. Duggan, the present seigneur.[35]

It is a sad story this of the extinction of a family. Both Thomas Nairne and his father were buried at first in the Protestant cemetery at Quebec. But not there permanently were they to lie, and many years ago they found a resting-place in a new tomb in Mount Hermon Cemetery. On a lovely autumn day in 1907 I made my way in Quebec to the spot where the Nairnes are interred. In the fresh cool air it was a pleasure to walk briskly the three miles of the St. Louis road to the cemetery. One crossed the battle field of the Plains of Abraham where, within a few months, a century and a half ago, Britain and France grappled in deadly strife. The elder Nairne saw that field with its harvest of dead on September 13th, 1759, and, in the following April, he saw its snow stained with the blood of brave men who fell in Murray's battle with Levis. In May, 1776, he marched across it in victorious pursuit of the fleeing American army. At Mount Hermon I readily found the Nairne tomb. It lies on the slope of the hill towards the river. Through the noble trees gleamed the mighty tide of the St. Lawrence. A great pine tree stands near the block of granite that marks the Nairne graves and a gentle breeze through its countless needles caused that mysterious sighing which is perhaps nature's softest and saddest note. One's thoughts went back to the brave old Colonel who wrought so well and had such high hopes for his posterity to the soldier son, remembered here, who died in far distant India; and to the other soldier son who fell in Canada upon the field of battle. He was the last male heir of his line. The name and the family are now well-nigh forgotten. The inscriptions on the tomb, reared by a friend, connected with the Nairnes by ties of friendship only, not of blood, are themselves the memorial of the rise and extinction of a Canadian family.[36]

[Footnote 25: He must have been a Roman Catholic for he was buried in the churchyard at Murray Bay.]

[Footnote 26: We have seen (ante p. 49) how at Malbaie Colonel Nairne expected that a Protestant missionary would soon make the community Protestant.]

[Footnote 27: Professor Barrett Wendell, France of To-day, New York, 1907.]

[Footnote 28: Roy, Histoire de la Seigneurie de Lauzon, IV: 169, 170.]

[Footnote 29: The Abbe H.R. Casgrain: Une Paroisse Canadienne au XVII. Siecle. Oeuvres, Vol. I, pp. 483 sqq.]

[Footnote 30: Roy, La Seigneurie de Lauzon, IV: 247.]

[Footnote 31: M. Leon Gerin in "L'Habitant de Saint-Justin", p. 202.]

[Footnote 32: Roy, La Seigneurie de Lauzon IV: 245.]

[Footnote 33: De Gaspe, Memoires, p. 533, 4.]

[Footnote 34: Mr. Nairne claimed as compensation for his lods et ventes L4,560, 9s. 6d., (Halifax currency) and for the banal rights L3,400. He probably received considerably less. More than 400 dwellers in the seigniory still pay the annual cens et rentes.]

[Footnote 35: Malcolm Fraser's seigniory, Mount Murray, remained somewhat longer in the family of its original owner. On Fraser's death in 1815 his eldest son William, who had become a medical practitioner and a Roman Catholic, succeeded. He died without issue in 1830 and his brother, John Malcolm Fraser, then fell heir to the seigniory. When he died in 1860 the property passed by will to his two daughters, both married to British officers. The elder, Mrs. Reeve, succeeded to the manor house. The younger, Mrs. Higham, soon sold her share to the Cimon family who became prominent in the district and one of whose members sat in Parliament at Ottawa on the Conservative side. Mrs. Reeve died in 1879 leaving the use of the property to her husband, Colonel Reeve, for his life. When he died in 1888, his son Mr. John Fraser Reeve, Malcolm Fraser's great-grandson, became seigneur. In 1902 he sold the property to the present seigneur, Mr. George T. Bonner, of New York, a Canadian by birth. Though there are numerous living descendants of Malcolm Fraser, Murray Bay knows them no more.]

[Footnote 36: Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant Colonel John Nairne, First Seigneur of Murray Bay. This Gallant Officer during 38 years distinguished himself as an able and brave Soldier. For simplicity of manners as a man, for Intrepidity and humanity as a Soldier, and for the virtues of a Gentleman, his memory will long be respected and cherished. Born in Scotland, March 1, 1731. Died at Quebec, July 14, 1802.

Lieutenant Colonel Nairne first entered the Dutch Service where he belonged to that distinguished Corps, the Scotch Brigade. He afterwards entered the British Service where under Wolfe he was present at the taking of Louisbourg and Quebec. He also served under Murray and Carleton and distinguished himself in a most gallant manner when Quebec was attacked by the Americans in the years 1775 and 1776.

And of his eldest son, Lieutenant John Nairne of the 19th Regiment of Foot, who fell a victim to the climate of India when returning with the victorious troops from the capture of Seringapatam in the 21st year of his age; also of his youngest son, Captain Thomas Nairne, of the 49th Regiment of Foot who bravely fell at the head of his Company in the Battle at Chrysler's Farm in Upper Canada November 11, 1813, aged 26 years.

Also of John Leslie Nairne, great grandson of Colonel Nairne, born July 23, 1842, died March 18, 1845; and of John Nairne, Esq., Grandson of Colonel Nairne, born at Murray Bay, March 22nd, 1808, died at Quebec June 8, 1861; and of his Widow, Maria Katherine Leslie, died at Quebec, August 25, 1884, deeply regretted by her friends and by the poor of whom she was the constant benefactress.

This monument is erected in affectionate remembrance of much kindness by one who was privileged to enjoy their friendship during the best part of his life.]



CHAPTER VIII

THE COMING OF THE PLEASURE SEEKERS

Pleasure seeking at Murray Bay.—A fisherman's experience in 1830.—New visitors.—Fishing in a mountain lake.—Camp life.—The Upper Murray.—Canoeing.—Running the rapids.—Walks and drives.—Golf.—A rainy day.—The habitant and his visitors.

In the Middle Ages mankind in pursuit of change of air and scene and of bodily and spiritual health went on pilgrimage to some famous shrine; in modern times dwellers in cities, in a similar pursuit, go in summer to some beautiful spot by sea, or lake, or mountain. To many these places then become as sacred as was the saint's shrine of an earlier age. Busy men have leisure there to be idle, to read, to enjoy companionship, to pursue wholesome pleasures. Such a spot has Murray Bay become to many. Their intrusion was not looked upon with favour by those who wished to preserve the old simplicity, but it could not be resisted. More than a hundred years ago Colonel Nairne and Colonel Fraser had parties of guests in the summer that must have made the two manor houses lively enough. The beauty of the place, its coolness when Quebec and Montreal suffered from sweltering heat in the short Canadian summer, the simplicity and charm of its life, proved alluring. There was also excellent sport. Salmon and trout abounded. Though time has brought changes, in some seasons the salmon fishing is still excellent and, in all the world, probably, there is no better trout fishing than in the upper waters of the Murray and in some of the lakes.

Thus it happened that the earliest annals of pleasure seeking at Murray Bay relate to fishing. It is at least possible that more than two hundred years ago the Sieur de Comporte tried his fortune as a fisherman in the lake that bears his name. A hundred and fifty years ago, as we have seen, Captain Nairne and his guest Gilchrist had such excellent salmon fishing that Gilchrist thought this sport alone worth a trip across the Atlantic. Many other fishing expeditions to Malbaie there must have been and, fortunately, a detailed narrative of one of them, made in 1830, has been preserved. The fishermen were Major Wingfield and Dr. Henry—attached to the 66th regiment at Montreal.

They went by steamer from Montreal to Quebec and an American General on board jeered at them for travelling three hundred miles to catch fish which they could buy in the market at their door! When they reached Quebec they found no steamer for Murray Bay,—hardly strange as then the steamboat was comparatively new. Three days they waited at Quebec until at length they bargained with the captain of a coasting schooner bound for Kamouraska, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, to land them at Malbaie. The weather was stormy, the ship nearly foundered, and the eighty miles of the journey occupied no less than four days and nights. The fishermen had brought with them a quarter of cold lamb, a loaf, and a bottle of wine, but, before the journey was over, sheer hunger drove them to the ship's salt pork and to sausages stuffed with garlic. Rather than take refuge below among "thirty or forty dirty habitants from Kamouraska" they stuck to the deck and encamped under the great sail, but the rain fell so heavily that they could not even keep their cigars alight. At length "with beards like Jews," cold, wet, half-starved and miserable, they reached their destination. As they landed at Murray Bay they saw a salmon floundering in a net, bought it, and carried it with them to the house of a man named Chaperon where they had engaged lodgings. Here, says Dr. Henry, the sensation of being clean and comfortable in their host's "pleasant parlour" was delicious. The tea, the toast, the dainty prints of fresh butter were all exquisite "after rancid pork and garlic," and he declares that they ate for two hours and consumed "some half gallon of thick cream and half a bushel of new laid eggs." Under their window bloomed a rose bush in full flower. Murray Bay was at its best.

On Monday morning, July 5th, 1830, the two fishermen engaged a caleche, and a boy named Louis Panet drove them up the Murray River. The present village church was already standing, "a respectable church," says Dr. Henry, "with its long roof and glittering spire and a tall elm or two"; the elms, alas, have disappeared and now there are only willows. A wooden bridge crossed the Murray and its large abutments loaded with great boulders told of formidable spring floods sweeping down the valley. A recent "eboulement" or land slide had blocked the road along the river and men were still busy clearing away the rubbish. Eight or ten miles up the river at the fall known as the Chute, still a favourite spot for salmon fishing, they had magnificent sport. One Jean Gros, in a crazy canoe, took them to the best places for casting the fly. The first salmon weighed twenty-five pounds and they had to play it for three-quarters of an hour. That evening when they returned to M. Chaperon's, to feast once more, they had five salmon weighing in all one hundred and five pounds and forty-five sea trout averaging three pounds each. No wonder Gilchrist has said such fishing was worth a trip across the Atlantic! The blot on the day's enjoyment was that in the July weather they were pestered with flies.

Excellent sport continued from day to day. Once Jean Gros lost his hold of the pole by which he controlled the canoe and it drifted helplessly towards a rapid, Henry all the time playing a salmon. The man was alarmed and knelt to mumble prayers but Henry caught up a board thrown from the shore, gave him a whack with it on the back and shouted: "Ramez! Sacre! Ramez!" The effect was electrical. The old fellow seized the board, paddled with it like mad, steered down the rapid, and Henry finally landed his salmon. Day after day the two fishermen drove up to the Chute to fish until, after a fortnight, the river fell and the salmon ceased to rise; then they went down in a large boat to Riviere Noire, said never yet to have been fished with a rod, slept at night on the sandy beach, but had no luck. Henry tells of an annoyance at Malbaie that still continues; mongrel dogs ran after their caleche; sometimes one would try to seize the horse by the nose and nearly cause a run-away. Each cur pursued the vehicle and barked himself hoarse, and then, when he retired, his neighbour would take up the task. At length, after this experience had been frequently renewed, they decided to retaliate. One black shaggy beast had made himself specially obnoxious; with his thick wooly fur he did not mind in the least being struck by the whip. So one day Dr. Henry got ready the salmon gaff and, as the brute darted out at them, skilfully hooked him by the side. The driver whipped up his horse, which seemed to enjoy the punishment of his enemy, and the vehicle went tearing along the road, the dog yelling hideously as he was dragged by the hook. The people ran to the doors holding up their hands in astonishment. The Doctor soon shook off the dog and he trotted home little the worse. Next day when he saw the fisherman's caleche coming he limped into the house "as mute as a fish" with his tail between his legs.

Dr. Henry thought Murray Bay an earthly paradise. The people in this "secluded valley" were the most virtuous he had ever seen. Flagrant crime was unknown,—doors were never locked at night. There was no need of temperance reform; "whole families pass their lives without any individual ever having tasted intoxicating fluids." The devout people, he says, had social family worship, morning and evening; the families were huge, fifteen to twenty children being not uncommon; when a young couple married the relations united to build a house for them; and so on. Unfortunately we know from other sources that conditions were not as idyllic at Murray Bay as Dr. Henry describes; but it was, no doubt, a simple and virtuous community.

In time its isolation was to disappear before invaders like Dr. Henry, in pursuit of pleasure. So gradual was the change that we hardly know when it came. By 1850 there was a little summer colony mostly from Quebec and Montreal. Soon a few came from points more distant. As means of transport on the St. Lawrence improved a great many travellers passed Murray Bay on their way to the Saguenay. Tadousac, at its mouth, was already well known and an occasional stray visitor stopped off at Murray Bay to see what it was like. The accommodation offered was rude enough, no doubt, but perhaps less rude than one might suppose. At Pointe au Pic stood a substantial stone house. This was turned into a hotel and known some fifty years ago as Duberger's house. There were besides a few other houses for summer visitors. Thus, long ago, was there tolerable comfort at Murray Bay. In any case visitors soon found that the place had abundant compensations even for discomfort. They came and came again. Friends came to visit them and they too learned to love the spot. Some Americans from New York chanced to find it out and others of their countrymen followed; by 1885 already well established was the now dominant American colony.

The influx has limited and restricted but has not destroyed the old diversion of fishing. There are still many hundreds of lakes in the neighbourhood on which no fisherman has ever yet cast a fly. But nearly all the good spots within easy range are now leased or owned by private persons and clubs; no longer may the transient tourist fish almost where he pleases. All the better for this restriction is the quality of the fishing. What magnificent sport there is in some of those tiny lakes on the mountain side and what glorious views as one drives thither! To reach Lac a Comporte, for instance, one crosses the brawling Murray, drives up its left bank for a mile or so and then heads straight up the mountain side. Turning back one can see the silver gleam of the small river winding through its narrow valley until lost in the enveloping mountains. From points still higher one looks northwestward upon the mountain crests worn round ages ago, some of them probably never yet trodden by the foot of man. Most are wooded to the top but there are bare crags, a glowing purple sometimes in the afternoon light; but the prevailing tone is the deep, deep blue, the richest surely that nature can show anywhere. Along the road where we are driving stretch the houses of the habitants and sometimes, to survey the passing strangers, the whole family stands on the rude door-step. They rarely fail in a courteous greeting, with a touch still of the manners of France.

Two or three days spent on one of these wild mountain lakes, such as Lac a Comporte, is as pleasant an experience as any one can have. The walk is beautiful from the last cottage where the vehicles are left and the two or three men are secured who shoulder the packs with the necessary provisions. At first the forest path is hewn broadly in a straight line but it soon narrows to a trail winding up the mountain side. The way is rough; one must clamber over occasional boulders and turn aside to avoid fallen trees. The white stems of birches are conspicuous in the forest thicket. After a stiff climb we have passed over the shoulder of the mountain; the path is now trending downward and at length through the arch of green over the pathway one catches the gleam of the lake. The pace quickens and in a few minutes we stand upon the shore of a lovely little sheet of water with a shore line perhaps three miles long, lying in the mountain hollow. Evening is near and, half an hour later, each fisherman is in a boat paddled softly by a habitant companion. In a thousand places the calm water is disturbed by the trout feeding busily; they often throw themselves quite clear of the water and, when the sport has well begun, at a single cast one occasionally takes a trout on each of his three flies. Before it is dark the whole circuit of the lake has been made and a goodly basket of trout is the result.

A camp at evening is always delightful. The tired fishermen lie by the cheery fire while the men prepare the evening meal, to consist chiefly of the trout just caught. They have the vivacity and readiness of their race: rough habitants though they are their courtesy is inborn, inalienable. After the meal is over silence often falls on the group of three or four by the fire. Every one is tired and at barely nine o'clock it is time for bed. Before each of the two or three small tents standing some distance apart by the water's edge the men have built a blazing fire which throws its light far out over the tiny lake. All round rise the mountains, now dark and sombre; a sharp wind is blowing and as one stands alone looking out over the water there comes a sense of chill; for a moment the mountain solitude seems remote, melancholy and friendless: with something like a shiver one turns to the cheerful fire before the tent. Here blankets are spread on sweet scented boughs of sapin; the bed is hard, but not too hard for a tired man and one quickly falls asleep.

Other fishing expeditions at Murray Bay take one farther afield and into more varied scenes. In its upper stretches, three thousand feet above the sea, the Murray River flows through a level country before it plunges into mountain fastnesses, almost impregnable in summer, for a long and troubled detour, to emerge at length into this last valley. To reach this flat upland one must drive through a beautiful mountain pass with great heights towering on either side of the winding roadway. In the upper river the fishing is still unsurpassed. Of small trout there are vast numbers, excellent for the table, but in the deep pools are also huge trout, ranging in weight from three to eight pounds. The surrounding country is open; there are only clumps of scrubby timber; and the plain is covered with deep moss readily beaten into a hard path upon which the foot treads silently. Here the bears come to feed upon the berries and the Canadians have called the plain prettily the "Jardin des Ours." Other sport than trout fishing there is. In season the caribou and the moose are abundant—but that is a sportsman's tale by itself.

Fishing and hunting are not the sole diversions. As long ago as in 1811, when young Captain Nairne came here fresh from Europe, the boating attracted him and he spent much time on the bay and the river. No doubt the young seigneur was soon skilful in the art of paddling a canoe. In those days there were real Indians and no other canoes than those of birch bark; now these have well-nigh disappeared and, indeed, few visitors at Murray Bay, use any kind of a canoe. The pastime is thought too dangerous for all but the initiated. Amid these mountains, winds rise quickly and beat up a sea, and it is well to keep near the shore. The rising tide sweeps like a mill race over the bar at the mouth of the bay and when one has passed out to the great river it is like being afloat on the open sea. On perfectly calm days we may go far out to be swept up with the tide; but it is both safer and pleasanter to glide along close to shore under the shadow of the cliffs, around sharp corners, dodging in and out among boulders submerged, or now being submerged, by the rising tide. The successive sandy beaches are each backed by high cliffs. The river is a shining, spangled, surface of light blue and white, reflecting the sky sprinkled with fleecy clouds. Here a chattering stream, the Petit Ruisseau, falls over white rocks to lose itself in the sand. Far ahead now one can see the Church of Ste. Irenee perched on a level table-land, two or three hundred feet above the river. Soon a dark green line on the high birch-clad shore marks the gorge by which the Grand Ruisseau flows to the St. Lawrence. At its mouth is a good place to land and make tea. The canoes are drawn up on a sandy beach under the shadow of cliffs, a medley of red and grey and brown. Near by, the Grand Ruisseau, a fair sized brook, babbles in its bed crowded with great boulders. A wild path, part of it including steps from rock to rock in the bed of the stream itself, leads to a lovely little cascade where, in white foam, the water falls into a deep dark pool. One hurries to visit it and then, with the evening shadows falling and the narrow gorge becoming sombre, it is wise to hasten back. As one steps out from the wooded path to the shore of the great river the scene is enchanting. The river's shining surface is perfectly smooth. Far across it is a dark-blue serried line of mountains. Houses, twenty miles distant, stand out white in the last light of the sun. From the tin-covered spire of a church far away, the flash of the rays comes back like the glow of fire. Standing in shadow we look out on a realm of light:

"As when the sun prepared for rest Hath gained the precincts of the West, Though his departing radiance fail To illuminate the hollow vale, A lingering light he fondly throws On the fair hills, where first he rose."

The shore is strangely silent; one hears only the occasional puffing of the white whale or the sad cry of the loon.

A thrilling diversion is that of running the rapids in the Murray River. The canoe is sent up by charette and after luncheon it is a walk or drive of eight or nine miles up the river to the starting point—a deep, dark-brown pool, which soon narrows into a swift rapid, the worst in all the stretches to the river's mouth. Formerly a procession of half a dozen canoes would go through the rapid with light hearts, but, long ago, when the river was very high, a canoe upset here and one of its occupants was never seen alive again. As one paddles out into the pool and is drawn into the dark current moving silently and swiftly to the rapid the heart certainly beats a little faster. The water's surface is an inclined plane as it flows over the ledge of rock. Straight ahead the current breaks on a huge black rock in a cloud of white foam. One must sweep off to the right, with the great volume of the water, and need catch only a little spray in swinging safely past the danger point. Then, in the waves caused by the current, before the canoe is quite turned "head-on" a wave may curl over the bow and leave the occupants kneeling in half an inch of water. In such a case it is wise to land and empty the canoe. In the next rapid, a tangled maze, the water is shallow and skill is required to wind in and out among the rocks and find water enough to keep afloat. Then the canoe slips over a ledge with plenty of water and the only care is to curve sharply to the left with the current before it strikes the bank straight ahead. The whole trip down the river occupies two glorious hours. There are short stretches of smooth and deep water; then the river contracts and pours with impetuous swiftness down a rocky slope. Sometimes trees stand close to the river; then there are bare grey banks of clay; then smiling fields sloping gently up to the high land; at times the canoe is in shade, then in the flashing sunlight. The river grows milder as it nears its mouth but the excitement does not end until we float under the bridge at Malbaie village and lift the canoe over the boom fastened there to catch logs in their descent. To paddle home in calm water across the bay seems tame after dancing for two hours on that tossing current.