the months of June or July to the intendant of justice, police, and finance, established in the said country, who, having verified the same, shall order the payment of said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of each year."1 This was applicable to all. Colbert had before offered a reward, intended specially for the better class, of twelve hundred livres to those who had fifteen children, and eight hundred to those who had ten.

These wise encouragements, as the worthy Faillon calls them, were crowned with the desired result. A despatch of Talon in 1670 informs the minister that most of the young women sent out last summer are pregnant already; and in 1671 he announces that from six hundred to seven hundred children have been born in the colony during the year, a prodigious number in view of the small population. The climate was supposed to be particularly favorable to the health of women, which is somewhat surprising in view of recent American experience. "The first reflection I have to make," says Dollier de Casson, "is on the advantage that women have in this place [Montreal] over men; for though the cold is very wholesome to both sexes, it is incomparably

1 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 67. It was thought at this time that the Indians, mingled with the French, might become a valuable part of the population. The reproductive qualities of Indian women, therefore, became an object of Talon's attention, and he reports that they impair their fertility by nursing their children longer than is necessary; "but," he adds, "this obstacle to the speedy building up of the colony can be overcome by a police regulation." Mémoire sur l'Etat Présent du Canada, 1667.

more so to the female, who is almost immortal here." Her fecundity matched her longevity, and was the admiration of Talon and his successors, accustomed as they were to the scanty families of France.

Why with this great natural increase joined to an immigration which, though greatly diminishing, did not entirely cease, was there not a corresponding increase in the population of the colony? Why, more than half a century after the King took Canada in charge, did the census show a total of less than twenty-five thousand souls? The reasons will appear hereafter.

It is a peculiarity of Canadian immigration, at this its most flourishing epoch, that it was mainly an immigration of single men and single women. The cases in which entire families came over were comparatively few.1 The new settler was found by the King, sent over by the King, and supplied by the

1 The principal emigration of families seems to have been in 1669, when, at the urgency of Talon, then in France, a considerable number were sent out. In the earlier period the emigration of families was, relatively, much greater. Thus, in 1634, the physician Giffard brought over seven to people his seigniory of Beauport. Before 1663, when the King took the colony in hand, the emigrants were for the most part apprenticed laborers.

The zeal with which the King entered into the work of stocking his colony is shown by numberless passages in his letters, and those of his minister. "The end and the rule of all your conduct," says Colbert to the intendant Bouteroue, "should be the increase of the colony; and on this point you should never be satisfied, but labor without ceasing to find every imaginable expedient for preserving the inhabitants, attracting new ones, and multiplying them by marriage." - Instruction pour M. Bouteroue, 1668.

King with a wife, a farm, and sometimes with a house. Well did Louis XIV. earn the title of Father of New France. But the royal zeal was spasmodic. The King was diverted to other cares; and soon after the outbreak of the Dutch war in 1672 the regular despatch of emigrants to Canada wellnigh ceased, - though the practice of disbanding soldiers in the colony, giving them lands, and turning them into settlers, was continued in some degree, even to the last.

CHAPTER XVII.

1665-1672.

THE NEW HOME.

-As

MILITARY FRONTIER. -THE CANADIAN SETTLER.SEIGNIOR AND VASSAL. EXAMPLE OF TALON. - PLAN OF SETTLEMENT.-. PECT OF CANADA.- QUEBEC. -THE RIVER SETTLEMENTS.MONTREAL.-THE PIONEeers.

WE have seen the settler landed and married; let us follow him to his new home. At the end of Talon's administration, the head of the colonythat is to say, the island of Montreal and the borders of the Richelieu was the seat of a peculiar colonization, the chief object of which was to protect the rest of Canada against Iroquois incursions. The lands along the Richelieu, from its mouth to a point above Chambly, were divided in large seigniorial grants among several officers of the regiment of Carignan, who in their turn granted out the land to the soldiers, reserving a sufficient portion as their The officer thus became a kind of feudal chief, and the whole settlement a permanent military cantonment admirably suited to the object in view. The disbanded soldier was practically a soldier still, but he was also a farmer and a landholder.

own.

66

Talon had recommended this plan as being in accordance with the example of the Romans. "The practice of that politic and martial people," he wrote, may, in my opinion, be wisely adopted in a country a thousand leagues distant from its monarch. And as the peace and harmony of peoples depend above all things on their fidelity to their sovereign, our first kings, better statesmen than is commonly supposed, introduced into newly conquered countries men of war, of approved trust, in order at once to hold the inhabitants to their duty within, and repel the enemy from without."1

The troops were accordingly discharged, and settled not alone on the Richelieu, but also along the St. Lawrence, between Lake St. Peter and Montreal, as well as at some other points. The Sulpitians, feudal owners of Montreal, adopted a similar policy, and surrounded their island with a border of fiefs large and small, granted partly to officers and partly to humbler settlers, bold, hardy, and practised in bushfighting. Thus a line of sentinels was posted around their entire shore, ready to give the alarm whenever an enemy appeared. About Quebec the settlements, covered as they were by those above, were for the most part of a more pacific character.

To return to the Richelieu. The towns and villages which have since grown upon its banks and along the adjacent shores of the St. Lawrence owe their names to these officers of Carignan, ancient

1 Projets de Réglemens, 1667 (see Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 29).