luxury even—could desire; and at seven o'clock
on a fine summer morning we started to explore
the villages of the habitans, and to pic-nic at
Shawenegan. The first village on the road was
that of "Des Forges," where Mr. M'Dougall,
a Highlander by birth or descent, has established
a foundry that gives employment to a considerable
number of people. In this part of the
country the iron-ore lies thickly strewn over
the surface, but had never been turned to
account by the habitans until Mr. M'Dougall
established himself among them. "Jean Baptiste,"
however, is not slow to follow if you show him
the way, and the habitans, enlightened as to the
value of the ore which they find on their farms,
have nothing to do but to cart it to Des Forges
and receive payment. Mr. M'Dougall makes
from ninety to one hundred tons of iron per
week, and finds a ready purchaser in the Grand
Trunk Railway of Canada. The next place,
six miles further on, is St. Etienne, the very
type and model of a French Canadian village
—a description of which may serve for a description
of the hundreds that line the banks of the
St. Lawrence, the Richelieu, the St. Jean, the
St. Maurice, and other rivers. Nothing more
unlike an English village can be imagined.
There is no village green or common, with its
sheltering elms, the playground of the young
villagers, or the browsing-place of the donkeys,
or the geese, if browsing (which I do not assert)
be the proper word to apply to the grass-eating
of those noblest of birds [for the dinner-table].
There is a village church, generally a substantial
edifice, with a tin roof and steeple, that shine
and shimmer in the bright sun as if they were
of silver; but which is not visible to the whole
people at once, like the spire or tower of an
English hamlet, inasmuch as a village is
generally six or seven miles long, and not a cluster
of houses around some common centre as with
us at home. No one house in a French Canadian
village is much better than another, unless
it be the cabaret or the post-office. No "squire"
with a pretentious mansion overshadows his
tenants; and even the doctor or the avocat is
not better lodged than his neighbours, if,
indeed, there be an avocat to be found at all.
The reason of the extreme length of the villages
is, that everybody must have a frontage, and
that the "terres," as the farms or lots are
called, are laid out either upon the banks of a
river extending backwards or upon a high
road. The frontage varies from two to four
arpens, or from four hundred to eight hundred
feet, and each terre has a depth of about a
mile. The house invariably stands by the road
or the river, and is generally constructed of
rude logs of wood, the interstices being filled
with mud or clay to keep out the wind and
rain; and the whole scrupulously whitewashed
both outside and in. Adjoining each house,
and open to the road, is a four, or oven, in
which in summer-time the good wife boils her
broth, cooks her meat, roasts her potatoes, or
makes her tea and coffee, in the presence of the
public, as it were, if there were any public
which cared to inspect her culinary arrangements.
Among these simple people, as in
France, the terre, or farm, on the death of the
proprietor is usually divided equally among all
the children; and as each insists upon having
a frontage, and will not on any terms be pushed
into the rear, the farms still retain their depth,
but are diminished in width in proportion to
the number of heirs. Thus a terre of four
arpens, when divided among four children of a
deceased habitant, is still a mile long; but is
narrowed for each new proprietor to the width
of two hundred feet. This ribbon-like piece of
land is liable to still further subdivision, so
that it is possible, unless a purchase or marriage
should prevent and lead to the re-conjunction
of any of these dissevered slips, that a man
might inherit a farm which he could walk across
in half a minute, but which he could not walk
along in less than twenty. The style of farming
is rude and primitive: it is an accusation
brought against the habitans, that they farm
no better than their progenitors in the days of
Charlemagne; that they know nothing of
improvements in agricultural implements, or of
the rotation of crops; and that they are fast
exhausting the land. They remain on the old
farm from generation to generation, as fixed to
the soil as if they were serfs, and as averse from
change of domicile as the limpet upon the rock.
There is abundance of good land in the wilderness
to be had for almost nominal prices—land
which the Anglo-Saxon and the Irish Celt are
glad to purchase and reclaim, but which has no
attraction for Jean Baptiste. He does not
object to fell trees, or do the hardest work of the
wilderness for wages; but he seems to have no
inclination to do such work on his own account,
or act in any way as a pioneer of civilisation, like
the hardy Yankees, Englishmen, and Irishmen,
who are every year adding new states to the
already large dominion of the Union, and
connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific by a
continuous line of thriving and energetic
communities. He seems to think that his lot has
been cast in a pleasant place, in the Canada of
his great-grandfathers, and loves the old terre
as if the memories of a thousand years were
clustered around it. He lives far better than
his compeers in France, who are contented with
black bread, an onion, and a pint of "vin bleu"
for their ordinary diet, except on grand
occasions; and scarcely ever dream of such a
luxury as the "poule au pot," which good
Henri Quatre desired to see in the cottage of
every one of his subjects. The Canadian habitant
has more abundant fare. In travelling
along these lengthened villages, the grunt of
the porker, the cackle of the hen, the crowing
of the cock, and the gobble of the duck, are to
be heard on every side; and fair average crops
of maize, oats, rye, buckwheat, flax, lint, and
tobacco, somewhat later in coming to
maturity than similar crops in New England and
New York, are to be seen at every interval
between the cottages. Pork and poultry are
the staple food of Jean Baptiste, but mutton