A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs | Page 9

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

After 1750 the curtain falls again upon Malbaie and we see nothing
until, a few years later, the desolation of war has come, war that was to
bring to Canada, and, with it, to Malbaie, new masters of British blood.
After long mutterings the war broke out openly in 1756. In those days
the farmer at Malbaie who looked out, as we look out, upon the mighty
river would see great ships passing up and down. Some of them
differed from the merchant ships to which his eye was accustomed.
They stood high in the water. Ships came near the north shore in those
days and he could see grim black openings in their sides which meant
cannon. Already Britain had almost driven France from the sea and
these French ships, which ascended the St. Lawrence, were few. Then,
in 1759, happened what had been long-expected and talked about.
Signal fires blazed at night on both sides of the St. Lawrence to give
the alarm, when not French, but British ships, sailed up the river, a
huge fleet. They stopped at Tadousac and then slowly and cautiously
filed past Malbaie. On a summer day the crowd of white sails scattered
on the surface of the river made an animated scene. In wonder our
farmer and his helpers watched the ships silently advance to their goal.
There were 39 men-of-war, 10 auxiliaries, 70 transports and a
multitude of smaller craft carrying some 27,000 men; it was the
mightiest array Britain had ever sent across the ocean. New France was
doomed.
The French fought bravely a campaign really hopeless. Montcalm
massed his chief force at Quebec and there awaited attack. In vain had
he appealed to France for further help; he was left unaided to struggle
with a foe who had command of the sea, whose fleet could pass up and
down before Quebec with the tide and keep the French guards for
twenty miles in constant nervous tension as to where a landing might
be made. Wolfe carried on his work relentlessly. He warned the
Canadians that he would ravage their villages if they did not remain
neutral. Neutral it was almost impossible for them to be for the French
urged them in the other direction. With stern rigour, Wolfe meted out to
them his punishment. He sent parties to burn houses and destroy crops
and Malbaie was not spared. On August 15th, 1759, Captain Gorham
reported to Wolfe that with 300 men, one half of them Rangers from
the English colonies, the other half Highlanders, he had devastated the

north shore of the St. Lawrence. The soldiers did their work thoroughly.
From Baie St. Paul, the last considerable village east of Quebec, they
went on thirty miles to Malbaie where they destroyed almost all of the
houses. We do not know whether the competent Dufour was still the
farmer at Malbaie. But all