of the thrills which came from setting foot where no white man had ever trod.  The Frenchman of those days was no weakling either in body or in spirit; he did not shrink from privation or danger; in tasks requiring courage and fortitude he was ready to lead the way.  When he came to the New World he wanted the sort of life that would keep him always on his mettle, and that could not be found within the cultivated borders of seigneury and parish.  Hence it was that Canada in her earliest years found plenty of pioneers, but not always of the right type.  The colony needed yeomen who would put their hands to the plough, who would become pioneers of agriculture.  Such, however, were altogether too few, and the yearly harvest of grain made a poor showing when compared with the colony’s annual crop of beaver skins.  Yet the yeoman did more for the permanent upbuilding of the land than the trader, and his efforts ought to have their recognition in any chronicle of colonial achievement.

It was in the mind of the king that ‘persons of quality’ as well as peasants should be induced to make their homes in New France.  There were enough landless gentlemen in France; why should they not be used as the basis of a seigneurial nobility in the colony?  It was with this idea in view that the Company of One Hundred Associates was empowered not only to grant large tracts of land in the wilderness, but to give the rank of gentilhomme to those who received such fiefs.  Frenchmen of good birth, however, showed no disposition to become resident seigneurs of New France during the first half-century of its history.  The role of a ‘gentleman of the wilderness’ did not appeal very strongly even to those who had no tangible asset but the family name.  Hence it was that not a half-dozen seigneurs were in actual occupancy of their lands on the St Lawrence when the king took the colony out of the company’s hands in 1663.

But when Talon came to the colony as intendant in 1665 this situation was quickly changed.  Uncleared seigneuries were declared forfeited.  Actual occupancy was made a condition of all future grants.  The colony must be built up, if at all, by its own people.  The king was urged to send out settlers, and he responded handsomely.  They came by hundreds.  The colony’s entire population, including officials, priests, traders, seigneurs, and habitants, together with women and children, was about three thousand, according to a census taken a year after Talon arrived.  Two years later, owing largely to the intendant’s unceasing efforts, it had practically doubled.  Nothing was left undone to coax emigrants from France.  Money grants and free transportation were given with unwonted generosity, although even in the early years of his reign the coffers of Louis Quatorze were leaking with extravagance at every point.  At least a million livres [Footnote:  The livre was practically the modern franc, about twenty cents.] in these five years is a sober estimate of what the royal treasury must have spent in the work of colonizing Canada.