66 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



wealthy and some of them liad become the possessors of considerable 

 estates. Some of the seigniories had already passed into the hands of 

 sh-angers. Ross Cuthbert, a son-in-law of Dr. Benjamin Eush, of 

 Philadelphia, liad l)ecome seignior of Berthier. Colonel Gugy, an 

 émigré, formerly an officer in the Royal Swiss Guard of France, had 

 inherited the seigniory of Machiche. Colonel Bruyères of the Royal En- 

 gineers had purchased the seigniory of Beçancour. Moses Hart, a Jewish 

 merchant in Three Rivers, owned the seigniory of Grondines, a rather 

 barren possession. Several noble families had lately retired to the beauti- 

 ful little village of Boucherville, near Chambly, where they could live 

 modastly upon their diminished incomes in a circle of friends of their 

 own choice. 



The farms occupied by the hahitans along the St. Lawrence usually 

 were not more than twenty or thirty chains in width by ninety or one 

 hundred in depth. Thieir houses with few exceptions were built of 

 squared logs dovetailed together at the ends, with, the intersticesi tightly 

 packed with clay, and were scrupulously whitewashed with lime, both 

 inside and out. As a rule, they were but one story in height with a gar- 

 ret or sleeping loft, divided into four rooms, one of which was the 

 kitchen, the remainder being bedrooms. The chimney was built in the 

 centre of the house, with a large fireplace opening into the kitchen, in 

 which a large kettle of soup constantly hung over the fire. The furni- 

 ture consisted of a few wooden chairs, a table and two or three beds. 

 The best room sometimes contained a tall clock, and a crucifix and a few 

 prints or wax figures of the Virgin and the Saints looked down from the 

 waJls. 



Fat pork was the principal article of food in the winter. Their 

 bread was made of a mixture of rye and wheat flour, and was generally 

 sour, coarse and heavy. Pea soup with ta large piece of pork boiled in it 

 often furnished breakfast, dinner arid supper for a family day after day, 

 varied occasio^nally with fried sausage and bread. Tea was little used, 

 the younger people of bo'th sexes usually drinking milk or water at their 

 meals. Rum was very cheap, and drunkenness was so common that it 

 was remarked that the old men rarely returned home siober from market,^ 



The ordinary costume of the adult male habilnn consisted of a 

 long-skirted, grey frock coat with a hood, girt about the waist with a 

 worsted sash of some biright colour, ornamented with beadwork, a waists 

 coat and trousers of the same material and moccasins or swamp-boots. 

 On his head he wore a knit woollen cap or bonnet rouge. His hair was 

 tied in a long thick queue, and he was seldom seen without a short blacJc 



1 Lambert, Travels, Vol. I; Gray, Letters from Canada. 



