1651.] QUEBEC. 333 



a legislative assembly, a court of justice, and an 

 executive body: more even than this, for they 

 regulated the private affairs of families and indi- 

 'sdduals. The appointment and payment of clerks 

 and the examining of accounts mingled with high 

 functions of government ; and the new corporation 

 of the inhabitants seems to have been managed 

 with very little consultation of its members. How 

 the Father Superior acquitted himself in his ca- 

 pacity of director of a fur-company is nowhere 

 recorded.^ 



As for Montreal, though it had given a Govornor 

 to the colony, its prospects were far from hopeful. 

 The ridiculous Dauversiere, its chief founder, was 

 sick and bankrupt ; and the Associates of Mont- 

 real, once so full of zeal and so abounding in 

 wealth, were reduced to nine persons. What it 

 had left of vitality was in the enthusiastic Made- 

 moiselle Mance, the earnest and disinterested 

 soldier, Maisonneuve, and the priest, Olier, with 

 his new Seminary of St. Sulpice. 



Let us visit Quebec in midwinter. We pass the 

 warehouses and dwellings of the lower town, and 

 as we climb the zigzag way now called Mountain 

 Street, the frozen river, the roofs, the summits of 

 the cliff, and all the broad landscape below and 

 around us glare in the sharp sunlight with a 

 dazzling whiteness. At the top, scarcely a private 

 house is to be seen ; but, instead, a fort, a chui'ch, 

 a hospital, a cemetery, a house of the Jesuits, and 



1 Those curious in regard to tliese new regulations will find an ao 

 count of them, at greater length, in Ferland and Faillon. 



