48 FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN AMERICA. [1663-1763. 



erently to the law which he himself had made ; 

 patient and laborious, and seeking for the solid 

 comforts rather than the ornaments of life ; no 

 lover of war, yet, if need were, fighting with a 

 stubborn, indomitable courage, and then bending 

 once more with steadfast energy to his farm, or his 

 merchandise, — such a man might well be deemed 

 the very pith and marrow of a commonwealth. 



In every quality of efficiency and strength, the 

 Canadian fell miserably below his rival ; but in all 

 that pleases the eye and interests the imagination, 

 he far surpassed him. Buoyant and gay, like his 

 ancestry of France, he made the frozen wilderness 

 ring with merriment, answered the surly howling 

 of the pine forest with peals of laughter, and 

 warmed with revelry the groaning ice of the St. 

 Lawrence. Careless and thoughtless, he lived 

 happy in the midst of poverty, content if he could 

 but gain the means to fill his tobacco-pouch, and 

 decorate the cap of his mistress with a ribbon. 

 The example of a beggared nobility, who, proud 

 and penniless, could only assert their rank by 

 idleness and ostentation, was not lost upon him. 

 A rightful heir to French bravery and French rest- 

 lessness, he had an eager love of wandering and 

 adventure ; and this propensity found ample scope 

 in the service of the fur-trade, the engrossing occu- 

 pation and chief source of income to the colony. 

 When the priest of St. Ann's had shrived him of 

 his sins ; when, after the parting carousal, he em- 

 barked with his comrades in the deep-laden canoe ; 

 when their oars kept time to the measured cadence 



