1690.] CONDITION OF QUEBEC. 279 



ters of Lieutenant Clark, who had been killed at 

 the same place. Frontenac himself had humanely 

 ransomed these children from the Indians ; and 

 Madame de Champigny, wife of the intendant, 

 had, with equal kindness, bought from them a 

 little girl named Sarah Gerrish, and placed her 

 in charge of the nuns at the Hotel-Dieu, who had 

 become greatly attached to her, while she, on her 

 part, left them with reluctance. The French had 

 the better in these exchanges, receiving able- 

 bodied men, and returning, with the exception of 

 Davis, only women and children. 



The heretics were gone, and Quebec breathed 

 freely again. Her escape had been a narrow one ; 

 not that three thousand men, in part regular troops, 

 defending one of the strongest positions on the 

 continent, and commanded by Frontenac, could 

 not defy the attacks of two thousand raw fishermen 

 and farmers, led by an ignorant civilian, but the 

 numbers which were a source of strength were at 

 the same time a source of weakness. 1 Nearly all 

 the adult males of Canada were gathered at Quebec, 

 and there was imminent danger of starvation. 

 Cattle from the neighboring parishes had been 

 hastily driven into the town ; but there was little 

 other provision, and before Phips retreated the 

 pinch of famine had begun. Had he come a week 

 earlier or stayed a week later, the French them- 



1 The small-pox had left probably less than 2,000 effective men in 

 the fleet when it arrived before Quebec. The number of regular troops 

 in Canada by the roll of 1689 was 1.418. Nothing had since occurred to 

 greatly diminish the number. Callieres left about fifty in Montreal, and 

 perhaps also a few in the neighboring forts. The rest were in Quebec. 



