96 THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH-CANADIANS 



after leaving it. Sailing from New York by the Lucania Sep- 

 tember 4, the party broke up in London September 11, the Prince 

 in good time to take part in some 3' , acht races for which he had 

 promised to reach England by the middle of September — themost 

 modest and unassuming as the most intrepid and successful of all 

 the explorers who have essayed Mt St Elias. E. R. S. 



THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH-CANADIANS* 



Acadia was peopled without any kind of organization between 

 1636 and 1670. No one has yet satisfactorily demonstrated 

 where the French of that colony came from, though their dia- 

 lect would indicate their place of origin to be near the mouth of 

 the river Loire. They were distinct from the French-Canadians 

 in some particulars, and not allied by marriage with the settlers 

 of the St Lawrence. It is ascertained from Cham plain's writings 

 that no " habitant " tilled the soil of Canada during the first 

 quarter of the seventeenth century. 



From an examination of family and other archives, involving 

 over thirty years' labor, the following conclusions are arrived 

 at: Perche, Normandy, Beauce, Picardy,and Anjou contributed 

 about 200 families from 1633 to 1663, the period of the Hundred 

 Partners' regime. By natural growth these reached the figure 

 of 2,200 souls in 1663. In 1662-1663 there came about 100 men 

 from Perche and 150 from Poitou, Rochelle, and Gascony, with 

 a small number of women. This opens a new phase in the his- 

 tory of our immigration b}^ introducing Poitou and Rochelle 

 among the people of the northern and western provinces of 

 France, already counting two generations in the three districts 

 of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. 



After 1665 the city of Paris, or rather the small territory en- 

 circling it, contributed a good share. No part of the south or 

 east of France had any connection with Canada at any time. 

 Normandy, Perche, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Poitou, Saint Onge, 

 Angoumois, Guienne, and Gascony — on a straight line from 

 north to south — furnished the whole of the families now com- 

 posing the French-Canadian people. 



From 1667 to 1672 a committee was active in Paris, Rouen, 

 Rochelle, and Quebec to recruit men, women, and young girls for 



♦Abstract of paper, by B. Suite, read before the Anthropological Section of the British 



A.-.-oeiatioli for tin- Advancement of Science, at the Toronto meeting. 



