No More Learning

We were
told that it was just six miles from one parish church to another. I
thought that we saw every house in Ange Gardien. Therefore, as it was
a muddy day, we never got out of the mud, nor out of the village,
unless we got over the fence; then, indeed, if it was on the north
side, we were out of the civilized world. There were sometimes a few
more houses near the church, it is true, but we had only to go a
quarter of a mile from the road, to the top of the bank, to find
ourselves on the verge of the uninhabited, and, for the most part,
unexplored wilderness stretching toward Hudson's Bay. The farms
accordingly were extremely long and narrow, each having a frontage on
the river. Bouchette accounts for this peculiar manner of laying out a
village by referring to "the social character of the Canadian peasant,
who is singularly fond of neighborhood," also to the advantage arising
from a concentration of strength in Indian times. Each farm, called
_terre_, he says, is, in nine cases out of ten, three arpents wide by
thirty deep, that is, very nearly thirty-five by three hundred and
forty-nine of our rods; sometimes one half arpent by thirty, or one to
sixty; sometimes, in fact, a few yards by half a mile. Of course it
costs more for fences. A remarkable difference between the Canadian
and the New England character appears from the fact that, in 1745, the
French government were obliged to pass a law forbidding the farmers or
_censitaires_ building on land less than one and a half arpents front
by thirty or forty deep, under a certain penalty, in order to compel
emigration, and bring the seigneur's estates all under cultivation;
and it is thought that they have now less reluctance to leave the
paternal roof than formerly, "removing beyond the sight of the parish
spire, or the sound of the parish bell. " But I find that in the
previous or seventeenth century, the complaint, often renewed, was of
a totally opposite character, namely, that the inhabitants dispersed
and exposed themselves to the Iroquois. Accordingly, about 1664, the
king was obliged to order that "they should make no more clearings
except one next to another, and that they should reduce their parishes
to the form of the parishes in France as much as possible. " The
Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of
adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and
danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though
not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet to range over it as
_coureurs de bois_, or runners of the woods, or, as Hontan prefers to
call them, _coureurs de risques_, runners of risks; to say nothing of
their enterprising priesthood; and Charlevoix thinks that if the
authorities had taken the right steps to prevent the youth from
ranging the woods (_de courir les bois_), they would have had an
excellent militia to fight the Indians and English.

The road in this clayey-looking soil was exceedingly muddy in
consequence of the night's rain. We met an old woman directing her
dog, which was harnessed to a little cart, to the least muddy part of
it. It was a beggarly sight.
But harnessed to the cart as he was, we
heard him barking after we had passed, though we looked anywhere but
to the cart to see where the dog was that barked. The houses commonly
fronted the south, whatever angle they might make with the road; and
frequently they had no door nor cheerful window on the road side. Half
the time they stood fifteen to forty rods from the road, and there was
no very obvious passage to them, so that you would suppose that there
must be another road running by them. They were of stone, rather
coarsely mortared, but neatly whitewashed, almost invariably one story
high and long in proportion to their height, with a shingled roof, the
shingles being pointed, for ornament, at the eaves, like the pickets
of a fence, and also one row halfway up the roof. The gables sometimes
projected a foot or two at the ridge-pole only. Yet they were very
humble and unpretending dwellings. They commonly had the date of their
erection on them. The windows opened in the middle, like blinds, and
were frequently provided with solid shutters. Sometimes, when we
walked along the back side of a house which stood near the road, we
observed stout stakes leaning against it, by which the shutters, now
pushed half open, were fastened at night; within, the houses were
neatly ceiled with wood not painted. The oven was commonly out of
doors, built of stone and mortar, frequently on a raised platform of
planks. The cellar was often on the opposite side of the road, in
front of or behind the houses, looking like an ice-house with us, with
a lattice door for summer. The very few mechanics whom we met had an
old-Bettyish look, in their aprons and _bonnets rouges_ like fools'
caps. The men wore commonly the same _bonnet rouge_, or red woolen or
worsted cap, or sometimes blue or gray, looking to us as if they had
got up with their night-caps on, and, in fact, I afterwards found that
they had. Their clothes were of the cloth of the country, _etoffe du
pays_, gray or some other plain color. The women looked stout, with
gowns that stood out stiffly, also, for the most part, apparently of
some home-made stuff. We also saw some specimens of the more
characteristic winter dress of the Canadian, and I have since
frequently detected him in New England by his coarse gray homespun
capote and picturesque red sash, and his well-furred cap, made to
protect his ears against the severity of his climate.