No More Learning

I was amused to hear how much use they made of the word
oui in conversation with one another. After repeated single insertions
of it, one would suddenly throw back his head at the same time with
his chair, and exclaim rapidly, "Oui! oui! oui! oui! " like a Yankee
driving pigs. Our host told us that the farms thereabouts were
generally two acres or three hundred and sixty French feet wide, by
one and a half leagues (? ), or a little more than four and a half of
our miles deep. This use of the word _acre_ as long measure arises
from the fact that the French acre or arpent, the arpent of Paris,
makes a square of ten perches, of eighteen feet each, on a side, a
Paris foot being equal to 1. 06575 English feet. He said that the wood
was cut off about one mile from the river. The rest was "bush," and
beyond that the "Queen's bush. " Old as the country is, each landholder
bounds on the primitive forest, and fuel bears no price. As I had
forgotten the French for _sickle_, they went out in the evening to the
barn and got one, and so clenched the certainty of our understanding
one another. Then, wishing to learn if they used the cradle, and not
knowing any French word for this instrument, I set up the knives and
forks on the blade of the sickle to represent one; at which they all
exclaimed that they knew and had used it.
When _snells_ were mentioned
they went out in the dark and plucked some. They were pretty good.
They said they had three kinds of plums growing wild,--blue, white,
and red, the two former much alike and the best. Also they asked me if
I would have _des pommes_, some apples, and got me some. They were
exceedingly fair and glossy, and it was evident that there was no worm
in them; but they were as hard almost as a stone, as if the season was
too short to mellow them. We had seen no soft and yellow apples by the
roadside. I declined eating one, much as I admired it, observing that
it would be good _dans le printemps_, in the spring. In the morning
when the mistress had set the eggs a-frying she nodded to a thick-set,
jolly-looking fellow, who rolled up his sleeves, seized the
long-handled griddle, and commenced a series of revolutions and
evolutions with it, ever and anon tossing its contents into the air,
where they turned completely topsy-turvy and came down t'other side
up; and this he repeated till they were done. That appeared to be his
duty when eggs were concerned. I did not chance to witness this
performance, but my companion did, and he pronounced it a masterpiece
in its way. This man's farm, with the buildings, cost seven hundred
pounds; some smaller ones, two hundred.

In 1827, Montmorenci County, to which the Isle of Orleans has since
been added, was nearly as large as Massachusetts, being the eighth
county out of forty (in Lower Canada) in extent; but by far the
greater part still must continue to be waste land, lying as it were
under the walls of Quebec.

I quote these old statistics, not merely because of the difficulty of
obtaining more recent ones, but also because I saw there so little
evidence of any recent growth. There were in this county, at the same
date, five Roman Catholic churches, and no others, five cures and five
presbyteries, two schools, two corn-mills, four sawmills, one
carding-mill,--no medical man or notary or lawyer,--five shopkeepers,
four taverns (we saw no sign of any, though, after a little
hesitation, we were sometimes directed to some undistinguished hut as
such), thirty artisans, and five river crafts, whose tonnage amounted
to sixty-nine tons! This, notwithstanding that it has a frontage of
more than thirty miles on the river, and the population is almost
wholly confined to its banks. This describes nearly enough what we
saw.