way, gave the king's interests a great deal of loyal service, and showed what the colony was capable of doing if all its people worked with sufficient diligence and zeal. Three of these pioneers o

s pages glow. The priest and the trader afford better themes. But even the short a

nteresting and varied career from first to last. What he did and what he saw others do during these troublous years would make a readable chronicle of adventure, perseverance, and ultimate achievement. As it is, we must merely glean what we can from stray allusions to him in the general narratives of early colonial life. These tell us not a tithe of what we should like to know;

xpedition to Acadia. It was in these days the custom of ships to carry an apothecary or dispenser of health-giving herbs. His functions ran the whole gamut of medical practice from copious blood-letting to the dosing of sailors with concoctions of mysterious make. Not improbably Hebert set out with no intention to remain in A

voyage to the St Lawrence. This time the apothecary burned his bridges behind him, for he took his family along, and with them all his worldly effects. The family consisted of his wife, two daughters, and a young son. The trading company which was backing Champlain's enterprise promised that Hebert and his family should be paid a cash bonus and should receive, in addition to a tract of land, provisions and stores sufficient for their first two years in the colony. For hi

eatment. At Champlain's suggestion he simply took a piece of land above the settlement at Quebec, and without waiting for any formal title-deed began devoting all his spare hours to the task of getting it cleared and cultivated. His small tract comprised only about a dozen arpents on the heights above the village; and as he had no one to help him the work of clearing it moved slowly. Trees had to be felled and cut up, the

ts settlers were men of Hebert's persistence and stability. But the other prominent men of the little settlement, although they may have turned their hands to gardening in a desultory way, let him remain, for the time being, the only real colonist in the land. On his farm, moreover, a house had been built during these same years with the aid of two artisans, but chiefly by the labour of the owner himself. It was a stone house, about twenty feet by forty in size, a one-story affair, unpretentious and unadorned, but regarded as one of the most comfortable abod

ew France. It had but two aims-in the first place to get profits from the fur trade, and in the second place to make sure that no interlopers got any share in this lucrative business. Its officers placed little value upon such work as Hebert was doing. But in 1623 the authorities were moved to accord him the honour of rank as a seigneur, and the first title-deed conveying a gr

ocument proceeds, 'he has by his painful labours and industry cleared lands, fenced them, and erected buildings for himself, his family and his cattle.' In order, accordingly, 'to encourage those who may hereafter desire to inhabit and develop the said countr

ister, it is said, had an idea that the landless aristocrats of France might be persuaded to emigrate to the colonies by promises of lavish seigneurial estates wrested from the wilderness. It will be noted, however, that Hebert rec

ling hamlet of sixty-five souls, two-thirds of whom were women and children unable to till the fields. Hebert certainly did his share. His daughters married in the colony and had large families. By these marriages a close alliance was formed with the Couillards and other prominent families of the colony's earliest days. From these and later alliances some of the best-known families in the history of French Canada have come down,-the Jolliets, D

wing and reaping grain. Among the military seigneurs of the upper St Lawrence and Richelieu regions not a few were of this type. They were good soldiers and quickly adapted themselves to the circumstances of combat in the New World, meeting the Iroquois with his own arts and often combining a good deal of the red man's craftiness with a white man's superior intelligence. Insatiable in their thirst for adventure, they were willing to assume all manner of risks or privations. Spring might find them at Lake Champlain, autumn at the head-waters of the Mississippi, a trusty birch-bark having carried them the

records, had been sent to the fort, but to the chagrin of the diminutive garrison they turned out to contain salt water, the sailors having drunk the contents and refilled the casks on their way out from France. Warlike operations continued to engross Durantaye's attentions for a year or two longer, but when this work was finished he returned with some of his brother officers to France, while others remained in the colony, having taken up lands in accordance with Talon's plans. In 1670, however, he was back at Quebec again, and ha

s to his holding and brought new settlers with him. Twelve families had built their homes within the spacious borders of his seigneury. Their whitewashed cottages were strung along a short stretch of the river bank side by side, separated by a few arpents. Men, women, and children, the population of La Durantaye numbered only fifty-eight; sixty-

land. With an arsenal of sixty-two muskets it was better equipped for self-defence. The census everywhere took more careful count of muskets than of ploughs; and this is not surprising, for it was the design of the authorities to build up a '

but showed a preference for the more attractive life at Quebec. Durantaye was not one of the most prosperous seigneuries, neither was it among those making the slowest progress. As Catalogne phrased the situation in 1712, its lands were 'yielding moderate har

dians, followed him down to the lakes to join the punitive force. In 1690 he was at Montreal, lending his aid in the defence of that part of the colony against raiding bands of Iroquois which were once again proving a menace. At Boucherville, in 1694, one historian tells us with characteristic hyperbole, Durantaye killed ten Iroquois with his own hand. Mohawks were not, as a rule, so easy to catch or kill. Two years later he commanded a detachment of troops and militiamen in operations against his old-tim

7, these landed holdings had greatly increased in population, in cleared acreage, and in value, although it cannot be said that this progress had been in any direct way due to the seigneur's active interest or efforts. He had a family of six sons and three daughters, quite enough to provide for with his limited income, but not a l

rs, and the first few years of his life in Canada were spent among the Hurons in the regions round Georgian Bay. On becoming of age, however, he obtained a grant of lands on the south shore of the St Lawrence, opposite Montreal, and at once began the work of clearing it. This area, of fifty lineal arpents in fron

by a wedding gift of ninety additional arpents. But Le Moyne's ambition to provide for a rapidly growing family led him to petition the intendant for an enlargement of his holdings, and in 1672 the intendant Talon gave him the land which lay between the seigneuries of Varennes and La Prairie de la Magdelaine. Th

Quebec in 1690; (3) Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, born in 1661, voyageur to Hudson Bay and the Spanish Main, died at Havana in 1706; (4) Paul Le Moyne de Maricourt, born 1663, captain in the marine, died in 1704 from hardships during an expedition against the Iroquois; (5) Francois Le Moyne de Bienville, born 1666, intrepid young border-warrior, killed by the Iroquois in 1691; (6) Joseph Le Moyne de Serigny, born 1668, served as a youth in the expeditions of his brother to Hudson Bay, died in 1687; (7) Louis Le Moyne de Chateauguay, born 1676, his young life ended in

dred and seventy in breadth. The great towers or bastions were loopholed in such way as to permit a flanking fire in the event of an armed assault; and the whole building, when viewed from the river, presented an impressive facade. The grim Frontenac, who was not over-given to eulogy, praised it in one of his dispatches and said that it reminded him of the embattled chateaux of old Normandy. Speaking from the p

operation. The land was fertile and produced abundant harvests. When Catalogne visited Longueuil in 1712 he noted that the habitants were living in comfortable circumstances, by reason of the large expenditures which the seigneur had made to improve the land and the

owner the Baron de Longueuil. In recounting the services rendered to the colony by the new baron the patent mentioned that 'he has already erected at his own cost a fort supported by four strong towers of stone and masonry, with a guard-house, several large dwellings, a fine church bearing all the insignia of nobility, a spacious farmyard in which there is a barn, a stable, a sheep-pen, a dovecote, and other buildings,

ird Charles Le Moyne, born in 1687, who lived until 1755, and was for a time administrator of the colony. His son, the third baron, was killed during the Seven Years' War in the operations round Lake George, and the title passed, in the absence of direct male heirs, to his only daughter, Marie Le Moyne de

ony. It was not, however, until 1880 that a formal request for recognition was made to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The matter was, of course, submitted to the law officers of the crown, and their decision ruled the claim to be well grounded. By royal proclamation, accordingly, the rank and title of Charles Colmore Grant, seventh Baron de Longueuil, were formally recognized. [Footnote: The royal re

iving towns of Longueuil and St Johns grew up within its limits in the century following the conquest. As population increased, much of the land was sold into freehold;

administrators, and captains of industry, they contributed their full share to the sum of French achievement, alike in war and peace. By intermarriage also the Le Moynes of Longueuil connected themselves with other prominent families of French Canada, not

iting field of action failed to present themselves. Interesting figure though he was-an excellent type of a hundred others-it was well for the colony that not all its seigneurs were like him in temperament and ways. Le Moyne, the nearest Canadian approach to the seigneur of Old France in the days before the Revolution, combined the best qualities of the other two. There was plenty of red blood in his veins, and to some of his progeny went more of it than was good for them. He was ready with his sword when the occasion called. An arm shot off by an Iroquois flintlock in 1687 gave him through life a grim reminder of his combative habits in early days. But warfare was o