United States or Samoa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
No dependence apparently could be placed at this critical juncture on a number of the French habitants, as soon as the districts of Richelieu, Montreal and Three Rivers were occupied by the continental troops. Many of them were quite ready to sell provisions to the invaders, provided they were paid in coin, and a few of them even joined Montgomery on his march to Quebec.
By law, the lands cannot be subdivided, and if a seigneurie is sold it cannot be sold in parts, nor can any compromise with the habitants for rent, or any other claim or incumbrance, be made.
Meanwhile the new colonizers had become masters of the Nine Ways, having dislodged the Edonian Thracians, its previous habitants. VII. The siege of Thasos still continued, and the besieged took the precaution to send to Sparta for assistance.
The vast body of the habitants stood aloof. The Catholic Church, which earlier had sympathized with Papineau, had parted from him when he developed radical and republican views. Now the strong exhortations of the clergy to the faithful counted for much in keeping peace, and in one view justified the policy of the British Government in seeking to purchase their favor.
Moreover, through that half-sinister light, his long muzzle upstretched towards the moon, and raised as he was a little above the level on which Kane was standing, the wolf looked unnaturally and impossibly tall. Kane had never heard of a wolf acting in this cool, self-possessed, arrogantly confident fashion, and his mind reverted obstinately to the outworn superstitions of his habitants friends.
More important by far than this argument over precedence was the dispute concerning the organization of parishes. Here the issue hinged on questions of fact rather than of theory. Beyond question the habitants were entitled to have priests living permanently in their midst, as soon as conditions should warrant it. But had the time come when a parish system could be created?
But their enjoyment of office was of brief duration; in a few weeks the election was declared void, It was then determined to nominate a syndic to represent the inhabitants, and on August 3 Claude Charron, a merchant, was elected to the office; but, as the habitants often had difficulties to settle with members of the commercial class, objection was taken to him on the ground that he was a tradesman, and he retired.
He bore unquestioned rule over his congregation, but only within certain limits; for the French of the backwoods, leavened by the presence among them of so many wild and bold spirits, could not be treated quite in the same way as the more peaceful habitants of Lower Canada.
Even now the ghost of a smile played at his lips, as he recalled the surprise of the old habitants and of Father Roche when he was chosen for this responsible post; for to run a great lumber-camp well, hundreds of miles from civilisation, where there is no visible law, no restraints of ordinary organised life, and where men, for seven months together, never saw a woman or a child, and ate pork and beans, and drank white whisky, was a task of administration as difficult as managing a small republic new-created out of violent elements of society.
Therefore the notables among the habitants had gathered in his empty house for a last drink of good-fellowship Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, Benoit the ne'er-do-weel, Gingras the one-eyed shoemaker, and a few others. They had drunk the health of Medallion, they had drunk the health of the Cure, and now Duclosse the mealman raised his glass. "Here's to "
Word Of The Day