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The fire-brigade of Lebanon, with its two engines, had performed prodigies of valour. The work done, the men marched back, but with Osterhaut sitting on one fire-engine and Jowett on the other, through crowds of cheering, roaring workmen, rivermen, shantymen, and black-eyed habitants.

Few habitants had orchards, but most of them had one or two fruit-trees grown from seedlings which came from France. Wild fruits, especially raspberries, cranberries, and grapes, were to be had for the picking, and the younger members of each family gathered them all in season. Even in the humbler homes of the land there was no need for any one to go hungry.

In the rural parishes, the villages, properly speaking, consisted of a church, presbytery, school, and tradesmen's houses, while the farms of the habitants stretched on either side. The size and shape of the farms were governed by the form of the seigniories throughout the province.

And so we prepared for the night. Yet, a little before dark, we discovered that the weed-continent trended out towards us; so that we should pass it, maybe, at a distance of something like half a mile, and, at that, there was talk between the second mate and the bo'sun as to whether it was better to put the ship about, and gain a greater sea-room before attempting to pass this promontory of weed; but at last they decided that we had naught to fear; for we had fair way through the water, and further, it did not seem reasonable to suppose that we should have aught to fear from the habitants of the weed-continent, at so great a distance as the half of a mile.

If each of 400 such tenants paid for their frontage in capons, 800 of these fowls would he brought to the seigneur's barn-yard each autumn! Though payment was due on November 11th, the habitants usually waited for the first winter days when the sleighing had become good.

And so I could go on ever; but that I fear to weary; and yet, whether I do weary, or not, I must tell of this country that I see, even now as I set my thoughts down, so plainly that my memory wanders in a hushed and secret fashion along its starkness, and amid its strange and dread habitants, so that it is but by an effort I realise me that my body is not there in this very moment that I write.

What he would have paid, by reason of getting his own lands into freehold, was applied pro rata to the reduction of the annual rentals payable by the habitants. It was arranged, furthermore, that any habitant might commute this yearly rental by paying his seigneur a lump sum such as would represent his rent capitalized at the rate of six per cent.

It seemed desirable that the name of the first seigneur should be continued and, in 1834, by royal warrant, John McNicol adopted the name and arms of Nairne. Once more was there a John Nairne. In 1837 we find him empowered to take the oath of allegiance from the habitants to show that they were not in sympathy with the rebel Papineau.

Some of the Canadians hoped that, in joining the Americans, they were hastening the restoration of France's power in Canada an argument however of little weight with many, who remembered grim days of hard service and starvation when, without appreciation or reward, they had fought France's battle. The habitants were, in truth, friendly enough to the Americans; but they would not fight for them.

In the first place there was the language not patois as of habitants and barbers, nor the mode of the occasional caller at our house, whose pronunciation seemed an individual exception; but an entire assemblage holding intercourse in dainty Parisian, exquisite as the famous dialect of the Brahmans. There was the graceful compliment, the antithetic description, the witty repartee.