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A good deal of stock and farm implements remained at Malbaie and this the new proprietors arranged to buy, giving in payment their promissory notes, Nairne's for £85, 6s. 8d., currency and Fraser, who got only one-third, his for £42, 13s. 4d. They seem to have had a good deal for their money.
Though nearly all the children now go to school, yet reading can hardly be considered one of the amusements of the habitant. In the neighbourhood of Malbaie, at least, rarely does one see other than books of devotion in a habitant household; the book-shelf is conspicuous by its absence. Of course newspapers are read but many of the habitants are still illiterate, or nearly so, and read nothing.
The young men were seeking their fortunes but since they had very little money to buy estates, as Murray did, they could not expect to get land in the more settled parts of the country. For them Malbaie was a promising field and in September, 1761, they went down to have a look at it. The property was vested in the government, for which Murray could act.
In scattered settlements the mill brought little profit and was a source of expense rather than of income. But, as population increased, this "droit de banalité" became valuable. The mill at Malbaie was, in time, very prosperous. In Canada the seigneur was not the oppressor of his people but rather their watchful guardian.
When he goes on a journey he looks up not merely his own but his parishioners' friends and is welcome everywhere. He is the general counsellor, the reconciler of family quarrels, the arbitrator in differences, the guardian of morals. The seigneur at Malbaie found the priest enquiring as to the manner in which the male and female servants of the Manor were lodged.
He planned roads and other improvements, checked abuses, and enforced justice. At his side stood, usually, the priest. The moment a parish was established a curé was entitled to the tithe; near every manor house, the village church was sure to spring up. Even when, as at Malbaie, the priest and the seigneur were not of the same faith they were often fast friends.
But its many rocks, he thought, made it unnavigable, except for the canoes of the Indians, whose light craft of bark can surmount all kinds of difficulties. Perhaps Champlain is a little severe on Malbaie which, when one knows how, is navigable enough for coasting schooners, but his observations are natural for a passing traveller.
Three days they waited at Quebec until at length they bargained with the captain of a coasting schooner bound for Kamouraska, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, to land them at Malbaie. The weather was stormy, the ship nearly foundered, and the eighty miles of the journey occupied no less than four days and nights.
He asked for the more important tract lying west of the little river at Malbaie and stretching to the seigniory of Les Eboulements, Fraser for that lying east of the river and stretching some eighteen miles along the St. Lawrence to the Rivière Noire. The grants were to extend for three leagues into the interior.
The two farmers were both in the King's service and, in the absence of other diversions, quarrelled ceaselessly. The region, wrote the Jesuit Father Claude Godefroi Coquart, who was sent, in 1750, to inspect the posts, is the finest in the world. He reported, in particular, that the farm of Malbaie had good soil, excellent facilities for raising cattle, and other advantages.
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