governor-general--which was rebuilt by Count de Frontenac within the
limits of the fort of St. Louis, first erected by Champlain on the
historic height always associated with his name. The best buildings in
the towns were generally of one story and constructed of stone. 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. M.
Bourdon, the first Canadian surveyor-general, originally mapped out the
seigniories in oblong shapes with very narrow frontage along the
river--a frontage of two or three _arpents_ against a depth of from
forty to eighty _arpents_--and the same inconvenient oblong plan was
followed in making sub-grants to the _censitaire_ or _habitant_. The
result was a disfigurement of a large portion of the country, as the
civil law governing the succession of estates gradually cut up all the
seigniories into a number of small farms, each in the form of the
parallelogram originally given to the seigniorial grants. The houses of
the _habitants_, then as now, were generally built of logs or sawn
lumber, all whitewashed, with thatched or wooden roofs projecting over
the front so as to form a sort of porch or verandah. The farm-houses
were generally close together, especially in the best cultivated and
most thickly settled districts between Quebec and Montreal. Travellers,
just before the Seven Years' War, tell us that the farms in that
district appeared to be well cultivated on the whole, and the homes of
the _habitants_ gave evidences of thrift and comfort. Some farmers had
orchards from which cider was made, and patches of the coarse strong
tobacco which they continue to use to this day, and which is now an
important product of their province. Until the war the condition of the
French Canadian _habitant_ was one of rude comfort. He could never
become rich, in a country where there was no enterprise or trade which