their conduct before they embarked, and their subsequent behaviour was a
proof of the success of this system. During the following years the same
care was exercised, and we soon saw in this part of America a generation
of true Christians growing up, among whom prevailed the simplicity of
the first centuries of the Church, and whose posterity has not yet lost
sight of the great examples set by their ancestors.... In justice to the
colony of New France we must admit that the source of almost all the
families which still survive there to-day is pure and free from those
stains which opulence can hardly efface; this is because the first
settlers were either artisans always occupied in useful labour, or
persons of good family who came there with the sole intention of living
there more tranquilly and preserving their religion in greater security.
I fear the less contradiction upon this head since I have lived with
some of these first colonists, all people still more respectable by
reason of their honesty, their frankness and the firm piety which they
profess than by their white hair and the memory of the services which
they rendered to the colony."

M. Aubert says, on his part: "The French of Canada are well built,
nimble and vigorous, enjoying perfect health, capable of enduring all
sorts of fatigue, and warlike; which is the reason why, during the last
war, French-Canadians received a fourth more pay than the French of
Europe. All these advantageous physical qualities of the
French-Canadians arise from the fact that they have been born in a good
climate, and nourished by good and abundant food, that they are at
liberty to engage from childhood in fishing, hunting, and journeying in
canoes, in which there is much exercise. As to bravery, even if it were
not born with them as Frenchmen, the manner of warfare of the Iroquois
and other savages of this continent, who burn alive almost all their
prisoners with incredible cruelty, caused the French to face ordinary