the entire category of Hebert's descendants must run well
into the thousands. All but unknown by a busy world
outside, the memory of this Paris apothecary has none
the less been cherished for nearly three hundred years
in many a Canadian home. Had all the seigneurs of the
old regime served their king with half his zeal the colony
would not have been left in later days so naked to its
enemies.

But not all the seigneurs of Old Canada were of Hebert's
type. Too many of them, whether owing to inherited Norman
traits, to their previous environment in France, or to
the opportunities which they found in the colony, developed
an incurable love of the forest life. On the slightest
pretext they were off on a military or trading expedition,
leaving their lands, tenants, and often their own families
to shift as best they might. Fields grew wild while the
seigneurs, and often their habitants with them, spent
the entire spring, summer, and autumn in any enterprise
that promised to be more exciting than sowing and reaping
grain. Among the military seigneurs of the upper St
Lawrence and Richelieu regions not a few were of this
type. They were good soldiers and quickly adapted themselves
to the circumstances of combat in the New World, meeting
the Iroquois with his own arts and often combining a good
deal of the red man's craftiness with a white man's
superior intelligence. Insatiable in their thirst for
adventure, they were willing to assume all manner of
risks or privations. Spring might find them at Lake
Champlain, autumn at the head-waters of the Mississippi,