the noblemen and officers. Captain de la Mothe, marrying
and taking up his abode in the country, received sixteen
hundred livres. During the years 1665-68 six thousand
livres were expended to aid the marriage of young
gentlewomen without means, and six thousand to enable
four captains, three lieutenants, five ensigns, and a
few minor officers to settle and marry in the colony.

A word must be said as to the character of the young
women. Some writers have cast unfair aspersions upon the
girls sent out from France to marry in Canada. After a
serious study of the question, we are in a position to
state that these girls were most carefully selected. Some
of them were orphans reared in charitable institutions
under the king's protection; they were called les filles
du roi. The rest belonged to honest families, and their
parents, overburdened with children, were willing to send
them to a new country where they would be well provided
for. In 1670 Colbert wrote to the archbishop of Rouen:
'As in the parishes about Rouen fifty or sixty girls
might be found who would be very glad to go to Canada to
be married, I beg you to employ your credit and authority
with the cures of thirty or forty of these parishes, to
try to find in each of them one or two girls disposed to
go voluntarily for the sake of settlement in life.' Such
was the quality of the female emigration to Canada. The
girls were drawn from reputable institutions, or from
good peasant families, under the auspices of the cures.
During their journey to Canada they were under the care
and direction of persons highly respected for their