The date of this letter would be about 1670. From 1665 to 1673,
bachelors in Canada underwent a martyrdom of great severity, and Jules'
fear lest he find himself married in spite of himself is hardly an
exaggeration. From 1665 to 1673, about one thousand girls were sent out
from France to find husbands in Canada. Each couple married was given
an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted
meat, and eleven crowns in money. Girls under sixteen and youths under
twenty were given twenty livres when they married, and were encouraged
to marry at fourteen and eighteen respectively. To such an extent was
this rage for marriage carried that, it is said, a widow was married
before her first husband's body had been consigned to the grave. Large
bounties were paid to parents having from ten to fifteen children, and
the slightest sign of courtship between the unmarried officers and
ladies of Quebec and Montreal, was chronicled in official documents and
transmitted to France. For further particulars, the reader is referred
to Parkman's _The Old Regime in Canada_, chapter xiii.