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[Illustration: COLONEL JOHN NAIRNE]
A CANADIAN MANOR
AND ITS SEIGNEURS
THE STORY OF A HUNDRED YEARS
1761-1861
BY
GEORGE M. WRONG, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
TORONTO
THE BRYANT PRESS, LIMITED
1908
COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1908
BY GEORGE M. WRONG
PREFACE
In spite of many pleasant summers spent at Murray Bay one had never
thought of it as having a history. The place and its people seemed
simple, untutored, new. Some of the other summer residents talked
complacently even of having discovered it. They had heard of Murray Bay
as beautiful and had gone to explore this unknown country. When this
bold feat was performed there was abundant recompense. Valley, mountain,
river and stream united to make Murray Bay delightful. The little summer
community grew. At first visitors lived in the few primitive hotels or
in cottages at Pointe au Pic, vacated for the time being by their
owners, who found temporary lodgings somewhere,--not infrequently in
their own out-buildings. The cottages left something to be desired, and,
gradually, the visitors bought land and built houses for themselves:
to-day dozens of them dot the western shore of Murray Bay. In due time
appeared tennis courts; then a golf links. Murray Bay had become, alas,
almost fashionable.
It still seemed to have no past. True, near the village church, a
fair-sized house stood, embowered in trees, with a fine view out over
the bay and the wide St. Lawrence. A high fence shut in a beautiful old
garden, with a few great trees: as one drove past one got a glimpse of
shady walks and old-fashioned flowers. The extensive out-buildings near
this manor house, stables, carriage-house, dairy, showed that the
establishment was fairly large. There were sleek cattle in the farm
yard. On one of the out-buildings was a small belfry, with a bell to
summon the work-people from afar to meals, and this seemed like the
olden times when the seigneur fed his labourers under his own roof. On
making a formal call at the manor house one noted that some of the rooms
were of fine proportions and that a good many old portraits and
miniatures hung on the walls. This all spoke of a past; and yet of it
one asked little and knew nothing.
Just across the bay stood another manor house; of stone, too, in this
case not concealed by a covering of wood. Thick walls crowned by a
mansard roof spoke of a respectable age. This manor house, also looked
out on the bay and across the St. Lawrence. One knew that it was named
Mount Murray Manor, while that on the right bank of the river Murray was
called Murray Bay Manor. It was said vaguely that a Colonel Fraser had
dwelt at Mount Murray and a Colonel Nairne at Murray Bay; but all that
one heard was loose tradition and there were no Nairnes or Frasers of
whom one might ask questions. One could see that, in both places,
something like an old world dignity of life had in the past been kept
up.
Making a call at the Murray Bay Manor House, I was told one day of a
manuscript volume in which the first seigneur had copied some of his
letters. I begged to be allowed to spend an afternoon or two in looking
through it. I went and went again. To me the book was absorbing. It told
the story of the first people of British origin who went to settle at
Malbaie, which they named Murray Bay, just after the British conquest;
of the career of a soldier brother of Colonel Nairne who died in India
not long after Plassey; of campaigns fought by Colonel Nairne during the
period of the American Revolution; of his plans and hopes as the ruler
of the little community where he settled. When I had read the book
through, I asked if there was not something more. Yes, there were some
old letters, preserved in a lumber room at the top of the house. These
I was allowed to see. This task, too, was of great interest and I spent
the better part of a summer holiday reading, analyzing, and copying
letters. Some of them told of the schoolboy days, in Edinburgh, of the
old Colonel's son and heir, the second seigneur, of this son's life at
Gibraltar at the time when Trafalgar was fought, of his return to
Canada, of campaigns in the war of 1812. Then there were touching
letters from others to tell how he fell at the battle of Crysler's Farm.
So intimate were the letters that one experienced again the hopes and
fears of more than a century ago. In time, out of the dimness in which
all had been shrouded, Murray Bay's history became clear. Of course one
had to seek some information elsewhere, especially in attempting an
analysis of French Canadian village life. But the story told in this
volume is based chiefly on the papers read during that holiday. Not only
did they enable one to reconstruct the story of a spot made almost
sacred by the joys of many a delightful summer; they furnished, besides,
an outline of the tragic history of a Canadian family. Here at Murray
Bay, a century and a half ago, a brave and distinguished British officer
secured a great estate and made his home. In his letters we read almost
from day to day of his plans. He had a strong heart and a deep faith. He
reared a large family and built not merely for himself but for his
posterity. And yet, just one hundred years after he began his work at
Murray Bay, the last of his descendants was laid in the grave and the
family became extinct. It is the fashion of our modern fiction to end
the tale in sorrow not in joy. Perhaps the fashion has a more real basis
in fact than we like to think. At any rate this true story of the
seigneur of Murray Bay ends with the closed record of his family history
on a granite monument in Quebec. There is no one living for whom the
tale has the special interest that attaches to one's ancestors.
I have received help from many but my deepest obligation is to Mr. E.J.
Duggan, the present seigneur of Murray Bay, for his great kindness in
permitting me to use the letters and papers in the Manor House. I owe
much to the Right Honourable Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, who has taught me,
in many holiday outings, most of what appreciation I have learned for
French Canadian village life, and has corrected errors into which I
should otherwise have fallen. So also have Mr. W.H. Blake, K.C., of
Toronto, a good authority on all that concerns life at Murray Bay, and
M. J.-Edmond Roy, Assistant Archivist at Ottawa, whose "Histoire de la
Seigneurie de Lauzon" and many other works relating to the Province of
Quebec entitle him to the rank of its foremost historical scholar. To
another authority on the seigniorial system in Canada, Professor W.
Bennett Munro, of Harvard University, I am much indebted for information
readily given. My colleagues Professor W.J. Alexander, Ph.D., of
University College, and Professor Pelham Edgar, Ph.D., of Victoria
College, Toronto, have given me the benefit of their discriminating
criticism. Dr. A.G. Doughty, C.M.G., Dominion Archivist, and the Rev.
Abbé A.E. Gosselin of Laval University, have responded with unfailing
courtesy to my numerous calls upon them, and Mr. John Fraser Reeve, the
great-grandson of Colonel Malcolm Fraser, who figures so prominently in
the story, has given me invaluable information about the Fraser family.
Dr. J.M. Harper and M. P.-B. Casgrain, of Quebec, and Mr. A.C.
Casselman, of Toronto, have also aided me on some difficult points. To
the Honourable Edward Blake, K.C., of Toronto, I am indebted for
reproductions of some of his paintings of scenes at Murray Bay, and to
the Honourable Dudley Murray, of London, England, for a photograph of
the portrait of General Murray preserved in the General's family.
Toronto, _July, 1908_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDING OF MALBAIE
The situation of Malbaie.--The physical features of
Malbaie.--Jacques Cartier at Malbaie.--Champlain at
Malbaie.--The first seigneur of Malbaie.--A new policy for
settling Canada.--The Sieur de Comporté, seigneur of
Malbaie, sentenced to death in France.--His career in
Canada.--His plans for Malbaie.--Hazeur, Seigneur of
Malbaie.--Malbaie becomes a King's Post.--A Jesuit's
description of Malbaie in 1750.--The burning of Malbaie by
the British in 1759. 1
CHAPTER II
THE TWO HIGHLAND SEIGNEURS AT MALBAIE
Pitt's use of Highlanders in the Seven Years' War.--The
origin of Fraser's Highlanders.--The career of Lord
Lovat.--Lovat's son Simon Fraser and other Frasers at
Quebec.--Malcolm Fraser and John Nairne future seigneurs of
Malbaie.--The Highlanders and Wolfe's victory.--The
Highlanders in the winter of 1759-60.--Malcolm Fraser on
Murray's defeat in April, 1760.--The return of Canadian
seigneurs to France.--General Murray buys Canadian
seigniories.--Nairne and Fraser at Malbaie.--Their grants
from Murray. 22
CHAPTER III
JOHN NAIRNE, SEIGNEUR OF MURRAY BAY
Colonel Nairne's portrait.--His letters.--The first Scottish
settlers at Malbaie.--Nairne's finance.--His tasks.--The
curé's work.--The Scottish settlers and their French
wives.--The Church and Education.--Nairne's efforts to make
Malbaie Protestant.--His war on idleness.--The character of
the habitant.--Fishing at Malbaie.--Trade at
Malbaie.--Farming at Malbaie.--Nairne's marriage,--Career
and death in India of Robert Nairne.--The Quebec Act and its
consequences for the habitant. 40
CHAPTER IV
JOHN NAIRNE IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Nairne's work among the French Canadians.--He becomes Major
of the Royal Highland Emigrants.--Arnold's march through the
wilderness to Quebec.--Quebec during the Siege,
1775-76.--The habitants and the Americans.--Montgomery's
plans.--The assault on December 31st, 1775.--Malcolm Fraser
gives the alarm in Quebec.--Montgomery's death.--Arnold's
attack.--Nairne's heroism.--Arnold's failure.--The American
fire-ship.--The arrival of a British fleet.--The retreat of
the Americans.--Nairne's later service in the War.--Isle aux
Noix and Carleton Island.--Sir John Johnson and the
desolation of New York.--Nairne and the American prisoners
at Murray Bay.--Their escape and capture.--Nairne and the
Loyalists.--The end of the War.--Nairne's retirement to
Murray Bay. 62
CHAPTER V
THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN NAIRNE
Nairne's careful education of his children.--His son John
enters the army.--Nairne's counsels to his son.--John Nairne
goes to India.--His death.--Nairne's declining years.--His
activities at Murray Bay.--His income.--His daughter
Christine and Quebec society.--The isolation of Murray Bay
in Winter.--Signals across the river.--Nairne's
reading.--His notes about current events.--The fear of a
French invasion of England.--Thoughts of flight from
Scotland to Murray Bay.--Nairne's last letter, April 20th,
1802.--His death and burial at Quebec. 93
CHAPTER VI
THOMAS NAIRNE, SEIGNEUR OF MURRAY BAY
His education in Scotland.--His winning character.--He
enters the army.--Malcolm Fraser's counsels to a young
soldier.--Thomas Nairne's life at Gibraltar.--His desire to
retire from the army.--His return to Canada in 1810-11.--His
life at Quebec.--His summer at Murray Bay, 1811.--His
resolve to remain in the Army.--Beginning of the War of
1812.--Captain Nairne on Lake Ontario.--Quebec Society and
the proposed flight from danger to Murray Bay.--Anxiety at
Murray Bay.--The progress of the War.--An American attack on
Kingston.--Captain Nairne on the Niagara frontier.--Naval
War on Lake Ontario.--Nairne's description of a naval
engagement.--Sense of impending disaster at Murray Bay.--The
American advance on Montreal by the St. Lawrence.--Nairne's
regiment a part of the opposing British force.--The Battle
of Crysler's Farm.--Nairne's death.--His body taken to
Quebec.--The grief of the family at Murray Bay.--The
funeral. 124
CHAPTER VII
A FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE
Life at Murray Bay after Captain Nairne's death.--Letters
from Europe.--Death of Malcolm Fraser.--Death of Colonel
Nairne's widow and children.--His grandson John Nairne,
seigneur.--Village Life.--The Church's Influence.--The
Habitant's tenacity.--His cottage.--His labours.--His
amusements.--The Church's missionary work in the
Village.--The powers of the bishop.--His visitations.--The
organization of the Parish.--The powers of the
_fabrique_.--Lay control of Church finance.--The curés'
tithe.--The best intellects enter the Church.--A native
Canadian clergy.--The curé's social life.--The Church and
Temperance Reform.--The diligence of the curés.--The
habitant's taste for the supernatural.--The belief in
goblins.--Prayer in the family.--The habitant as voter.--The
office of Churchwarden.--The Church's influence in
elections.--The seigneur's position.--The habitant's
obligations to him.--Rent day and New Year's Day.--The
seigneur's social rank.--The growth of discontent in the
villages.--The evils of Seigniorial Tenure.--Agitation
against the system.--Its abolition in 1854.--The last of the
Nairnes.--The Nairne tomb in Quebec. 168
CHAPTER VIII
THE COMING OF THE PLEASURE SEEKERS
Pleasure seeking at Murray Bay.--A fisherman's experience in
1830.--New visitors.--Fishing in a mountain lake.--Camp
life.--The Upper Murray.--Canoeing.--Running the
rapids.--Walks and drives.--Golf.--A rainy day.--The
habitant and his visitors. 222
AUTHORITIES 243
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A (p. 31) The Journal of Malcolm Fraser,
First Seigneur of Mount Murray,
Malbaie. 249
APPENDIX B (p. 38) Title Deed of the Seigniory of
Murray Bay, granted to Captain
John Nairne. 271
APPENDIX C (p. 78) The Siege of Quebec in 1775-76.
Colonel Nairne's Narrative. 273
APPENDIX D (p. 98) Memorandum of Colonel Nairne,
5th April, 1795, for his son
John Nairne in regard to
military duty. 277
APPENDIX E (p. 104) The "Porpoise" (Beluga or
White Whale) Fishery on the
St. Lawrence. 279
APPENDIX F (p. 122) The Prayer of Colonel Nairne. 286
APPENDIX G (p. 144) The Curés of Malbaie. 287
INDEX 291
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COLONEL JOHN NAIRNE Frontispiece
(From the Oil Painting in the Manor House at Murray Bay.)
PAGE
CAP À L'AIGLE FROM THE WEST SHORE OF MURRAY BAY 6
(From the Water Colour by the late L.R. O'Brien, in the
possession of the Hon. Edward Blake, K.C.)
VIEW ACROSS MURRAY BAY FROM THE CAP À L'AIGLE SHORE 21
(From an Oil Painting by E. Wyly Grier, in the possession of
the Hon. Edward Blake.)
GENERAL JAMES MURRAY 35
(From an Oil Painting preserved in the General's Family.)
THE MANOR HOUSE AT MURRAY BAY 74
(From amateur photographs.)
VIEW FROM POINTE AU PIC UP MURRAY BAY 102
(From a Water Colour by the late L.R. O'Brien in the
possession of the Hon. Edward Blake.)
THE GOLF LINKS AT MURRAY BAY 237
(From a Photograph by W. Notman and Son, Montreal.)
MAPS
THE ST. LAWRENCE FROM QUEBEC TO MURRAY BAY 1
SKETCH MAP OF LAKE ONTARIO AND THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE TO
ILLUSTRATE THE WAR OF 1812-14 148
[Illustration: THE ST. LAWRENCE FROM QUEBEC TO MURRAY BAY]
A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDING OF MALBAIE
The situation of Malbaie.--The physical features of
Malbaie.--Jacques Cartier at Malbaie.--Champlain at Malbaie.--The
first seigneur of Malbaie.--A new policy for settling Canada.--The
Sieur de Comporté, seigneur of Malbaie, sentenced to death in
France.--His career in Canada.--His plans for Malbaie.--Hazeur,
Seigneur of Malbaie.--Malbaie becomes a King's Post.--A Jesuit's
description of Malbaie in 1750.--The burning of Malbaie by the
British in 1759.
If one is not in too great a hurry it is wise to take the steamer--not
the train--at Quebec and travel by it the eighty miles down the St.
Lawrence to Malbaie, or Murray Bay, as the English call it, somewhat
arrogantly rejecting the old French name used since the pioneer days of
Champlain. This means an early morning start and six or seven hours--the
steamers are not swift--on that great river. Only less than a mile apart
are its rugged banks at Quebec but, even then, they seem to contract the
mighty torrent of water flowing between them. Once past Quebec the river
broadens into a great basin, across which we see the head of the
beautiful Island of Orleans. We skirt, on the south side, the twenty
miles of the island's well wooded shore, dotted with the cottages of
the habitants, stretched irregularly along the winding road. Church
spires rise at intervals; the people are Catholic to a man. Once past
this island we begin to note changes. Hardly any longer is the St.
Lawrence a river; rather is it now an inlet of the sea; the water has
become salt; the air is fresher. So wide apart are the river's shores
that the cottages far away to the south seem only white specks.
Hugging the north shore closely we draw in under towering Cap Tourmente,
fir-clad, rising nearly two thousand feet above us; a mighty obstacle it
has always been to communication by land on this side of the river. Soon
comes a great cleft in the mountains, and before us is Baie St. Paul,
opening up a wide vista to the interior. We are getting into the Malbaie
country for Isle aux Coudres, an island some six miles long, opposite
Baie St. Paul, was formerly linked with Malbaie under one missionary
priest. The north shore continues high and rugged. After passing Les
Eboulements, a picturesque village, far above us on the mountain side,
we round Cap aux Oies, in English, unromantically, Goose Cape, and, far
in front, lies a great headland, sloping down to the river in bold
curves. On this side of the headland we can see nestling in under the
cliff what, in the distance, seems only a tiny quay. It is the wharf of
Malbaie. The open water beyond it, stretching across to Cap à l'Aigle,
marks the mouth of the bay. The great river, now twelve miles broad,
with a surging tide, rising sometimes eighteen or twenty feet, has the
strength and majesty almost of Old Ocean himself.
As we land we see nothing striking. There is just a long wharf with some
cottages clustered at the foot of the cliff. But when we have ascended
the short stretch of winding road that leads over the barrier of cliff
we discover the real beauties of Malbaie. Before us lies the bay's
semi-circle--perhaps five miles in extent; stretching far inland is a
broad valley, with sides sloping up to rounded fir-clad mountain tops.
It is the break in the mountains and the views up the valley that give
the place its peculiar beauty. When the tide is out the bay itself is
only a great stretch of brown sand, with many scattered boulders, and
gleaming silver pools of water. Looking down upon it, one sees a small
river winding across the waste of sand and rocks. It has risen in the
far upland three thousand feet above this level and has made an arduous
downward way, now by narrow gorges, more rarely across open spaces,
where it crawls lazily in the summer sunlight:--_les eaux mortes_, the
French Canadians call such stretches. It bursts at length through the
last barrier of mountains, a stream forty or fifty yards wide, and flows
noisily, for some ten miles, in successive rapids, down this valley,
here at last to mingle its brown waters with the ice-cold, steel-tinted,
St. Lawrence.
When the tide is in, the bay becomes a shallow arm of the great
river,--the sea, we call it. The French are better off than we; they
have the word "_fleuve_" for the St. Lawrence;--other streams are
"_rivières_." Almost daily, at high water, one may watch small schooners
which carry on the St. Lawrence trade head up the bay. They work in
close to shore, drop their anchors and wait for the tide to go out. It
leaves them high and dry, and tilted sometimes at an angle which
suggests that everything within must be topsy-turvy, until the vessel is
afloat again. With a strong wind blowing from the north-east the bay is
likely to be, at high tide, an extremely lively place for the mariner; a
fact which helps perhaps to explain the sinister French name of Malbaie.
The huge waves, coming with a sweep of many miles up the broad St.
Lawrence, hurl themselves on the west shore with surprising vehemence,
and work destruction to anything not well afloat in deep water, or
beyond the highest of high water marks. At such a time how many a
hapless small craft, left incautiously too near the shore, has been
hammered to pieces between waves and rocks!
Tired wayfarers surveying this remote and lovely scene have fancied
themselves pioneers in something like a new world. In reality, here is
the oldest of old worlds, in which pigmy man is not even of yesterday,
but only of to-day. This majestic river, the mountains clothed in
perennial green, the blue and purple tints so delicate and transient as
the light changes, have occupied this scene for thousands of centuries.
No other part of our mother earth is more ancient. The Laurentian
Mountains reared their heads, it may be, long before life appeared
anywhere on this peopled earth; no fossil is found in all their huge
mass. In some mighty eruption of fire their strata have been strangely
twisted. Since then sea and river, frost and ice, have held high
carnival. Huge boulders, alien in formation to the rocks about them,
have been dropped high up on the mountain sides by mighty glaciers, and
lie to-day, a source of unfailing wonder to the unlearned as to how they
came to be there.
Man appeared at last upon the scene; the Indian, and then, long after,
the European. In 1535, Jacques Cartier, the first European, as far as we
know, to ascend the St. Lawrence, creeping slowly from the Saguenay up
towards the Indian village of Stadacona, on the spot where now is
Quebec, must have noted the wide gap in the mountains which makes the
Malbaie valley. Not far from Malbaie, he saw the so-called "porpoises,"
or white whales, (beluga, French, _marsouin_) that still disport
themselves in great numbers in these waters, come puffing to the surface
and writhe their whole length into view like miniature sea-serpents.
They have heads, Cartier says, with no very great accuracy, "of the
style of a greyhound," they are of spotless white and are found, he was
told (incorrectly) only here in all the world. He anchored at Isle aux
Coudres where he saw "an incalculable number of huge turtles." He
admired its great and fair trees, now gone, alas, and gave the island
its name--"the Isle of Hazel Nuts"--which we still use. For long years
after Cartier, Malbaie remained a resort of its native savages only.
Perhaps an occasional trader came to give these primitive people, in
exchange for their valuable furs, European commodities, generally of
little worth. In time the Europeans learned the great value of this
trade and of the land which offered it. So France determined to colonize
Canada and in 1608, when Champlain founded a tiny colony at Quebec, the
most Christian King had announced a resolution to hold the country. Ere
long Malbaie was to have a European owner.
[Illustration: CAP À L'AIGLE FROM THE WEST SHORE OF MURRAY BAY
"A great headland sloping down to the river in bold curves."]
As Champlain went up from Tadousac to make his settlement of Quebec he
noted Malbaie as sufficiently spacious. But its many rocks, he thought,
made it unnavigable, except for the canoes of the Indians, whose light
craft of bark can surmount all kinds of difficulties. Perhaps Champlain
is a little severe on Malbaie which, when one knows how, is navigable
enough for coasting schooners, but his observations are natural for a
passing traveller. In the years after Quebec was founded no more can be
said of Malbaie than that it was on the route from Tadousac to Quebec
and must have been visited by many a vessel passing up to New France's
small capital on the edge of the wilderness. In the summer of 1629 the
occasional savages who haunted Malbaie might have seen an unwonted
spectacle. Three English ships, under Lewis Kirke, had passed up the
river and to him, Champlain, with a half-starved force of only sixteen
men, had been obliged to surrender Quebec. Kirke was taking his captives
down to Tadousac when, opposite Malbaie, he met a French ship coming to
the rescue. A tremendous cannonade followed, the first those ancient
hills had heard. It ended in disaster to France, and Kirke sailed on to
Tadousac with the French ship as a prize.
When peace came France began more seriously the task of settling Canada.
Though inevitably Malbaie would soon be colonized, it was still very
difficult of access. A wide stretch of mountain and forest separated it
from Quebec; not for nearly two hundred years after Champlain's time was
a road built across this barrier. Moreover France's first years of rule
in Canada are marked by conspicuous failure in colonizing work. The
trading Company--the Company of New France or of "One Hundred
Associates"--to which the country was handed over in 1633, thought of
the fur trade, of fisheries, of profits--of anything rather than
settlement, and never lived up to its promises to bring in colonists.
It made huge grants of land with a very light heart. In 1653 a grant was
made of the seigniory of Malbaie to Jean Bourdon, Surveyor-General of
the Colony. But Bourdon seems not to have thought it worth while to make
any attempt to settle his seigniory and, apparently for lack of
settlement, the grant lapsed. Even the Company of New France treasured
some idea that would-be land owners in a colony had duties to perform.
After thirty years France at length grew tired of the incompetence of
the Company and in 1663 made a radical change. The great Colbert was
already the guiding spirit in France and colonial plans he made his
special care. Louis XIV too was already dreaming of a great over-sea
Empire. The first step was to take over from the trading Company the
direct government of the colony. The next was to get the right men to do
the work in New France. An excellent start was made when, in 1665, Jean
Talon was sent out to Canada as Intendant. He had a genius for
organization. Though in rank below the Governor he, with the title of
Intendant, did the real work of ruling; the Governor discharged its
ceremonial functions. Talon had a policy. He wished to colonize, to
develop industry, to promote agriculture. In his capacious brain new and
progressive ideas were working. He brought in soldiers who became
settlers, among them the first real seigneur of Malbaie. An adequate
military force, the Carignan regiment, came out from France to awe into
submission the aggressive Iroquois, who long had made Montreal, and even
Quebec itself, unsafe by their sudden and blood-thirsty attacks.
Travelling by canoe and batteau the regiment went from Quebec up the
whole length of the St. Lawrence, landed on the south shore of Lake
Ontario, and marched into the Iroquois country. With amazement and
terror, those arrogant savages saw winding along their forest paths the
glittering array of France. Some of their villages were laid low by
fire. The French regiment had accomplished its task; with no spirit left
the Iroquois made peace.
A good many officers of the Carignan regiment, with but slender
prospects in France, decided to stay in Canada and to this day their
names--Chambly, Verchères, Longueuil, Sorel, Berthier and others are
conspicuous in the geography of the Province of Quebec. Malbaie was
granted to a soldier of fortune, the Sieur de Comporté, who came to
Canada at this time, but apparently was not an officer of the Carignan
Regiment. His outlook at Malbaie cannot have been considered promising,
for Pierre Boucher, who in 1664 published an interesting account of New
France, declared the whole region between Baie St. Paul and the Saguenay
to be so rugged and mountainous as to make it unfit for civilized
habitation. But Philippe Gaultier, Sieur de Comporté, was of the right
material to be a good colonist. Born in 1641 he was twenty-four years of
age when he came to Canada. Already he had had some stirring adventures,
one of which might well have proved grimly fatal had he not found a
refuge across the sea. Comporté, then serving as a volunteer in a
Company of Infantry led by his uncle, La Fouille, was involved in one of
the bloody brawls of the time that Richelieu had made such stern efforts
to suppress. The Company was in garrison at La Motte-Saint-Heray in
Poitou. On July 9th, 1665, one of its members, Lanoraye, came in with
the tale of an insult offered to the company by a civilian in the town.
Lanoraye had been marching through the streets with a drum beating, in
order to secure recruits, when one Bonneau, the local judge, attacked
him, and took away the drum. Lanoraye rushed to arouse his fellow
soldiers. When Comporté and half a dozen other hot-heads had listened to
his tale, they cried with one voice, "Let us go and demand the drum. He
must give it up." So at eight or nine o'clock at night they set out to
look for Bonneau. They came upon him unexpectedly in the streets of the
town. He was accompanied by seven or eight persons with whom he had
supped and all were armed with swords, pistols or other weapons. When
Lanoraye demanded the drum, Bonneau was defiant and told him to go away
or he should chastise him. The inevitable fight followed. Comporté,
whose own account we have, says that it lasted some time and the results
were fatal. Comporté declares that he himself struck no blows but the
fact remains that two of Bonneau's party were so severely wounded that
they died. Comporté and the rest of the Company soon went to Canada. In
their absence he and others were sentenced to death.
In Canada he appears to have behaved himself. In France a simple
volunteer, in New France he became an important citizen. Talon trusted
him and made him Quarter-Master-General. In 1672 Comporté received an
enormous grant of land stretching along the St. Lawrence from Cap aux
Oies to Cap à l'Aigle, a distance of some eighteen miles, including
Malbaie and a good deal more. About the same time he married Marie
Bazire, daughter of one of the chief merchants in the colony, by whom he
had a numerous family. So eminently respectable was he that we find him
churchwarden at Quebec. In time he retired from trade, in which he had
engaged, and became a judge of the newly established Court of the
Prévôté at Quebec. This was not doing badly for a man under sentence of
death. But over him still hung this affair in France and, in 1680, he
petitioned the King to have the sentence annulled. For this petition he
secured the support of the families of the men killed in the quarrel
fifteen years earlier. In 1681 Louis XIV's pardon was registered with
solemn ceremonial at Quebec, and at last Comporté was no longer an
outlaw.
He had plans to settle his great fief. Working in his brain no doubt
were dreams of a feudal domain, of a seigniorial chateau looking out
across the great river, of respectful tenants paying annual dues to
their lord in labour, kind, and money, of a parish church in which over
the seigniorial pew should be displayed his coat of arms. But if these
pictures inspired his fancy and cheered his spirit, they were never to
become realities. In 1687 he was, apparently, in need of money, and he
resolved to sell two-thirds of his interest in the seigniory of Malbaie.
The price was a pitiful 1000 livres, or some $200, and the purchasers
were François Hazeur, Pierre Soumande and Louis Marchand of Quebec, who
were henceforth to get two-thirds of the profits of the seigniory. Then,
in 1687, still young--he was only forty-six--Comporté died, as did also
his wife, leaving a young family apparently but ill provided for. His
name still survives at Malbaie. The portion of the village on the left
bank of the river above the bridge is called Comporté, and a lovely
little lake, nestling on the top of a mountain beyond the Grand Fond,
and unsurpassed for the excellence of its trout fishing, is called Lac à
Comporté; it may be that well-nigh two and a half centuries ago the
first seigneur of Malbaie followed an Indian trail to this lake and wet
a line in its brown and rippling waters.
Comporté and his partners in the seigniory had planned great things.
They had begun the erection of a mill, an enterprise which Comporté's
heirs could not continue. So the guardian of the children determined to
sell at auction their third of the seigniory. The sale apparently took
place in Quebec in October, 1688. We have the record of the bids made.
Hazeur began with 410 livres; one Riverin offered 430 livres; after a
few other bids Hazeur raised his to 480 livres; then Riverin offered 490
and finally the property was sold to Hazeur for 500 livres. Malbaie was
cheap enough; one third of a property more than one hundred and fifty
square miles in extent sold for about $100! In 1700 for a sum of 10,000
livres ($2,000) Hazeur bought out all other interests in the seigniory
and became its sole owner. Its value had greatly improved in 22 years.
Of Hazeur we know but little. He was a leading merchant at Quebec and
was interested in the fishing for "porpoises" or white whales. When he
died in 1708 he left money to the Seminary at Quebec on condition that
from this endowment, forever, two boys should be educated; for the
intervening two centuries the condition has been faithfully observed;
one knows not how many youths owe their start in life to the gift of
the former seigneur of Malbaie. There, however, no memory or tradition
of him survives. In his time some land was cleared. The saw mill and a
grist mill, begun by Comporté, were completed and stood, it seems, near
the mouth of the little river now known as the Fraser but then as the
Ruisseau à la Chute. Civilization had made at Malbaie an inroad on the
forest and was struggling to advance.
On Hazeur's death in 1708 his two sons, both of them priests, inherited
Malbaie. Meanwhile the government developed a policy for the region. It
resolved to set aside, as a reserve, a vast domain stretching from the
Mingan seigniory below Tadousac westward to Les Eboulements, and
extending northward to Hudson Bay. The wealth of forest, lake, and
river, in this tract furnished abundant promise for the fur and other
trade of which the government was to have here a complete monopoly.
Malbaie was necessary to round out the territory and so the heirs of
Hazeur were invited to sell back the seigniory to the government. The
sale was completed in October, 1724, when the government of New France,
acting through M. Begon, the Intendant, for a sum of 20,000 livres
(about $4,000) found itself possessed of Malbaie "as if it had never
been granted," of a saw mill and a grist mill, of houses, stables and
barns, gardens and farm implements, grain, furniture, live stock,
cleared land, cut wood and all other products of human industry there
in evidence.[1]
Within the reserve, in addition to Malbaie, were a number of trading
posts--Tadousac, Chicoutimi, Lake St. John, Mistassini, &c. In this
great tract the government expected to reap large profits from its
monopoly of trade with the Indians. Some of the fertile land was to be
used for farms which should produce food supplies for the posts. The
Intendant had sanguine hopes that the profit from trade and agriculture
would aid appreciably in meeting the expense of government. It was, we
may be well assured, an expectation never realized.
We get a glimpse of Malbaie in 1750 as a King's post. There were two
farms, one called La Malbaie, the other La Comporté. The two farmers
were both in the King's service and, in the absence of other diversions,
quarrelled ceaselessly. The region, wrote the Jesuit Father Claude
Godefroi Coquart, who was sent, in 1750, to inspect the posts, is the
finest in the world. He reported, in particular, that the farm of
Malbaie had good soil, excellent facilities for raising cattle, and
other advantages. Only a very little land had been cleared, just enough
wheat being raised to supply the needs of the farmer and his assistants.
The place should be made more productive, M. Coquart goes on to say, and
the present farmer, Joseph Dufour, is just the man to do it. He is able
and intelligent and if only--and here we come to the inherent defect in
trying to do such pioneer work by paid officials who had no final
responsibility--he were offered better pay the farm could be made to
produce good results. The old quarrel with the farmer at La Comporté had
been settled; now the farmer of Malbaie was the superior officer,
rivalry had ceased, and all was peace.
Coquart gives an estimate of the farming operations at Malbaie which is
of special interest as showing that, if the old régime in Canada did not
produce good results, it was not for lack of criticism. Better cattle
should be raised, he says; at Malbaie one does not see oxen as fine as
those at Beaupré, near Quebec, or on the south shore. The pigs too are
extremely small, the very fattest hardly weighing 180 pounds; in
contrast, at La Petite Rivière, above Baie St. Paul, the pigs are huge;
one could have good breeds without great expense; it costs no more to
feed them and [a truism] there would be more pork! Of sheep too hardly
fifty are kept at Malbaie through the winter; there should be two or
three hundred. From the two farms come yearly only thirty or forty pairs
of chickens.
Father Coquart's census is as rigorous and unsparing of detail as the
Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror. He tells exactly what the
Malbaie farm can produce in a year; the record for the year of grace
1750 is "4 or 6 oxen; 25 sheep, 2 or 3 cows, 1200 pounds of pork, 1400
to 1500 pounds of butter, one barrel of lard,"--certainly not much to
help a paternal government. The salmon fishery should be developed, says
Coquart. Now the farmers get their own supply and nothing more. Nets
should be used and great quantities of salmon might be salted down in
good seasons. Happily, conditions are mending. The previous farmer had
let things go to rack and ruin but now one sees neither thistles nor
black wheat; all the fences are in place. Joseph Dufour has a special
talent for making things profitable. If he can be induced to continue
his services, it will be a benefit to his employer. But he is not
contented. Last year he could not make it pay and wished to leave.
Nearly all his wages are used in the support of his family. He has three
grown-up daughters who help in carrying on the establishment, and a boy
for the stables. The best paid of these gets only 50 livres (about $10)
a year; she should get at least 80 livres, M. Coquart thinks. Dufour has
on the farm eight sheep of his own but even of these the King takes the
wool, and actually the farmer has had to pay for what wool his family
used. Surely he should be allowed to keep at least half the wool of his
own sheep! If it was the policy of the Crown to grant lands along the
river of Malbaie there are many people who would like those fertile
areas, but there is danger that they would trade with the Indians which
should be strictly forbidden. So runs M. Coquart's report. It was
rendered to one of the greatest rascals in New France, the Intendant
Bigot, but he was a rascal who did his official tasks with some
considerable degree of thoroughness and insight. He knew what were the
conditions at Malbaie even if he did not mend them.
After 1750 the curtain falls again upon Malbaie and we see nothing
until, a few years later, the desolation of war has come, war that was
to bring to Canada, and, with it, to Malbaie, new masters of British
blood. After long mutterings the war broke out openly in 1756. In those
days the farmer at Malbaie who looked out, as we look out, upon the
mighty river would see great ships passing up and down. Some of them
differed from the merchant ships to which his eye was accustomed. They
stood high in the water. Ships came near the north shore in those days
and he could see grim black openings in their sides which meant cannon.
Already Britain had almost driven France from the sea and these French
ships, which ascended the St. Lawrence, were few. Then, in 1759,
happened what had been long-expected and talked about. Signal fires
blazed at night on both sides of the St. Lawrence to give the alarm,
when not French, but British ships, sailed up the river, a huge fleet.
They stopped at Tadousac and then slowly and cautiously filed past
Malbaie. On a summer day the crowd of white sails scattered on the
surface of the river made an animated scene. In wonder our farmer and
his helpers watched the ships silently advance to their goal. There were
39 men-of-war, 10 auxiliaries, 70 transports and a multitude of smaller
craft carrying some 27,000 men; it was the mightiest array Britain had
ever sent across the ocean. New France was doomed.
The French fought bravely a campaign really hopeless. Montcalm massed
his chief force at Quebec and there awaited attack. In vain had he
appealed to France for further help; he was left unaided to struggle
with a foe who had command of the sea, whose fleet could pass up and
down before Quebec with the tide and keep the French guards for twenty
miles in constant nervous tension as to where a landing might be made.
Wolfe carried on his work relentlessly. He warned the Canadians that he
would ravage their villages if they did not remain neutral. Neutral it
was almost impossible for them to be for the French urged them in the
other direction. With stern rigour, Wolfe meted out to them his
punishment. He sent parties to burn houses and destroy crops and Malbaie
was not spared. On August 15th, 1759, Captain Gorham reported to Wolfe
that with 300 men, one half of them Rangers from the English colonies,
the other half Highlanders, he had devastated the north shore of the St.
Lawrence. The soldiers did their work thoroughly. From Baie St. Paul,
the last considerable village east of Quebec, they went on thirty miles
to Malbaie where they destroyed almost all of the houses. We do not know
whether the competent Dufour was still the farmer at Malbaie. But all
the fine pictures of better cattle, better pigs and sheep, better
farming, better fishing, ended with the applying of the British
soldiers' torch to the wooden buildings: much of the settlement went up
in smoke. Some of the cattle, pigs and sheep found their way perhaps to
Wolfe's commissariat. But a good many were left and no doubt they are
the ancestors of many of the cattle, sheep and pigs we see at Malbaie
still. This first visit of Americans and Highlanders to Malbaie has its
special interest. A few years later Highlanders came again, not to
destroy but to settle, and to become the ancestors of families that to
this day show their Highland origin in their names and in their
faces, but never a trace of it in their speech or in their customs.[2]
The Americans were longer in coming back. But, after more than a hundred
years they, too, were to come again, not to destroy but in a very
literal sense to build; their many charming cottages now stretch along
the shore of the Bay that looks across to Cap à l'Aigle.
[Illustration: VIEW ACROSS MURRAY BAY FROM THE CAP À L'AIGLE SHORE
(The farther point: Cap aux Oies, the nearer Pointe au Pic)]
[Footnote 1: Exact information in regard to the brothers Hazeur, who
have a place in this story merely because they held the seigniory of
Malbaie, may be found in articles by Mgr. H. Têtu, in the _Bulletin des
Recherches Historiques_ (Lévis, Quebec) for August, 1907, and the
following numbers. They were the Canon Joseph Thierry Hazeur, born in
1680, and Pierre Hazeur de L'Orme, born in 1682, both apparently at
Quebec. The younger brother took the name de L'Orme from his mother's
family. He was for many years the representative in France of the
Chapter of the Cathedral at Quebec, which held, from the Pope and the
King, four or five abbeys in France. His copious letters published by
Mgr. Têtu illustrate with some vividness details of the ecclesiastical
life of the time. For several years after the British conquest of Canada
the Quebec Chapter continued to receive the revenues of the Abbey of
Meaubec. The elder Hazeur, less able than his brother, was Curé at Point
aux Trembles. An invalid, he spent his later years chiefly in Quebec.]
[Footnote 2: Malcolm Fraser, an officer in the 78th Highlanders and
afterwards first seigneur of Mount Murray, one of the two seigniories
into which Malbaie was divided, was sent out on these ravaging
expeditions. Years after, some of Fraser's neighbours of French origin
rallied him on his capacity for devastation as shown at this time. See
Fraser's _Journal_, Appendix A, p. 253, and the _Mémoires_ of Philippe
Aubert de Gaspé, 1866, Ch. II.]