To the Earl of ----.
My Lord,
Silleri, Feb. 20.
Your Lordship does me great honor in supposing me capable of giving
any satisfactory account of a country in which I have spent only a few
months.
As a proof, however, of my zeal, and the very strong desire I have
to merit the esteem you honor me with, I shall communicate from time to
time the little I have observed, and may observe, as well as what I
hear from good authority, with that lively pleasure with which I have
ever obeyed every command of your Lordship's.
The French, in the first settling this colony, seem to have had an
eye only to the conquest of ours: their whole system of policy seems
to have been military, not commercial; or only so far commercial as was
necessary to supply the wants, and by so doing to gain the friendship,
of the savages, in order to make use of them against us.
The lands are held on military tenure: every peasant is a soldier,
every seigneur an officer, and both serve without pay whenever called
upon; this service is, except a very small quit-rent by way of
acknowledgement, all they pay for their lands: the seigneur holds of
the crown, the peasant of the seigneur, who is at once his lord and
commander.
The peasants are in general tall and robust, notwithstanding their
excessive indolence; they love war, and hate labor; are brave, hardy,
alert in the field, but lazy and inactive at home; in which they
resemble the savages, whose manners they seem strongly to have
imbibed. The government appears to have encouraged a military spirit
all over the colony; though ignorant and stupid to a great degree,
these peasants have a strong sense of honor; and though they serve, as
I have said, without pay, are never so happy as when called to the
field.
They are excessively vain, and not only look on the French as the
only civilized nation in the world, but on themselves as the flower of
the French nation: they had, I am told, a great aversion to the regular
troops which came from France in the late war, and a contempt equal to
that aversion; they however had an affection and esteem for the late
Marquis De Montcalm, which almost rose to idolatry; and I have even at
this distance of time seen many of them in tears at the mention of his
name: an honest tribute to the memory of a commander equally brave and
humane; for whom his enemies wept even on the day when their own hero
fell.
I am called upon for this letter, and have only time to assure your
Lordship of my respect, and of the pleasure I always receive from your
commands. I have the honor to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's, &c.
William Fermor.