glish colonies of the South, of importing girls as wives.
Accordingly, from time to time, there arrived consignments of maidens,
called "the king's girls," and semi-annual wife-markets were held in
Quebec and Montreal. The character of these imported ladies was not
invariably of the best; but a trifle such as this did not affect the
soldiers of the baser sort, who were willing to overlook past
peccadillos in consideration of the dowry which their wives brought them
and in hope of gaining the bounty offered for the rearing of large
families. Moreover, there was passed a law which provided that every
unmarried young man, who had not within two weeks of the arrival of a
company, entered into the matrimonial state should be deprived of the
privileges of hunting, fishing, and trading, while the persistent
bachelors were to be excluded from all places of honor and
responsibility, and it was even suggested that they should be branded as
felons. Marriage was certainly esteemed honorable in those days. The
account of La Hontan, a witty officer of the Canadian forces, of the
first coming of "the king's girls" is worth quoting in part:

"After these first inhabitants there came a folk useful to the country
and a good riddance to the Kingdom. There arrived one day at Quebec a
small fleet loaded with Amazons and crowds of females, Nuns of Paphos or
of Cythera conducting this precious cargo. I have been told the
circumstances of their coming, and I cannot resist the pleasure of
sharing the story with you.

"This chaste folk was led to the pasture by old and prudish
Shepherdesses. As soon as they had arrived, these wrinkled dames passed
their soldiery in review, and having separated them into three classes,
each group entered a different room. As they had to crowd quite close
together on account of the smallness of the place, they made rather a
pleasant decoration, and the good merchant Cupid had no reason to be
ashamed of his wares. Never had he made a better assortment. Blonde,
brunette, red, black, fat, thin, large, small,--he could satisfy the
most bizarre and most fastidious tastes.

"The report of the new cargo being spread abroad, all the
well-intentioned in the way of multiplication hastened thither. As it
was not permitted to examine all and still less to take them on trial,
it was a case of buying a pig in a poke, or rather of buying the whole
piece from the sample. But the disposal of them was none the less rapid
on this