isproportionate depth, handicapped all
efforts to cultivate the fields in an intelligent way. Finally, there
was the general poverty of the people. With a large family to support,
for families of ten to fifteen children were not uncommon, it was hard
for the settler to make both ends meet from the annual yield of a few
_arpents_, however fertile. The habitant, therefore, took the shortest
cut to everything, getting what he could out of his land in the
quickest possible way with no reference to the ultimate improvement
of the farm itself. If he ever managed to get a little money, he was
likely to spend it at once and to become as impecunious as before.
Such a propensity did not make for progress, for poverty begets
slovenliness in all ages and among all races of men.

If anything like the industry and intelligence that was bestowed
upon agriculture in the English colonies had been applied to the St.
Lawrence valley, New France might have shipped far more wheat than
beaver skins each year to Europe. But in this respect the colony never
half realized the royal expectations. On the other hand, the attempt
to make the land a rich grain-growing colony was far from being a flat
failure. It was supporting its own population, and had a modest amount
of grain each year for export to France or to the French West Indies.
With peace it would soon have become a land of plenty, for the
traveler who passed along the great river from Quebec to Montreal in
the late autumn might see, as Kalm in his _Travels_ tells us he saw,
field upon field of waving grain extending from the shores inward as
far as the eye could reach, broken only here and there by tracts of
meadow and woodland. Here was at least the nucleus of a Golden West.

Of colonial industry, however, not as much can be said as of
agriculture. Down to about 1663 it had given scarcely a single token
of existence. The colony, until that date, manufactured nothing.
Everything in the way of furnishings, utensils, apparel, and ornament
was brought in the company's ships from France, and no one seemed to
look upon this procedure as at all unusual. On the coming of Talon in
1665, however, the idea of fostering home industries in the colony
took active shape. By persuasion and by promise of reward, the
"Colbert of New France" interested the prominent citizens of Quebec in
modest industrial enterprises of every sort.

But the outcome soon belied the intendant's airy hopes. It was easy
en