keep large sections of the country in a state of
wildness--the seigniorial estates had to be cultivated and settled
within a reasonable time if they were to be retained by the occupants.
During the French dominion the Crown sequestrated a number of
seigniories for the failure to observe the obligation of cultivation.
As late as 1741 we find an ordinance restoring seventeen estates to
the royal domain, although the Crown was ready to reinstate the former
occupants the moment they showed that they intended to perform their
duty of settlement. But all the care that was taken to encourage
settlement was for a long time without large results, chiefly in
consequence of the nomadic habits of the young men on the seigniories.
The fur trade, from the beginning to the end of French dominion, was a
serious bar to steady industry on the farm. The young _gentilhomme_ as
well as the young _habitant_ loved the free life of the forest and
river better than the monotonous work of the farm. He preferred too
often making love to the impressionable dusky maiden of the wigwam
rather than to the stolid, devout damsel imported for his kind by
priest or nun. A raid on some English post or village had far more
attraction than following the plough or threshing the grain. This
adventurous spirit led the young Frenchman to the western prairies
where the Red and Assiniboine waters mingle, to the foot-hills of the
Rocky Mountains, to the Ohio and Mississippi, and to the Gulf of
Mexico. But while Frenchmen in this way won eternal fame, the
seigniories were too often left in a state of savagery, and even those
_seigneurs_ and _habitants_ who devoted themselves successfully to
pastoral pursuits found themselves in the end harassed by the constant
calls made upon their military services during the years the French
fought to retain the imperial domain they had been the first to
discover and occupy in the great valleys of North America. Still,
despite the difficulties which impeded the practical working of the
seigniorial system, it had on the whole an excellent effect on the
social conditions of the country. It created a friendly and even
parental relation between _seigneur, cure,_ and _habitant_, who on
each estate constituted as it were a seigniorial family, united to
each other by common ties of self-interest and personal affection. If
the system did not create an energetic self-reliant people in the
rural communities, it arose from the fact that it w