He pointed out to her the places which he had known so
well, the citadel where he had been quartered, the college of the
Jesuits, the cathedral of Bishop Laval, the magazine of the old company,
dismantled by the great fire, and the house of Aubert de la Chesnaye,
the only private one which had remained standing in the lower part.
From where they lay they could see not only the places of interest, but
something also of that motley population which made the town so
different to all others save only its younger sister, Montreal. Passing
and repassing along the steep path with the picket fence which connected
the two quarters, they saw the whole panorama of Canadian life moving
before their eyes, the soldiers with their slouched hats, their plumes,
and their bandoleers, habitants from the river _cotes_ in their rude
peasant dresses, little changed from their forefathers of Brittany or
Normandy, and young rufflers from France or from the seigneuries, who
cocked their hats and swaggered in what they thought to be the true
Versailles fashion. There, too, might be seen little knots of the men
of the woods, _coureurs-de-bois_ or _voyageurs_, with leathern hunting
tunics, fringed leggings, and fur cap with eagle feather, who came back
once a year to the cities, leaving their Indian wives and children in
some up-country wigwam. Redskins, too, were there, leather-faced
Algonquin fishers and hunters, wild Micmacs from the east, and savage
Abenakis from the south, while everywhere were the dark habits of the
Franciscans, and the black cassocks and broad hats of the Recollets, and
Jesuits, the moving spirits of the whole.

Such were the folk who crowded the streets of the capital of this
strange offshoot of France which had been planted along the line of the
great river, a thousand leagues from the parent country. And it was a
singular settlement, the most singular perhaps that has ever been made.
For a long twelve hundred miles it extended, from Tadousac in the east,
away to the trading stations upon the borders of the great lakes,
limiting itself for the most part to narrow cultivated strips upon the
margins of the river, banked in behind by wild forests and unexplored
mountains, which forever tempted the peasant from his hoe and his plough
to the freer life of the paddle and the musket. Thin scattered
clearings, alternating with little palisaded clumps of log-hewn houses,
marked the line where civilisation was forcing itsel