now turned their thoughts toward you and all of us determined to
work for our bread the best way we could. But you might have no
small addition to your settlers; some of us poor old creatures
would have settled heavy enough I fear upon yourself and family. It
is a fine place Mal Bay turned by your account. What a deal of
respectable company. I am glad of it on your account. A very great
piece of good fortune to get Col. Fraser so near; I wonder he does
not marry Maidy, but she will think him too old. I think Christine
may do a great deal worse than spend the summer if not more at Mal
Bay. You are most amazingly indulgent to her. I wish she would make
a grateful return by bestowing more of her company on her friends
at home in a situation it would appear so pleasant. But she is a
good kind-hearted Lassie after all and I suppose when she has got
her full swing of Quebec she will be very well pleased to return
home.

A legislature now sat at Quebec, the result of the new Constitutional
Act passed in 1791, and Nairne might have become a member. Murray Bay
then formed a part of what, with little fitness, had been called by the
English conquerors the County of Northumberland, no doubt because it lay
in the far north of Canada as Northumberland lies in the far north of
England. Two members sat in the legislature for this county. "I never
had any idea of trying to be one of them," writes Nairne in 1800, "but
succeeded in procuring that honour for a friend Dr. Fisher, who resides
in Quebec. He is rich and much flattered with it and is ready on all
occasions to speak."

To Nairne, contrary to a general impression, the climate of Canada did
not seem to grow milder as the land was cleared. In any case the blood
of old age runs less hotly. Formerly the winter had its delights of
hunting excursions but now, he writes, these are all over. "The passion
I had formerly for hunting and fishing and wandering through the woods
is abated.... What with the cold hand of old age my former Winter
excursions into the woods seem impossible and no more now of fishing
and hunting which formerly I esteemed so interesting a business." He
writes again: "My employment is more in the sedentary way than formerly
and what from calls in my own affairs and calls from people here in
theirs, accounts to settle, &c., [I have] ... plenty of occupation.
Besides being a Justice of the Peace and