ed his to 480 livres; then Riverin offered 490
and finally the property was sold to Hazeur for 500 livres. Malbaie was
cheap enough; one third of a property more than one hundred and fifty
square miles in extent sold for about $100! In 1700 for a sum of 10,000
livres ($2,000) Hazeur bought out all other interests in the seigniory
and became its sole owner. Its value had greatly improved in 22 years.

Of Hazeur we know but little. He was a leading merchant at Quebec and
was interested in the fishing for "porpoises" or white whales. When he
died in 1708 he left money to the Seminary at Quebec on condition that
from this endowment, forever, two boys should be educated; for the
intervening two centuries the condition has been faithfully observed;
one knows not how many youths owe their start in life to the gift of
the former seigneur of Malbaie. There, however, no memory or tradition
of him survives. In his time some land was cleared. The saw mill and a
grist mill, begun by Comporte, were completed and stood, it seems, near
the mouth of the little river now known as the Fraser but then as the
Ruisseau a la Chute. Civilization had made at Malbaie an inroad on the
forest and was struggling to advance.

On Hazeur's death in 1708 his two sons, both of them priests, inherited
Malbaie. Meanwhile the government developed a policy for the region. It
resolved to set aside, as a reserve, a vast domain stretching from the
Mingan seigniory below Tadousac westward to Les Eboulements, and
extending northward to Hudson Bay. The wealth of forest, lake, and
river, in this tract furnished abundant promise for the fur and other
trade of which the government was to have here a complete monopoly.
Malbaie was necessary to round out the territory and so the heirs of
Hazeur were invited to sell back the seigniory to the government. The
sale was completed in October, 1724, when the government of New France,
acting through M. Begon, the Intendant, for a sum of 20,000 livres
(about $4,000) found itself possessed of Malbaie "as if it had never
been granted," of a saw mill and a grist mill, of houses, stables and
barns, gardens and farm implements, grain, furniture, live stock,
cleared land, cut wood and all other products of human industry there
in evidence.[1]

Within the reserve, in addition to Malbaie, were a number of trading
posts--Tadousac, Chicoutimi, Lake St. John, Mistassini, &c. In this
great tract the government expected to reap large pro