fits from its
monopoly of trade with the Indians. Some of the fertile land was to be
used for farms which should produce food supplies for the posts. The
Intendant had sanguine hopes that the profit from trade and agriculture
would aid appreciably in meeting the expense of government. It was, we
may be well assured, an expectation never realized.

We get a glimpse of Malbaie in 1750 as a King's post. There were two
farms, one called La Malbaie, the other La Comporte. The two farmers
were both in the King's service and, in the absence of other diversions,
quarrelled ceaselessly. The region, wrote the Jesuit Father Claude
Godefroi Coquart, who was sent, in 1750, to inspect the posts, is the
finest in the world. He reported, in particular, that the farm of
Malbaie had good soil, excellent facilities for raising cattle, and
other advantages. Only a very little land had been cleared, just enough
wheat being raised to supply the needs of the farmer and his assistants.
The place should be made more productive, M. Coquart goes on to say, and
the present farmer, Joseph Dufour, is just the man to do it. He is able
and intelligent and if only--and here we come to the inherent defect in
trying to do such pioneer work by paid officials who had no final
responsibility--he were offered better pay the farm could be made to
produce good results. The old quarrel with the farmer at La Comporte had
been settled; now the farmer of Malbaie was the superior officer,
rivalry had ceased, and all was peace.

Coquart gives an estimate of the farming operations at Malbaie which is
of special interest as showing that, if the old regime in Canada did not
produce good results, it was not for lack of criticism. Better cattle
should be raised, he says; at Malbaie one does not see oxen as fine as
those at Beaupre, near Quebec, or on the south shore. The pigs too are
extremely small, the very fattest hardly weighing 180 pounds; in
contrast, at La Petite Riviere, above Baie St. Paul, the pigs are huge;
one could have good breeds without great expense; it costs no more to
feed them and [a truism] there would be more pork! Of sheep too hardly
fifty are kept at Malbaie through the winter; there should be two or
three hundred. From the two farms come yearly only thirty or forty pairs
of chickens.

Father Coquart's census is as rigorous and unsparing of detail as the
Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror. He tells exactly what the
Malbaie farm can produce