cal militia and he found that officers of militia, and even a
neighbouring seigneur, could not read. When Roman Catholic services were
held at Murray Bay, as they were regularly before he died, the tongue
was one that the people did not understand. At the services there was
nothing "but a few lighted candles, in defyance of the sun, and the
priest singing and reading Latin or Greek.... None of us understands a
word." He complains of "the greatest deficiency in preaching sentiments
of morality and virtue." Indeed, very few of the priests could preach or
say anything in public beyond the Latin mass. Nairne tried to secure
better means of educating his people. Probably earlier also, but
certainly in 1791, he was writing to the Anglican Bishop of Quebec to
help him to do something. He lives, he says, in "the most Northerly and,
I believe, the poorest parish on the Continent of America." The people
cannot read and have no literary amusement. Their idle days they spend
in drunkenness and debauchery and he wishes something done for them. Ten
years later Nairne is returning to the charge. There are five Protestant
families in the neighbourhood. They cannot even be baptized except by
the cure. They cannot get any Protestant instruction; so the Protestant
children are reared Roman Catholics. Nairne wished to have a Protestant
clergyman established at Murray Bay; he could make that place his
headquarters and carry on missionary work in the neighbouring parishes.
But the five Protestant families at Murray Bay soon became three, for
Nairne says, in 1801, that his and Colonel Fraser's families and one
other man, an Englishman, are the only remaining Protestants. He and
Fraser, he adds, are growing old and, in any case, it was doubtful
whether the Englishman would attend service.

Yet Nairne still begged for a Protestant missionary. He desired most of
all a free school. The teacher should be, he says, French but able also
to preach in English; there was now no school at Murray Bay; a free
school and a church system which would release the people from paying
tithes could work wonders and, probably, most of the people would soon
become Protestants. Knowing the tenacity with which the French
Canadians have clung to their faith, it seems hardly likely that
Nairne's dreams would have been realized. At any rate nothing was done.
At that time there were hardly more than a dozen Anglican clergymen in
all Canada and the Bishop of Quebec had no