The Refugees by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Read

That night old Theophile Catinat was buried from the ship's side, his / sole mourners the two who bore his own blood in their veins. The next / day De Catinat spent upon deck, amid the bustle and confusion of the / unlading, endeavouring to cheer Adele by light chatter which came from a / heavy heart. 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 itself in upon the huge / continent, and barely holding its own against the rigour of a northern / climate and the ferocity of merciless enemies. The whole white / population of this mighty district, including soldiers, priests, and / woodmen, with all women and children, was very far short of twenty / thousand souls, and yet so great was their energy, and such the / advantage of the central government under which they lived, that they / had left their trace upon the whole continent. When the prosperous / English settlers were content to live upon their acres, and when no axe / had rung upon the further side of the Alleghanies, the French had pushed / their daring pioneers, some in the black robe of the missionary, and / some in the fringed tunic of the hunter, to the uttermost ends of the / continent.