A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs | Page 8

mill, begun by Comport��, were completed and stood, it seems, near the mouth of the little river now known as the Fraser but then as the Ruisseau �� 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 profits 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 Comport��. 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 Comport�� 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 r��gime 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 Beaupr��, 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 Rivi��re, 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 in a year; the record for the year of grace 1750 is "4 or 6 oxen; 25 sheep, 2 or 3 cows, 1200 pounds of pork, 1400 to 1500 pounds of butter, one barrel of lard,"--certainly not much to help a paternal government. The salmon fishery should be developed, says Coquart. Now the farmers get their own supply and nothing more. Nets should be used and great quantities of salmon might be salted down in good seasons. Happily, conditions are mending. The previous farmer had let things go to rack and ruin but now one sees neither thistles nor black wheat; all the fences are in place. Joseph Dufour has a special talent for