To my great surprise, ten days after I had selected that spot, fifty families from Canada had planted their tents around mine, on the beautiful site which forms to-day the town of St. Anne.
We were at the end of November, and though the weather was still mild, I felt I had not an hour to lose in order to secure shelter for every one of those families, before the cold winds and chilly rains of winter should spread sickness and death among them. The greater part were illiterate and poor people, without any idea of the dangers and incredible difficulties of establishing a new settlement, where everything had to be created. There were, at first, only two small houses, one 25 by 30, and the other 16 by 20 feet, to lodge us.
With the rest of my dear emigrants, wrapped in buffalo robes, with my overcoat for my pillow, I slept soundly, many nights on the bare floor, during the three months which it took to get my first house erected.
Having taken the census of the people on the first of December, I found two hundred souls, one hundred of whom were adults. I said to them:
“There are not three of you, if left alone, able to prepare a shelter for your families, this winter; but if, forgetting yourselves, you work for each other, as true friends and brethren, you will increase your strength tenfold, and in a few weeks, there will be a sufficient number of small, but solid buildings, to protect you against the storms and snow of the winter which is fast coming upon us. Let us go to the forest together and cut the wood, to-day; and to-morrow we will draw that timber to one of the lots you have selected, and you will see with what marvellous speed the house will be raised, if your hands and hearts are perfectly united to work for each other, under the eyes and for the love of the merciful God who gives us this splendid country for our inheritage. But before going to the forest, let us kneel down to ask our Heavenly Father to bless the work of our hands, and grant us to be of one mind and one heart, and to protect us against the too common accidents of those forests and building works.”
We all knelt on the grass, and, as much with our tears as with our lips, we sent to the mercy-seat a prayer, which was surely heard by the One who said, “Ask and you will receive,” and we started for the forest.
The readers would scarcely believe me, were I to tell them with what marvellous rapidity the first forty small, but neat houses were put up on our beautiful prairies.
Whilst the men were cutting timber, and raising one another’s houses, with a unity, a joy, a good-will and rapidity, which many times drew from me tears of admiration, the women would prepare the common meals. We obtained our flour and pork from Bourbonnais and Momence, at a very low price; and, as I was a good shot, one or two friends and I, used to kill, every day, enough prairie chickens, quails, ducks, wild geese, brants and deer, to feed more people than there were in our young colony.
Those delicious viands, which would have been welcomed on the table of the king, and which would have satisfied the most fastidious gourmand, caused many of my poor, dear emigrants to say:
“Our daily and most common meals here, are more sumptuous and delicate than the richest ones in Canada, and they cost almost nothing.”