* La Hontan, Nouveaux Voyages, I. 11 (1709). In some of the
other editions, the same account is given in different
words, equally lively and scandalous.
** This is the statement of Boucher, a good authority. A
case of the sort in 1658 is mentioned in the correspondence
of Argenson. Boucher says further, that an assurance of good
character was required from the relations or friends of the
girl who wished to embark. This refers to a period anterior
to 1663, when Boucher wrote his book. Colbert evidently
cared for no qualification except the capacity of maternity.
not taken from institutions of charity usually belonged to the families of peasants overburdened with children, and glad to find the chance of establishing them. * How some of them were obtained appears from a letter of Colbert to Harlay, Archbishop of Rouen. “As, in the parishes about Rouen,” he writes, “fifty or sixty girls might be found who would be very glad to go to Canada to be married, I beg you to employ your credit and authority with the curés of thirty or forty of these parishes, to try to find in each of them one or two girls disposed to go voluntarily for the sake of a settlement in life.” **
Mistakes nevertheless occurred. “Along with the honest people,” complains Mother Mary, “comes a great deal of canaille of both sexes, who cause a great deal of scandal.” *** After some of the young women had been married at Quebec, it was found that they had husbands at home. The priests
* Témoignage de la Mère du Plessis de Sainte-Helène
(extract in Faillon).
** Colbert a l’Archevêque de Rouen, 27 Fev., 1670.
That they were not always destitute may be gathered from a
passage in one of Talon’s letters. “Entre les filles qu’on
fait passer ici il y en a qui ont de légitimes et
considérables prétentions aux successions de leurs parents,
même entre celles qui sont tirées de l’Hôpital Général.” The
General Hospital of Paris had recently been established
(1656) as a house of refuge for the “Bohemians,” or vagrants
of Paris. The royal edict creating it says that “les pauvres
mendiants et invalides des deux sexes y seraient enfermés
pour estre employés aux manufactures et aultres travaux
selon leur pouvoir.” They were gathered by force in the
streets by a body of special police, called “Archers de
l’Hôpital.” They resisted at first, and serious riots
ensued. In 1662, the General Hospital of Paris contained
6262 paupers. See Clement, Histoire de Colbert, 113. Mother
de Sainte-Helène says that the girls sent from this asylum
had been there from childhood in charge of nuns.
*** “Beaucoup de canaille de l’un et l’autre sexe qui
causent beaucoup de scandale.” Lettre du—Oct., 1669.
became cautious in tying the matrimonial knot, and Colbert thereupon ordered that each girl should provide herself with a certificate from the cure or magistrate of her parish to the effect that she was free to marry. Nor was the practical intendant unmindful of other precautions to smooth the path to the desired goal. “The girls destined for this country,” he writes, “besides being strong and healthy, ought to be entirely free from any natural blemish or any thing personally repulsive.” *
Thus qualified canonically and physically, the annual consignment of young women was shipped to Quebec, in charge of a matron employed and paid by the king. Her task was not an easy one, for the troop under her care was apt to consist of what Mother Mary in a moment of unwonted levity calls “mixed goods.” ** On one occasion the office was undertaken by the pious widow of Jean Bourdon. Her flock of a hundred and fifty girls, says Mother Mary, “gave her no little trouble on the voyage; for they are of all sorts, and some of them are very rude and hard to manage.” Madame Bourdon was not daunted. She not only saw her charge distributed and married, but she continued to receive and care for the subsequent ship-loads as they arrived summer after summer. She was
* Talon a Colbert, 10 Nov., 1670.
** “Une marchandise mêlée.” Lettre du—1668. In that year,
1668, the king spent 40,000 livres in the shipment of men
and girls. In 1669, a hundred and fifty girls were sent; in
1670, a hundred and sixty-five; and Talon asks for a hundred
and fifty or two hundred more to supply the soldiers who had
got ready their houses and clearings, and were now prepared
to marry. The total number of girls sent from 1665 to 1673,
inclusive, was about a thousand.
indeed chief among the pious duennas of whom La Hontan irreverently speaks. Marguerite Bourgeoys did the same good offices for the young women sent to Montreal. Here the “king’s girls," as they were called, were all lodged together in a house to which the suitors repaired to make their selection. “I was obliged to live there myself,” writes the excellent nun, “because families were to be formed;” * that is to say, because it was she who superintended these extemporized unions. Meanwhile she taught the girls their catechism, and, more fortunate than Madame Bourdon, inspired them with a confidence and affection which they retained long after.
