Sportsmen may learn that partridge shooting was prohibited between March 15th and July 15th by an ordonnance of MM. de Vaudreuil and Bégon, dated January 28, 1720. In the same year the lieutenant-general of the jurisdiction of Montreal on May 10th forbids the merchants and private persons to keep more than ten pounds of powder on their premises. On May 21st an ordonnance of the Intendant Bégon forbade gunshots in the town and in the barns and other buildings in the country places.

A similar injunction was repeated by Intendant Dupuy on March 21, 1727, with the addition of a fine of 100 livres, for catching them by net or snare, or taking their eggs.

The druggists of today will hear with satisfaction of the recommendation by the king in a letter to MM. de Vaudreuil and Bégon, on June 8, 1721, of a powder, and the details of its composition, that was very much valued in sicknesses. This had just been recently made public. It was an Alkermes or Aurifique de Glaubec, prepared by Bolduc and La Serre, apothecaries to the king: it could cure the fevers, dropsy, vertigo, apoplexy, dysentery, gravel, smallpox, etc. English and American journals of that period contain numerous advertisements of similar "quack" medicines.

There is an act, dated July 1, 1721, of a land sale on the Coteau St. Louis at Montreal by the seigneurs of the seminary to M. Charles de Ramezay de la Gesse. This was to establish a brickyard and tile works.

To 1721 we may date the first beginnings of our Canadian postal service. In this year a posting system for the transportation of letters and travelers was created between Montreal and Quebec and the monopoly was rented for twenty years to M. Lanouiller on the condition of observing a certain tariff, according to distances, imposed by the Intendant Bégon. We may now give a picture of Montreal in 1721, as described by Charlevoix:

"This town has a very pleasing appearance. It is well situated, well laid out and well built. The charm of its surroundings and its streets inspires a certain gayety, which everybody feels. It is not fortified. A simple palisade with bastions, badly enough maintained, offers the sole defence with a rather wretched redoubt on a little rising ground, which serves as a boulevard and shelves down to a little square. This is the first point which one meets on arriving from Quebec. It is not forty years since the town was quite unprotected and exposed daily to be burned by the savages or by the English. It was the Chevalier de Callières who had it closed in. For some years there has been a project afoot to surround it with walls, but it will not be an easy task to induce the inhabitants to contribute to its expense. They are brave, and they are not rich. There has already been found difficulty in persuading them of the necessity of this expense since they are strongly convinced that their valour is more than sufficient to defend their town against any force that would dare to attack it....

"Montreal is a long square, situated on the bank of the river which, rising insensibly, divides the whole into high and low town, without any appreciable line of demarkation. The Hôtel-Dieu, the King's storehouses and the place d'Armes are in the lower town; this is also the merchants' quarter. In the upper town are the Seminary, the parish church, the Recollects, the Jesuits, the ladies of the Congregation, the Governor and the greater part of the officers. Beyond a little stream which comes from the northwest and bounds the town on this side, there are to be found some houses and the General Hospital and on the right, above the Recollects, whose convent is at the end of the town, or the same side, there is commencing to form a kind of suburb, which in time will be a very beautiful district. The Jesuits have only a small house here, but their church, which they have just finished covering in, is large and well built. The convent of the Recollects is much larger and its community more numerous. The seminary is in the middle of the town. It would seem that the object has been to make it solid and commodious rather than handsome. Its dignity, however, is such that one is not allowed to forget that it is the Seigneurial Manor; it communicates with the parochial church, which has more the air of a cathedral than that at Quebec. The services are conducted with a modesty and a dignity which inspire respect for the majesty of God, adored there. The house of the ladies of the Congregation, although one of the largest in the town, is too small as yet for its numerous community. It is the mother house of the order and the novitiate of an institute which ought to be all the dearer to New France and to this town in particular, since it originated here and the whole colony partakes in the advantages which so worthy an establishment brings to it.... The Hôtel-Dieu is served by nuns, whose first members were drawn from the Hôtel-Dieu of La Flèche in Anjou. They are poor; yet this is seen neither in their hall, which is large and well furnished and well supplied with beds, nor in their church, which is handsome and well ornamented, nor in their dwelling house, which is well built, becoming and spacious. But they are badly fed, although they are all occupied indefatigably, whether with the instruction of children, or the care of the sick.

"There can still be seen, from time to time, little flotillas of Indians arriving at Montreal, but this is nothing in comparison with the past. It is the Iroquois wars which have interrupted this great gathering of the nations in the colony. To remedy this, storehouses with forts have been established among the greater part of them, where there is always a commandant and soldiers enough to place the stores in safety. The savages always wish to have a gunsmith with them. In many places there are missionaries among them, who would do more good, if they were the only Frenchmen there. It would seem good to put things again on their former basis, seeing that throughout the length and breadth of the colony there is now peace. This would be the means of restraining the coureurs de bois, whose cupidity, without speaking of the other disorders brought about by their looseness of life, brings on daily instances of dishonesty, which make us despicable in the eyes of these barbarian people."

FOOTNOTES:

[165] A decree of May 7, 1679, forbids local or particular governors to arrest or imprison any of the French inhabitants without the express order of the governor and lieutenant-general, or that of the Sovereign Council, or to condemn any to l'amende," or to exercise any judgment of their private authority in this respect.