These Dwellings Are Large, Whitewashed, And Many-
Windowed, And Are Always Surrounded With Balconies.
The doors are reached
by flights of steps, in order that they may be above the level of the snow
in winter.
The rooms are clean, but large and desolate-looking, and are
generally ornamented with caricatures of the Virgin and uncouth
representations of miracles. The women dress in the French style, and wear
large straw hats out of doors, which were the source of constant
disappointments to me, for I always expected to see a young, if not a
pretty, face under a broad brim, and these females were remarkably ill-
favoured; their complexions hardened, wrinkled, and bronzed, from the
effects of hard toil, and the extremes of heat and cold. I heard the hum
of spinning-wheels from many of the houses, for these industrious women
spin their household linen, and the gray homespun in which the men are
clothed. The furniture is antique, and made of oak, and looks as if it had
been handed down from generation to generation. The men, largely assisted
by the females, cultivate small plots of ground, and totally disregard all
modern improvements. These French towns and villages improve but little.
Popery, that great antidote to social progress, is the creed universally
professed, and generally the only building of any pretensions is a large
Romish church with two lofty spires of polished tin. Education is not much
prized; the desires of the simple habitans are limited to the attainment
of a competence for life, and this their rudely-tilled farms supply them
with. Few emigrants make this part of Canada even a temporary resting-
place; the severity of the climate, the language, the religion, and the
laws, are all against them; hence, though a professor of a purer faith may
well blush to confess it, the vices which emigrants bring with them are
unknown. These peasants are among the most harmless people under the sun;
they are moral, sober, and contented, and zealous in the observances of
their erroneous creed. Their children divide the land, and, as each
prefers a piece of soil adjoining the road or river, strips of soil may
occasionally be seen only a few yards in width. They strive after
happiness rather than advancement, and who shall say that they are
unsuccessful in their aim? As their fathers lived, so they live; each
generation has the simplicity and superstition of the preceding one. In
the autumn they gather in their scanty harvest, and in the long winter
they spin and dance round their stove-sides. On Sundays and saints' days
they assemble in crowds in their churches, dressed in the style of a
hundred years since. Their wants and wishes are few, their manners are
courteous and unsuspicious, they hold their faith with a blind and
implicit credulity, and on summer evenings sing the songs of France as
their fathers sang them in bygone days on the smiling banks of the rushing
Rhone.
The road along which the dwellings of these small farmers lie is
macadamised, and occasionally a cross stands by the roadside, at which
devotees may be seen to prostrate themselves.
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