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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