book must mainly base its claim to be called a work of fiction, rather

than a volume of memoirs and folklore. I have ventured, therefore, at

the suggestion of my publishers, to take a liberty with the author's

title, and name the story after this young Scotch exile, "Cameron of

Lochiel." I am the more willing to take this liberty because I feel

that de Gaspé has not hitherto been granted the place he is entitled to

in the ranks of Canadian fictionists. Considered purely as a romance,

it seems to me that the sincerity, simplicity, and originality of this

work quite outweigh its sprawling looseness of structure, and make it

one of the unique ornaments of the composite literature which we are

building up in Canada. If by so changing its title as to emphasize the

fictional character of the work I can the better call attention to the

worth of de Gaspé's achievement, I feel that I am justified, even in

the face of such anticipatory protest as may seem to be implied in the

author's too modest introduction.

When all this has been said, however, the fact remains that it was

not its many merits as a romance that induced me to translate this

work, but the riches of Canadian tradition, folk-lore, and perished

customs embalmed in the clear amber of its narrative, coupled with my

own anxiety to contribute, in however humble a way, to the increase

of understanding and confidence between the two great branches of the

Canadian people. It is a beautiful and gracious life, that of old

French Canada, as depicted in de Gaspé's lucent pages,--a life of high

ideals, and family devotion, and chivalry, and courage. This is an

atmosphere it is wholesome to breathe. These are people it is excellent

to know; and the whole influence of the story makes for trust and a

good understanding.

C. G. D. R.

+Fredericton, N. B.+, _May, 1905_.

PREFACE.

In Canada there is settling into shape a nation of two races; there

is springing into existence, at the same time, a literature in

two languages. In the matter of strength and stamina there is no

overwhelming disparity between the two races. The two languages are

admittedly those to which belong the supreme literary achievements of

the modern world. In this dual character of the Canadian people and the

Canadian literature there is afforded a series of problems which the

future will be taxed to solve. To make any intelligent forecast as to

the solution is hardly possible without a fair comprehension of the two

races as they appear at the point of contact. We, of English speech,

turn naturally to French-Canadian literature for knowledge of the

French-Canadian people. The romance before us, while intended for those

who read to be entertained, and by no means weighted down with didactic

purpose, succeeds in throwing, by its faithful depictions of life and

sentiment among the early French Canadians, a strong side-light upon

the motives and aspirations of the race.

In spite of the disclaimer with which the author begins, the romance

of Les Anciens Canadiens is a classic. From the literary point of

view it is markedly the best historical romance so far produced in

French Canada. It gathers up and preserves in lasting form the songs

and legends, the characteristic customs, the phases of thought and

feeling, the very local and personal aroma of a rapidly changing

civilization. Much of what de Gaspé has so vividly painted from his

boyish reminiscences had faded out of the life upon which his alert

eyes rested in old age. The origin of the romance, as given by his

biographer, the Abbé Casgrain, is as follows:

When, in 1861, that patriotic French-Canadian publication the _Soirées

Canadiennes_ was established, its inaugurators adopted as their motto

the words: "Let us make haste to write down the stories and traditions

of the people, before they are forgotten." M. de Gaspé was struck with

the idea; and seeing that the writers who were setting themselves the

laudable task were all young men, he took the words as a summons to his

old age, and so the book came to be written.

Patriotism, devotion to the French-Canadian nationality, a just pride

of race, and a loving memory for his people's romantic and heroic

past--these are the dominant chords which are struck throughout the

story. Of special significance, therefore, are the words which are put

in the mouth of the old seigneur as he bids his son a last farewell.

The father has been almost ruined by the conquest. The son has left

the French army and taken the oath of allegiance to the English crown.

"Serve thy new sovereign," says the dying soldier, "as faithfully as I

have served the King of France; and may God bless thee, my dear son!"

In the present day, when nationalism in Quebec appears rather given

to extravagant dreams, it would be well for the distant observer to

view the French Canadians through the faithful medium which de Gaspé's

work affords him. Under constitutional forms of government it is

inevitable that a vigorous and homogeneous minority, whose language

and institutions are more or less threatened by the mere preponderance

of the dominant race, should seem at times overvehement in its

self-assertion. A closer knowledge leads us to conclude that perhaps

the extreme of Quebec nationalism is but the froth on the surface of a

not unworthy determination to keep intact the speech and institutions

of French Canada. However this may be, it is certain that the point of

contact between the two races in Canada is at the present day as rich

a field for the romancer as de Gaspé found it at the close of the _old

régime_.

According to the Histoire de la littérature Canadienne of Edmond

Lareau, Philippe Aubert de Gaspé was born in Quebec on the 30th of

October, 1786. He died in 1871. He belonged to a noble French-Canadian

family. At the manor of St. Jean-Port-Joli, of which he was seigneur,

he passed a large part of his life; and there he laid the chief scenes

of his great romance. He was educated at the seminary of Quebec, and

then studied law in the city, under Sewell, afterward chief-justice.

Only for a few years, however, did he devote himself to his

profession--one from which so many a poet and man of letters has broken

loose. He accepted the position of sheriff of Quebec, and afterward

came misfortunes which Lareau passes over with sympathetic haste. His

lavish generosity to his friends and the financial embarrassments into

which he fell, his four years' confinement in the debtors' prison, his

sufferings of soul and body, all doubtless contributed to the poignant

coloring with which he has painted the misfortunes of M. d'Egmont,

_le bon gentilhomme_. On his release from prison he retired to his

estate of St. Jean-Port-Joli, but not to the solitude and benevolent

melancholy of D'Egmont. The romancer was of too sunny a disposition,

he was too genuine and tolerant a lover of his kind, to run much

risk of becoming a recluse. A keynote to his nature may be found in

the bright _Bonsoir la compagnie_ with which, in the words of an old

French-Canadian song, he closed his literary labors at the age of

seventy-nine, when the last page of the Mémoires was completed.

The story we have translated, under the title of The Canadians of Old,

was published in 1862. It is accompanied in the original by a mass of

curious information, in the shape of notes and _addenda_, such as would

hardly interest the general reader. They will more than repay, however,

the attention of any one who wishes to study the French-Canadian people

as they were in their early days. The story itself has the air of being

the product of a happy leisure. The style is quaint and unhurried,

with no fear of the printer's devil before its eyes. The stream of the

narrative, while swift enough and direct enough at need, is taught

to digress into fascinating cross-channels of highly colored local

tradition, or to linger felicitously in eddies of feast and song.

The work begun in Les Anciens Canadiens De Gaspé carried to completion

in his second and last composition, the Mémoires, published in 1866.

As the former work is a vivid epitome of life at the _seigneuries_ and

among the _habitants_ of those days, so the latter reproduces and fixes

for us the picturesque effects of life in the city of Quebec itself in

the generation or two succeeding the conquest--a period during which

the French-Canadian _noblesse_ yet maintained, about the person of

the English governor, something of the remembered splendor of the old

vice-regal court.

C. G. D. R.

_Windsor, Nova Scotia, 1890._

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

+Foreword+ ix

I. +D'Haberville and Cameron of Lochiel+ 19

II. +A Night with the Sorcerers+ 31

III. +La Corriveau+ 45

IV. +The Breaking up of the Ice+ 56

V. +A Supper at the House of a French-Canadian

Seigneur+ 76

VI. +D'Haberville Manor House+ 99

VII. +The May-Feast+ 115

VIII. +The Feast of St. Jean-Baptiste+ 124

IX. "+The Good Gentleman+" 137

X. +Madame D'Haberville's Story+ 154

XI. +The Burning of the South Shore+ 167

XII. +A Night Among the Savages+ 180

XIII. +The Plains of Abraham+ 198

XIV. +The Shipwreck of the Auguste+ 213

XV. +Lochiel and Blanche+ 228

XVI. +The Family Hearth+ 254

XVII. +Conclusion+ 269

FOREWORD.

As my story lays no claim to classicism, either in style or structure,

this foreword may as well be made to play the part of a preface. My

acquaintances will, doubtless, open their eyes on seeing me thus

enter, at the age of seventy-six, on the perilous paths of authorship.

Possibly I owe them an explanation. Although tired of reading all these

years with so little profit either to myself or others, I yet dreaded

to pass the Rubicon. A matter small enough in itself in the end decided

me.

One of my friends, a man of parts, whom I met last year in St Louis

Street, in our good city of Quebec, grasped me warmly by the hand and

exclaimed:

"Awfully glad to see you! Do you know, my dear fellow, I have talked

this morning with no fewer than eleven people, not one of them with

half an idea in his noddle!" And he wrung my arm almost out of joint.

"Really," said I, "you are very complimentary; for I perceive by the

warmth of your greeting that I am the exception, the man you--"

"Oh, yes, indeed," he cried, without letting me finish my sentence,

"those are the only sensible words I have heard this morning." And he

crossed the street to speak to some one, probably his addle-pate number

twelve, who was seeking to attract his attention.

"The devil!" thought I to myself, "if what I just said is in any way

brilliant, it would seem easy enough to shine. Though I have never yet

been suspected of it, I must be rather a clever fellow."

Much elated with this discovery, and congratulating myself that I had

more brains than the unhappy eleven of whom my friend had spoken, I

hurry to my library, I furnish myself, perhaps all too appropriately,

with a ream of the paper called "foolscap," and I set myself to work.

I write for my own amusement, at the risk of wearying the reader who

may have the patience to go through this volume. But, as Nature has

made me compassionate, I will give this dear reader a little good

advice. He had better throw away the unlucky book without taking the

trouble to criticise it, which would be making it much too important,

and would be, moreover, but wasted labor for the serious critic; for,

unlike that old Archbishop of Granada, so touchy on the subject of his

sermons, of whom Gil Blas has told us, I am, for my part, blessed with

an easy humor, and, instead of retorting to my critic, "I wish you good

luck and very much better taste," I will frankly admit that my book has

a thousand faults, of most of which I have a lively consciousness.

As for the unfriendly critic, his work will be all in vain, debarred as

he will be from the privilege of dragging me into a controversy. Let me

say beforehand that I grieve to deprive him of his gentle diversion,

and to clip his claws so soon. I am old and indolently content, like

Figaro of merry memory. Moreover, I have not enough self-conceit to

engage in any defense of my literary productions. To record some

incidents of a well-loved past, to chronicle some memories of a youth

long flown--this is my whole ambition.

Many of the anecdotes, doubtless, will appear insignificant and

childish to some readers. Let these lay the blame upon certain of our

best men-of-letters, who besought me to leave out nothing which could

illustrate the manners and customs of the early Canadians. "That which

will appear insignificant and childish to the eyes of strangers," they

urged, "in the records of a septuagenarian, born but twenty-eight years

after the conquest of New France, will yet not fail to interest true

Canadians."

This production of mine shall be neither very dull nor surpassingly

brilliant. An author should assuredly have too much self-respect to

make his appeal exclusively to the commonplace; and if I should make

the work too fine, it would be appreciated by none but the _beaux

esprits_. Under a constitutional government, a candidate must concern

himself rather with the number than the quality of his votes.

This work will be Canadian through and through. It is hard for an old

fellow of seventy to change his ancient coat for garb of modern pattern.

I must have also plenty of elbow-room. As for rule and precept--which,

by the way, I am well enough acquainted with--I can not submit myself

to them in a work like this. Let the purists, the past masters in the

art of literature, shocked at my mistakes, dub my book romance, memoir,

annals, miscellany, hotch-potch. It is all the same to me.

Having accomplished my preface, let me make a serious beginning with

the following pretty bit of verse, hitherto unpublished, and doubtless

now much surprised to find itself in such unworthy company:

QUEBEC, 1757.

An eagle city on her heights austere,

Taker of tribute from the chainless flood,

She watches wave above her in the clear

The whiteness of her banner purged with blood.

Near her grim citadel the blinding sheen

Of her cathedral spire triumphant soars,

Rocked by the Angelus, whose peal serene

Beats over Beaupré and the Lévis shores.

Tossed in his light craft on the dancing wave,

A stranger where he once victorious trod,

The passing Iroquois, fierce-eyed and grave,

Frowns on the flag of France, the cross of God.

Let him who knows this Quebec of ours betake himself, in body or in

spirit, to the market of the Upper Town, and consider the changes which

the region has undergone since the year of grace 1757, whereat my story

opens. There was then the same cathedral, minus its modern tower, which

seems to implore the charitable either to raise it to its proper height

or to decapitate its lofty and scornful sister.

The Jesuits' College, at a later date transformed into a barrack,

looked much the same as it does to-day; but what has become of the

church which stood of old in the place of the present halls? Where

is the grove of venerable trees behind the building, which adorned

the grounds, now so bare, of this edifice sacred to the education of

Canadian youth? Time and the axe, alas! have worked their will. In

place of the merry sports, the mirthful sallies of the students, the

sober steps of the professors, the high philosophic discourse, we hear

now the clatter of arms, the coarse jest of the guard.

Instead of the market of the present day, some low-built butchers'

stalls, perhaps seven or eight in number, occupied a little plot

between the cathedral and the college. Between these stalls and the

college prattled a brook, which, after descending St. Louis Street and

dividing Fabrique, traversed Couillard and the hospital garden, on its

way to the river St. Charles. Our fathers were bucolic in their tastes!

It is the end of April. The brook is overflowing; children are amusing

themselves by detaching from its edges cakes of ice, which, shrinking

as they go, overleap all barriers, and lose themselves at last in the

mighty tide of the St. Lawrence. A poet, who finds "sermons in stones,

books in the running brooks," dreaming over the scene, and marking

the descent of the ice-cakes, their pausings, their rebuffs, might

have compared them to those ambitious men who, after a restless life,

come with little wealth or fame to the end of their career, and are

swallowed up in eternity.

The houses neighboring the market-place are, for the most part, of

but one story, unlike our modern structures, which tower aloft as if

dreading another deluge.

It is noon. The Angelus rings out from the cathedral belfry. All the

city chimes proclaim the greeting of the angel to the Virgin, who is

the Canadian's patron saint. The loitering _habitants_, whose calashes

surround the stalls, take off their caps and devoutly murmur the

Angelus. All worshiping alike, there is none to deride the pious custom.

Some of our nineteenth-century Christians seem ashamed to perform

before others an act of worship; which is proof, to say the least, of a

shrinking or cowardly spirit. The followers of Mohammed, who have the

courage of their convictions wherever they may chance to be, will seven

times daily make their prayers to Allah under the eyes of the more

timid Christians.

The students of the Jesuits' College, noisy enough on ordinary

occasions, move to-day in a serious silence from the church wherein

they have been praying. What causes this unusual seriousness? They are

on the eve of separation from two beloved fellow-students. The younger

of the two, who, being more of their age, was wont to share more often

in their boyish sports, was the protector of the feeble against the

strong, the impartial arbitrator in all their petty disagreements.

The great door of the college opens, and two young men in traveling

dress join the group of their fellow-students. Two leathern

portmanteaus, five feet long, adorned with rings, chains, and padlocks

which would seem strong enough for the mooring of a ship, lie at their

feet. The younger of the two, slight and delicate-looking, is perhaps

eighteen years old. His dark complexion, great black eyes, alert and

keen, his abruptness of gesture, proclaim his French blood. His name is

Jules D'Haberville. His father is one of the seigneurs, captain of a

company in the colonial marine.

His companion, who is older by two or three years, is much taller and

more robust of frame. His fine blue eyes, his chestnut hair, his blonde

and ruddy complexion with a few scattered freckles on face and hands,

his slightly aggressive chin--all these reveal a foreign origin. This

is Archibald Cameron of Lochiel, commonly known as Archie of Lochiel, a

young Scotch Highlander who has been studying at the Jesuits' College

in Quebec. How is it that he, a stranger, finds himself in this remote

French colony? We will let the sequel show.

The young men are both notably good looking. They are clad alike with

hooded overcoat, scarlet leggings edged with green ribbon, blue woolen

knitted garters, a broad belt of vivid colors embroidered with glass

beads, deer-hide moccasins tied in Iroquois fashion, the insteps

embroidered with porcupine-quills, and, finally, caps of beaver-skin

fastened over the ears by means of a red silk handkerchief knotted

under the chin.

The younger betrays a feverish eagerness, and keeps glancing along

Buade Street.

"You are in a hurry to leave us, Jules," said one of his friends,

reproachfully.

"No," replied D'Haberville, "oh, no, indeed, my dear De Laronde, I

assure you; but, since this parting must take place, I wish it over. It

unnerves me; and it is natural that I should be in a hurry to get back

home again."

"That is right," said De Laronde; "and, moreover, since you are a

Canadian, we hope to see you again before very long."

"But with you the case is different, my dear Archie," said another. "I

fear this parting will be forever, if you return to your own country."

"Promise us that you will come back," cried all the students.

During this conversation Jules darts off like an arrow to meet two men,

each with an oar on his right shoulder, who are hastening along by the

cathedral. One of them wears the costume of the _habitants_--capote

of black homespun, gray woolen cap, gray leggings and garters, belt

of many colors, and heavy cowhide larrigans tied in the manner

of the Iroquois. The dress of the other is more like that of our

young travelers, although much less costly. The first, tall and

rough-mannered, is a ferryman of Point Lévis. The second, shorter,

but of athletic build, is a follower of Captain D'Haberville, Jules's

father. In times of war, a soldier; in peace, he occupies the place of

a favored servant. He is the captain's foster-brother and of the same

age. He is the right hand of the family. He has rocked Jules in his

arms, singing him the gay catches of our up-river boatmen.

"Dear José, how are you? How have you left them all at home?" cried

Jules, flinging his arms about him.

"All well enough, thank God," replied Jose; "they send you all kinds o'

love, and are in a great way to see you. But how you have grown in the

last few months! Lord! Master Jules, but it is good to set eyes on you

again."

In spite of the familiar affection lavished upon José by the whole

D'Haberville family, he never forgot to be scrupulously respectful.

Jules overwhelms him with eager inquiries. He asks about the

servants, about the neighbors, and about the old dog whom, when in

his thirty-sixth lesson, he had christened _Niger_ to display his

proficiency in Latin. He has forgiven even the greedy cat who, the year

before, had gobbled up a young pet nightingale which he had intended to

take to college with him. In the first heat of his wrath, it is true,

he had hunted the assassin with a club, under tables, chairs, and beds,

and finally on to the roof itself, which the guilty animal had sought

as an impregnable refuge. Now, however, he has forgiven the creature's

misdeeds and makes tender inquiry after its health.

"Hello there!" grumbles the ferryman, who takes very little interest in

the above scenes, "when you have done slobbering and chattering about

the cat and dog, perhaps you'll make a move. The tide won't wait for

nobody."

In spite of the impatience and ill-humor of the ferryman, it took long

to say farewell. Their instructors embraced them affectionately.

"You are to be soldiers, both of you", said the principal. "In daily

peril of your life upon the battle-field, you must keep God ever

before you. It may be the will of Heaven that you fall. Be ready,

therefore, at all times, that you may go before the judgment-seat with

a clear conscience. Take this for your battle-cry--'God, the King, and

Fatherland!'"

"Farewell!" exclaimed Archie--"you who have opened your hearts to the

stranger. Farewell, kind friends, who have striven to make the poor

exile forget that he belonged to an alien race. Farewell, perhaps

forever."

"This parting would be hard indeed for me," said Jules, deeply moved,

"had I not the hope that my regiment will soon be ordered to Canada."

Then, turning to his instructors, he said:

"I have tried your patience sorely, gentlemen, but you know that my

heart has always been better than my head; I beg that you will forgive

the one for the sake of the other.--As for you, my fellow-students," he

continued, with a lightness that was somewhat forced, "you must admit

that, if I have tormented you sadly with my nonsense during the last

ten years, I have at least succeeded in sometimes making you laugh."

Seizing Archie by the arm, he hurried him off in order to conceal his

emotion.

We may leave our travelers now to cross the St. Lawrence, and rejoin

them a little later at Point Lévis.

+The Author.+

CAMERON OF LOCHIEL