we spent the time in round dances and games. There was no piano, so we sent for the village orchestra, two habitant girls, to sing for us to dance cotillons and contredances, which they did untiringly for a couple of hours. This we continued until eleven o'clock, when all retired to rest. We returned to Quebec next day. I am not without experience of balls, with all the accessories of decoration, lights and fine music; but I never recollect to have passed a more pleasant evening. We all knew one another, and we brought to our entertainment cheerfulness, geniality, good manners, and youth. Two of the ladies are now the wives of retired generals of artillery in England."

This charming glimpse by Mrs. Kingsford of social amusements in a Canadian home of the past, to be thoroughly understood, requires a few words of explanation, which I, more than once a favored guest, at the houses he describes, can easily supply from personal recollections of my sporting days on the Chateau-Richer marsh.

1. The Chateau-Richer Manor of 1843 was an antique tenement one hundred and ten feet in length, divided here and there by wide-throated chimnies. A massive Three-Rivers stove, of the Matthew Bell pattern, heated the ample hall; the parlor was hung round with family oil-portraits. Its hospitable laird, Lt. Col. William Henry LeMoine, C. M., counting many friends. Among the Quebec sportsmen whom September each year attracted to the Chateau-Richer manor and snipe marshes, I can recall, among others, the late Hon. Justice Elzéar Bedard, of the Court of Appeals, Judge Louis Fiset, his friend Hector Simon Huot, William Phillips, Errol Boyd Lindsay, Narcisse, Juchereau, Charles and Philippe Duchesnay, Dr. Joseph Frémont, father of the late mayor of Quebec, who like William Henry, Robert Auguste, Alexandre Olivier LeMoine, the three eldest sons of the "Seigneur," -all present at this memorable réunion de famille,—

have since joined the great majority. Possibly the veteran hunter, Pitre Portugais, who for half a century glories in having each spring flushed the first snipe, may more than once have knocked at the door of the mossy old manor, on his way to the snipe marsh.

2. The ancient chatelain had the attributes of, and met with, the respect accorded to a good seigneur of the old régime, without owning a seigniory. He held important trusts, and in his quality of Commissaire des Petites Causes and Justice of the Peace dispensed justice evenly; more than once the chosen arbitrator in parish feuds.

3. The unmarried brother," who assisted his brother in bringing up his patriarchal family, died in 1851. His younger brother, W. H. LeMoine expired at Villa Saint Denis, Sillery, in 1870, aged 85. One of his fair grand-daughters recently became the spouse of Lieut.-Governor Angers, at Spencer Wood.

4. Two of the ladies present at the fête de famille are now the wives of retired General officers; Miss Harriet Le Mesurier, the wife of General Clifford ; Miss Sophia Ashworth, the wife of General Pipon. Their friend, Miss Caroline Lindsay, who married Major Ross, then of the 85th Foot, died in London, Ontario; her sister married Mr. W. Kingsford, the Historian.

STYLE OF TRAVEL OF THE HIGH OFFICIALS AT

QUEBEC UNDER THE FRENCH REGIME.

The industry and patient research displayed by our French annalists, Garneau, Bibaud, Ferland, Faillon, has unquestionably left but little unsaid or unnoticed, on the old regime of Canada; albeit the manner of presenting facts may widely differ; whilst the glamour and rainbow tints, with which the historian Frs. Parkman has invested this remote period, seems to have rendered it instinct with life.

More than one circumstance of recent occurrence are of a nature to encourage the modern delver in the rich mine of colonial history to delve still deeper. In 1872, a Public Record Office was opened, an annex, as it were, of the Department of Agriculture; the best man in the whole Dominion of Canada, probably, Douglas Brymner, was selected as its head; specialists, such as the Abbés Verreau and Tanguay, B. Sulte, Jos. Marmette were asked to co-operate; we all know their cordial and effective response.

It is now apparent to careful observers that the lacuna, hitherto sorely felt with respect to reliable records for describing a later period, the English regime is being rapidly filled in. In more than one promising essay, is apparent the beneficient influence of the new light, of wider horisons opened out; there are many satisfactory indications; probably, no where more visible than in two late histories of Canada, Mr. B. Sulte's and the more recent work of Wm. Kingsford, F. R. S. C. Another healthy incident, worthy of notice, is the awakening of each province, since Confederation, to the

sacred duty of garnering and preserving its own historic records, in which are revealed the struggles, material and intellectual progress of its inhabitants from their rude beginnings to the present day. I am more particularly reminded of this at the present time by the perusal of the annual report, the Annuaire de l'Institut Canadien of Quebec, for the year 1889.

Amidst other interesting matter, it contains suminaries of no less than seventeen (1) hitherto unpublished Mémoires, compiled by a distinguished engineer officer sent out from France, Col. Franquet, who came to America, in 1750, as Chief Engineer of Fortifications; he had been charged by the king of France with the duty of fortifying Louisbourg, in Cape Breton, which he did, though it had to succumb, in 1758, to the victorious arms of Wolfe, despite the heroic defence it made. Franquet landed at Louisbourg, in 1750; in 1851, he

(1) Voyages et Mémoires sur le Canada, par Franquet. 1752. Voyages de Québec aux Trois-Rivières, Montréal et au Lac St-Sacrement.

1753. Voyages de Québec au village de Lorette Sauvage. Mémoire pour les principaux endroits parcourus de Montréal au Lac St-Sacrement.

1753. Voyage par terre et sur les glaces de Québec à Montréal.

1753. Voyage par terre, de Québec à la Pointe-aux-Trembles pour accompagner M. le Général dans son voyage à Montréal. Premier séjour à Montréal.

Voyage au Lac des Deux Montagnes.

Second séjour à Montréal.

Séjour aux Trois-Rivières.

Du Fort St-Frédéric.

Du Fort de Chambly.

De la Rivière de Richelieu.

Du Village Précancour.

Du Geinsing.

Mémoire sur les moyens d'augmenter la culture des terres du Canada.

Québec 1753. Mémoire sur le projet des ouvrages proposés pour défendre la basse-ville et la haute.

crossed over to Isle St. Jean (Prince Edward Island). In 1752, he extended his peregrinations to Quebec, Three-Rivers, Montreal, Lake St. Sacrement; during his three years stay in Canada, he visited and reported on innumerable forts. It is some of the memoirs he wrote about this time, I purpose to examine and comment.

In 1754, Franquet returned to Louisbourg in company with the Chevalier de Drucourt to put in order the old works of defence, and carry out the instructions of the French king as to new works. Franquet was even more than an experienced engineer officer; his memoirs exhibit him as possessed of literary attainments; he evidently was a close observer of men and things generally, though his timely reports to the king on existing abuses and needed reforms seem to have remained unheeded in those degenerate days, in which coming events were already, though dimly, casting their lurid shadow before them.

New France in 1751-4 was administered by the Marquis Duquesne. Duquesne de Menneville, a captain in the Royal Navy, was a descendant of the famous admiral Duquesne, who had shed lustre on the reign of Louis XIV. He was brave and able, but a blight affected the colony: the profuse expenditure and in some cases, the wholesale pilfering of some of its high officials. A burthen to France it was even in 1751, losing gradually its former prestige. Was the Marquis gifted with a species of second sight; and when in 1754, he asked for his recall, could he even then detect on the wall faint tracings of an ominous hand pointing to its loss to France a few years later? Some are inclined to think so.

In 1754, however, there were yet but distant mutterings of the gathering storm, and even Madame de Pampadour, the royal concubine, would have shrunk from daring to rejoice openly at the possible loss of Canada to France.