Despite all the efforts of the French government for some years, the total immigration from 1663 until 1713, when the great war between France and the Grand Alliance came to an end by the treaty of Utrecht, did not exceed 6000 souls, and the whole population of the province in that year was only 20,000, a small number for a century of colonization.  For some years after the formation of the royal government, a large number of marriageable women were brought to the country under the auspices of the religious communities, and marriages and births were encouraged by exhortations and bounties.  A considerable number of the officers and soldiers of the Carignan-Salieres regiment, who followed the Marquis de Tracy into Canada, were induced to remain and settle new seigniories, chiefly in palisaded villages in the Richelieu district for purposes of defence against Iroquois expeditions.  Despite all the paternal efforts of the government to stimulate the growth of a large population, the natural increase was small during the seventeenth century.  The disturbing influence, no doubt, was the fur-trade, which allured so many young men into the wilderness, made them unfit for a steady life, and destroyed their domestic habits.  The emigrants from France came chiefly from Anjou, Saintonge, Paris and its suburbs, Normandy, Poitou, Beauce, Perche, and Picardy.  The Carignan-Salieres regiment brought men from all parts of the parent state.  It does not appear that any number of persons ever came from Brittany.  The larger proportion of the settlers were natives of the north-western provinces of France, especially from Perche and Normandy, and formed an excellent stock on which to build up a thrifty, moral people.  The seigniorial tenure of French Canada was an adaptation of the feudal system of France to the conditions of a new country, and was calculated in some respects to stimulate settlement.  Ambitious persons of limited means were able to form a class of colonial noblesse.  But unless the seignior cleared a certain portion of his grant within a limited time, he would forfeit it all.  The conditions by which the censitaires or tenants of the seigniorial domain held their grants of land were by no means burdensome, but they signified a dependency of tenure inconsistent with the free nature of American life.  A large portion of the best lands of French Canada were granted under this seigniorial system to men whose names frequently occur in the records of the colony down to the present day:  Rimouski, Bic and Metis, Kamouraska, Nicolet, Vercheres, Lotbiniere, Berthier, Beloeil, Rouville, Juliette, Terrebonne, Champlain, Sillery, Beaupre, Bellechasse, Portneuf, Chambly, Sorel, Longueuil, Boucherville, Chateauguay, Lachine, are memorials of the seigniorial grants of the seventeenth century.