We are much obliged to you for the kind of reception you say we should have met with at Mal Bay had we fled there from the French and I do assure you ... it was for some time a very great comfort and relief to think we had resources to trust to.  I for one, I am sure, was almost frightened out of my wits, for a visit from these monsters, even the attempt, tho’ they had been subdued after landing, was fearsome.  I suspect you might have had more of your friends than your own family to have provided for.  The Hepburns I know turned their thoughts toward you and all of us determined to work for our bread the best way we could.  But you might have no small addition to your settlers; some of us poor old creatures would have settled heavy enough I fear upon yourself and family.  It is a fine place Mal Bay turned by your account.  What a deal of respectable company.  I am glad of it on your account.  A very great piece of good fortune to get Col.  Fraser so near; I wonder he does not marry Maidy, but she will think him too old.  I think Christine may do a great deal worse than spend the summer if not more at Mal Bay.  You are most amazingly indulgent to her.  I wish she would make a grateful return by bestowing more of her company on her friends at home in a situation it would appear so pleasant.  But she is a good kind-hearted Lassie after all and I suppose when she has got her full swing of Quebec she will be very well pleased to return home.

A legislature now sat at Quebec, the result of the new Constitutional Act passed in 1791, and Nairne might have become a member.  Murray Bay then formed a part of what, with little fitness, had been called by the English conquerors the County of Northumberland, no doubt because it lay in the far north of Canada as Northumberland lies in the far north of England.  Two members sat in the legislature for this county.  “I never had any idea of trying to be one of them,” writes Nairne in 1800, “but succeeded in procuring that honour for a friend Dr. Fisher, who resides in Quebec.  He is rich and much flattered with it and is ready on all occasions to speak.”

To Nairne, contrary to a general impression, the climate of Canada did not seem to grow milder as the land was cleared.  In any case the blood of old age runs less hotly.  Formerly the winter had its delights of hunting excursions but now, he writes, these are all over.  “The passion I had formerly for hunting and fishing and wandering through the woods is abated....  What with the cold hand of old age my former Winter excursions into the woods seem impossible and no more now of fishing and hunting which formerly I esteemed so interesting a business.”  He writes again:  “My employment is more in the sedentary way than formerly and what from calls in my own affairs and calls from people here in theirs, accounts to settle, &c., [I have] ... plenty of occupation.  Besides being a Justice of the Peace and Colonel of Militia ...  I employ myself without doors in