No campaign for immigrants in modern days has been more assiduously carried on.  Officials from Paris searched the provinces, gathering together all who could be induced to go.  The intendant particularly asked that women be sent to the colony, strong and vigorous peasant girls who would make suitable wives for the habitants.  The king gratified him by sending whole shiploads of them in charge of nuns.  As to who they were, and where they came from, one cannot be altogether sure.  The English agent at Paris wrote that they were ’lewd strumpets gathered up by the officers of the city,’ and even the saintly Mere Marie de l’Incarnation confessed that there was beaucoup de canaille among them.  La Hontan has left us a racy picture of their arrival and their distribution among the rustic swains of the colony, who scrimmaged for points of vantage when boatloads of women came ashore from the ships. [Footnote:  Another view will be found in The Great Intendant in this Series, chap.  IV.]

The male settlers, on the other hand, came from all classes and from all parts of France.  But Normandy, Brittany, Picardy, and Perche afforded the best recruiting grounds; from all of them came artisans and sturdy peasants.  Normandy furnished more than all the others put together, so much so that Canada in the seventeenth century was more properly a Norman than a French colony.  The colonial church registers, which have been kept with scrupulous care, show that more than half the settlers who came to Canada during the decade after 1664. were of Norman origin; while in 1680 it was estimated that at least four-fifths of the entire population of New France had some Norman blood in their veins.  Officials and merchants came chiefly from Paris, and they coloured the life of the little settlement at Quebec with a Parisian gaiety; but the Norman dominated the fields—­his race formed the backbone of the rural population.

Arriving at Quebec the incoming settlers were met by officials and friends.  Proper arrangements for quartering them until they could get settled were always made beforehand.  If the new-comer were a man of quality, that is to say, if he had been anything better than a peasant at home, and especially if he brought any funds with him, he applied to the intendant for a seigneury.  Talon was liberal in such matters.  He stood ready to give a seigneurial grant to any one who would promise to spend money in clearing his land.  This liberality, however, was often ill-requited.  Immigrants came to him and gave great assurances, took their title-deeds as seigneurs, and never upturned a single foot of sod.  In other cases the new seigneurs set zealously to work and soon had good results to show.