A more arduous undertaking next confronted the new seigneur.  It was not the royal intention that he should fold his talent in a napkin.  On the contrary, the seigneur was endowed with his rank and estate to the sole end that he should become an active agent in making the colony grow.  He was expected to live on his land, to level the forest, to clear fields, and to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before.  He was expected to have his seigneury surveyed into farms, or en censive holdings, and to procure, as quickly as might be, settlers for these farms.  It was highly desirable, of course, that the seigneurs should lend a hand in encouraging the immigration of people from their old homes in France.  Some of them did this.  Robert Giffard, who held the seigneury of Beauport just below Quebec, was a notable example.  The great majority of the seigneurs, however, made only half-hearted attempts in this direction, and their efforts went for little or nothing.  What they did was to meet, on arrival at Quebec, the shiploads of settlers sent out by the royal officers.  There they gathered about the incoming vessel, like so many land agents, each explaining what advantages in the way of a good location and fertile soil he had to offer.  Those seigneurs who had obtained tracts near the settlement at Quebec had, of course, a great advantage in all this, for the new-comers naturally preferred to set up their homes where a church would be near at hand, and where they could be in touch with other families during the long winters.  Consequently the best locations in all the seigneuries near Quebec were soon taken, and then settlers had to take lands more remote from the little metropolis of the colony.  They went to the seigneuries near Montreal and Three Rivers; when the best lands in these areas were taken up, they dispersed themselves along the whole north shore of the St Lawrence from below the Montmorency to its junction with the Ottawa.  The north shore having been well dotted with the whitewashed homes, the south shore came in for its due share of attention, and in the last half-century of the French regime a good many settlers were provided for in that region.

For a time the immigrants found little or no difficulty in obtaining farms on easy terms.  Seigneurs were glad to give them land without any initial payment and frequently promised exemption from the usual seigneurial dues for the first few years.  In any case these dues and services, which will be explained more fully later on, were not burdensome.  Any settler of reasonable industry and intelligence could satisfy these ordinary demands without difficulty.  Translated into an annual money rental they would have amounted to but a few sous per acre.  But this happy situation did not long endure.  As the settlers continued to come, and as children born in the colony grew to manhood, the demand for well-situated farms grew more brisk, and some of the seigneurs found that they need