even on week-days.  Dancing was a favourite diversion and card-playing also.  Gambling at cards was more common among the people than suited either the priests or the civil authorities, as the records often attest.  Less objectionable amusements were afforded by the corvees recreatives or gatherings at a habitant’s home for some combination of work and play.  The corn-husking corvee, for reasons which do not need elucidation, was of course the most popular of these.  Of study or reading there was very little, for only a very small percentage of the people could read.  Save for a few manuals of devotion there were no books in the home, and very few anywhere in the colony.

Two or three chroniclers of the day have left us pen-pictures of the French Canadians as they were before the English came.  As a race, Giles Hocquart says, they were physically strong, well set-up, with plenty of stamina.  They impressed La Hontan also as vigorous and untiring at anything that happened to gain their interest.  They were fond of honours and sensitive to the slightest affront.  This in part accounts for their tendency to litigiousness, which various intendants mentioned with regret.  The habitant went to law with his neighbour at every opportunity.  His attitude toward questions of public policy was one of rare self-control; but when anything touched his own personal interests he always waxed warm immediately.  Pretexts for squabbling there were in plenty.  With lands unfenced and cattle wandering about, with most deeds and other legal documents loosely drawn, with too much time on their hands during the winter, it is not surprising that the people were continually falling out and rushing to the nearest royal court.  The intendant Raudot suggested that this propensity should be curbed, otherwise there would soon be more lawsuits than settlers in the colony.

On the whole, however, the habitant was well behaved and gave the authorities very little trouble.  To the Church of his fathers he gave ungrudging devotion, attending its services and paying its tithes with exemplary care.  The Church was a great deal to the habitant; it was his school, his hospital, his newspaper, his philosopher telling of things present and things to come.  From a religious point of view the whole colony was a unit.  ‘Thank God,’ wrote one governor, ’there are no heretics here.’  The Church, needing to spend no time or thought in crushing its enemies, could give all its attention to its friends.  As for offences against the laws of the land these were conspicuously few.  The banks of the St Lawrence, when once the redskin danger was put out of the way, were quite safe for men to live upon.  The hand of justice was swift and sure, but its intervention was not very often needed.  New France was as law-abiding as New England; her people were quite as submissive to their leaders in both Church and State.