The Canadian youth are improving their knowledge.  They take to schools for sciences, arts, handicrafts, and especially navigation; and if the movement is sustained there is every reason to hope that this country will produce mariners, fishermen, seamen, and skilled workmen; for the youth here are naturally inclined to these pursuits.  The Sieur de Saint-Martin (a lay brother at the Jesuits), who knows enough mathematics, is going to give lessons at my request.

New France at this time was prosperous and happy.  ’Peace reigns within as well as without the colony,’ wrote Talon at the end of the year 1671.  There was work and activity on all sides.  New settlements were opened, new families were founded, new industries were born.  No wonder that Talon, when he reflected on what had been achieved in seven years, should have written:  ’This portion of the French monarchy is going to become something great.’

Unfortunately his activities and service in Canada were nearing their end.  His health was breaking down.  Louis XIV had promised that he should be relieved from his arduous task in two years.  Talon reminded his royal master of this promise, and on May 17, 1672, the king was pleased to give him permission to come home.  Courcelle had asked for his own recall; his request was also granted and the Comte de Frontenac was named in his stead.  No intendant was appointed to fill Talon’s place.  At the beginning of September 1672, while Talon had still two months to serve, Frontenac arrived in Quebec to take up his duties as the sole executive head of the colony. [Footnote:  Another volume of this Series, The Fighting Governor, tells of what happened in New France in Frontenac’s time.]

One of Talon’s last official acts was the allotment, under authority of a decree of the King’s Council of State, of a large number of seigneuries—­a matter of the highest importance for the development of the colony.  He set himself to the task with his usual activity and earnestness.  From October 10 to November 8 he authorized about sixty seigneurial concessions to officers and others desirous of forming settlements.  In one day alone (November 3) he made thirty-one grants.  The autumn of 1672, during which all these seigneuries were created, should be remembered in the history of New France.  Before Talon, it is true, seigneurial grants had been made in Canada, but only intermittently and without any preconceived plan or well-defined object.  Now it was quite different.  The grants made by Talon, and the way in which they were made, show clearly the execution of a well thought-out scheme.  If Talon was not the founder he was the organizer of the seigneurial institution in Canada.  The object was twofold—­to protect and to colonize the country.  By his concessions to Sorel, Chambly, Varennes, Saint-Ours, Contrecoeur—­all officers of the Carignan regiment—­he created so many little military colonies whose population would