A SHIPLOAD OP WIVES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1671, 10 December 1887, Page 3

A SHIPLOAD OP WIVES.

The following in reference to an emigration extraordinary under the paternal conduct of the French Government more than 300 years ago is taken from a recent issue of the Toronto Globe

It is one of the almost forgotten curiosities of early Canadian history that about the year 1668 France actually undertook to supply its discharged soldiers and other citizens who had settled in Canada with wires to order and on a scale befitting its own magnificence. Ships were chartered and a consignment of demoiselles was shipped from the motherland for the choice and delectation of the sturdy adventurers, who, having at length conquered a peace from the fierce Iroquois, were now in a position to cultivate their own assigned acres and sit down by their own peaceful firesides. Imagination falters in the attempt to depict the curiosity with which the arrival of the vessel bearing the precious freight would be awaited by the expectant and eager bachelors, if indeed they were permitted to know beforehand of the beneficent designs of the Government or the peculiar shape the royal bounty was about to assume. What a thrill must have flashed along the banks of the St, Lawrence when the advertisement was actually published that a large number of candidates for tbe matrimonial market bad reached the Canadian shores and that “ such as had means of supporting a wife should have their choice.” We can fancy the growing excitement as the avant couriers charged with the weighty news went from village to village and from house to house to spread the novel announcement. Wo can see in our mind's eye the living streams of pilgrims taking their rise in the remote huts of the dense forests and pouring forth in ever-swelling volume towards the place of rendezvous, as the ancestors of the inhabitants hastened forward, eager to try their fortunes, or exulting by anticipation in the enjoyment of the proffered boon. So far as it appears, tbe hundreds of imported ladies must have stood forth with unveiled faces and with that outward semblance of calm which only women can put on with marvellous success in the most trying circumstances, open to the inspection of the crowding and excited suitors. What pen can do justice to the contending emotions that must have rent their bosoms as each waited minute after minute, or hour after hour, for her turn to come, or perhaps as she found herself forced to decide, in very brief order, between the conflicting claims of half a dozen eager competitors, neither of whom she had ever seen before, and in regard to whose previous history and present character she was wholly in the dark, save so far as her keen woman’s instinct might give her light. The scene must certainly have been a memorable one to those who witnessed it. The collection, are told by the old chronicler, “ consisted of tall, short, fair, brown, fat, and lean.” Each of these had had, no doubt, her own peculiar trials, disappointments and sorrows 5 for it is hardly conceivable that jolly young damsels with high expectations and an abundance of eligible offers in their own land would have volunteered to take tbe chance of such a foreign adventure, even under the auspices of the French Government or its royal head. Even so, conjecture trios in rain to conceive of the arguments and influence the agents of the Government must have brought to bear in order to induce these young women, to the number of several hundreds, to bid farewell for ever to the land of their birth, and all old friends and associations, and go forth

' and take the dark chances of happiness as wives of unknown men, and disbanded soldiers at that. Be that as it may, there they were. The matches were all arranged within the short space of less than fifteen days from when the advertisements. The marriage ceremony was in each case duly performed, and then the wedding gifts were in order. The Governor-General himself undertook the beneficent task, in the absence of personal friends and acquaintances to be put under contribution. His gifts were admirably practical and useful. They consisted of “ oxen, cows, hogs, fowls, salted beef and kome money.” With these goodly stores the wed ded couples set out on their homeward journeys, and though regard for historical truth, or at least verisimilitude, forbids us to declare of them by wholesale that they were all “ happy ever after,” we may reasonably hope that a goodly proportion of them at least were reasonably so.