* Vasseur au Ministre, 2-4 Nov., 1701. Like Denonville before him, he urges the need of fire-buckets. class in France. “They have wit,” says La Potherie, “delicacy, good voices, and a great fondness for dancing. They are discreet, and not much given to flirting; but when they undertake to catch a lover it is not easy for him to escape the bands of Hymen.” * So much for the town. In the country parishes, there was the same autumnal stowing away of frozen vegetables, meat, fish, and eels, and unfortunately the same surfeit of leisure through five months of the year. During the seventeenth century, many of the people were so poor that women were forced to keep at home from sheer want of winter clothing. Nothing, however, could prevent their running from house to house to exchange gossip with the neighbors, who all knew each other, and, having nothing else to do, discussed each other’s affairs with an industry which often bred bitter quarrels. At a later period, a more general introduction of family weaving and spinning served at once to furnish clothing and to promote domestic peace. The most important persons in a parish were the curé, the seignior, and the militia captain. The seignior had his bench of honor in the church. Immediately behind it was the bench of the militia captain, whose duty it was to drill the able-bodied men of the neighborhood, direct road-making and other public works, and serve as deputy to the intendant, whose ordinances he was required to enforce. Next in honor came the local judge any there was, and the church-wardens. * La Potherie. I. 279. The existence of slavery in Canada dates from the end of the seventeenth century. In 1688, the attorney-general made a visit to Paris, and urged upon the king the expediency of importing negroes from the West Indies as a remedy for the scarcity and dearness of labor. The king consented, but advised caution, on the ground that the rigor of the climate would make the venture a critical one. * A number of slaves were brought into the colony; but the system never flourished, the climate and other circumstances being hostile to it. Many of the colonists, especially at Detroit and other outlying posts, owned slaves of a remote Indian tribe, the Pawnees. The fact is remarkable, since it would be difficult to find another of the wild tribes of the continent capable of subjection to domestic servitude. The Pawnee slaves were captives taken in war and sold at low prices to the Canadians. Their market value was much impaired by their propensity to run off.