The daily fare of New France was not of limitless variety, but it was nourishing and adequate. Bread made from wheat flour and cakes made from ground maize were plentiful. Meat and fish were within the reach of all. Both were cured by smoke after the Indian fashion and could be kept through the winter without difficulty. Vegetables of various kinds were grown, but peas were the great staple. Peas were to the French what maize was to the redskin. In every rural home soupe aux pois came daily to the table. Whole families were reared to vigorous manhood on it. Even to-day the French Canadian has not by any means lost his liking for this nourishing and palatable food. Beans, too, were a favourite vegetable in the old days; not the tender haricots of the modern menu, but the feves or large, tough-fibred beans that grew in Normandy and were brought by its people to the New World. There were potatoes, of course, and they were patates, not pommes de terre. Cucumbers were plentiful, indeed they were being grown by the Indians when the French first came to the St Lawrence. As they were not indigenous to that region it is for others than the student of history to explain how they first came there. Fruits there were also, such as apples, plums, cherries, and French gooseberries, but not in abundance. Few habitants had orchards, but most of them had one or two fruit-trees grown from seedlings which came from France. Wild fruits, especially raspberries, cranberries, and grapes, were to be had for the picking, and the younger members of each family gathered them all in season. Even in the humbler homes of the land there was no need for any one to go hungry. More than one visitor to the colony, indeed, was impressed by the rude comfort in which the habitants lived. 'The boors of these manours,' wrote the voluble La Hontan, [Footnote: Louis Armand, Baron La Hontan, came to Canada in 1683, and lived for some time among the habitants of Beaupre, below Quebec, and afterwards in the neighbourhood of Montreal. He also journeyed in the Far West and wrote a fantastic account of his travels, of which an English edition was published in 1703.] 'live with greater comfort than an infinity of the gentry in France.' And for once he was probably right.