Marriage was certainly esteemed honorable in those days. The account of La Hontan, a witty officer of the Canadian forces, of the first coming of "the king's girls" is worth quoting in part: "After these first inhabitants there came a folk useful to the country and a good riddance to the Kingdom. There arrived one day at Quebec a small fleet loaded with Amazons and crowds of females, Nuns of Paphos or of Cythera conducting this precious cargo. I have been told the circumstances of their coming, and I cannot resist the pleasure of sharing the story with you. "This chaste folk was led to the pasture by old and prudish Shepherdesses. As soon as they had arrived, these wrinkled dames passed their soldiery in review, and having separated them into three classes, each group entered a different room. As they had to crowd quite close together on account of the smallness of the place, they made rather a pleasant decoration, and the good merchant Cupid had no reason to be ashamed of his wares. Never had he made a better assortment. Blonde, brunette, red, black, fat, thin, large, small,--he could satisfy the most bizarre and most fastidious tastes. "The report of the new cargo being spread abroad, all the well-intentioned in the way of multiplication hastened thither. As it was not permitted to examine all and still less to take them on trial, it was a case of buying a pig in a poke, or rather of buying the whole piece from the sample. But the disposal of them was none the less rapid on this account. Each selected his partner, and in a fortnight these three lots of venison had been taken away with all the seasoning that could be taken with them. "The next day the Governor-general caused to be distributed to them enough provisions to give them courage to embark upon this stormy sea. They went to housekeeping almost as did Noah in the Ark, with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and a piece of money. The officers were more fastidious than the soldiers and allied themselves with the daughters of other officers or of the richer settlers who had been established in the country for nearly a century."