The drain of the war had starved out the butchers' stalls, but
Indians and hunters took their places for the nonce with an
abundance of game of all kinds, which had multiplied exceedingly
during the years that men had taken to killing Bostonnais and
English instead of deer and wild turkeys.
Fish was in especial abundance; the blessing of the old Jesuits
still rested on the waters of New France, and the fish swarmed
metaphorically with money in their mouths.
There were piles of speckled trout fit to be eaten by popes and
kings, taken in the little pure lakes and streams tributary to the
Montmorency; lordly salmon that swarmed in the tidal weirs along the
shores of the St. Lawrence, and huge eels, thick as the arm of the
fisher who drew them up from their rich river-beds.
There were sacks of meal ground in the banal mills of the
seigniories for the people's bread, but the old tinettes of yellow
butter, the pride of the good wives of Beauport and Lauzon, were
rarely to be seen, and commanded unheard-of prices. The hungry
children who used to eat tartines of bread buttered on both sides
were now accustomed to the cry of their frugal mother as she spread
it thin as if it were gold-leaf: "Mes enfants, take care of the
butter!"
The Commissaries of the Army, in other words the agents of the Grand
Company, had swept the settlements far and near of their herds, and
the habitans soon discovered that the exposure for sale in the
market of the products of the dairy was speedily followed by a visit
from the purveyors of the army, and the seizure of their remaining
cattle.
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