proceeded to the church to assist at the _Te Deum_. His second act
on the same morning was to visit an Indian wigwam, and stand sponsor for
an invalid who desired baptism, the greatest honour and sweetest
consolation, he said, which he could have desired at his arrival in New
France. His great aim from the beginning was to walk in the steps of his
predecessor, and thus develop and consolidate the work so happily
commenced. He maintained the moral and religious tone of society, by
following up Champlain's plan of excluding disreputable and vicious
characters. One of his first concerns was to build a Seminary for the
education of the Huron youth, an object which he knew to have been very
dear to the heart of the late Governor. He also constructed a stone fort,
strengthened the fortifications at Three Rivers, and traced a correct
plan of the city, which as yet, it must be owned, existed only among the
visions of hope. The Quebec of the Mother of the Incarnation was, indeed,
widely different from that for which in after years, England and France
contended, and Wolfe and Montcalm bled and died. At the time of which we
write, it consisted of little more than a few rudely-constructed huts,
and contained scarcely two hundred and fifty inhabitants, but we have
dwelt thus long on its origin and early history because of its connection
with the life and labours of the Venerable Mother, which give interest to
every least detail concerning it. We have now reached the date of its
annals when Heaven was pleased to bless it with her presence; but before
entering on her biography, a glance at the Indian portion of the
population will be necessary to the completion of our little sketch of
Canada as it was in her days.

All the tribes dispersed over the territory comprised in the basin of the
St. Lawrence, were at this period divided into two groups, the Algonquin
and Huron-Iroquois, classified according to their respective languages.
To each of these mother tongues belonged dialects more or less numerous,