In the
towns the officials and the well-to-do merchants dressed elaborately
on all occasions of ceremony, with scarlet cloaks and perukes, buckled
slippers and silk stockings. In early Canada there was no austerity of
garb such as we find in Puritan New England. New France on a _jour de
fete_ was a blaze of color.
As for his daily fare, the habitant was never badly off even in the
years when harvests were poor. He had food that was more nourishing
and more abundant than the French peasant had at home. Bread was made
from both wheat and rye flour, the product of the seigneurial mills.
Corn cakes were baked in Indian fashion from ground maize. Fat salted
pork was a staple during the winter, and nearly every habitant laid
away each autumn a smoked supply of eels from the river. Game of all
sorts he could get with little trouble at any time, wild ducks and
geese, partridges, for there were in those days no game laws to
protect them. In the early winter, likewise, it was indeed a luckless
habitant who could not also get a caribou or two for his larder.
Following the Indian custom, the venison was smoked and hung on the
kitchen beams, where it kept for months until needed. Salted or smoked
fish had also to be provided for family use, since the usages of the
Church required that meat should not be used upon numerous fast-days.
Vegetables of many varieties were grown in New France, where the warm,
sandy, virgin soil of the St.
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