Lands were given to settlers without accurate description of their
boundaries; farms were unfenced and cattle wandered into neighboring
fields; the notaries themselves were almost illiterate, and as a
result scarcely a legal document in the colony was properly drawn.
Nobody lacked pretexts for controversy. Idleness during the winter was
also a contributing factor. But the Church and the civil authorities
frowned upon this habit of rushing to court with every trivial
complaint. _Cures_ and seigneurs did what they could to have such
difficulties settled amicably at home, and in a considerable measure
they succeeded.
New France was born and nurtured in an atmosphere of religious
devotion. To the habitant the Church was everything--his school, his
counselor, his almsgiver, his newspaper, his philosopher of things
present and of things to come. To him it was the source of all
knowledge, experience, and inspiration, and to it he never faltered in
ungrudging loyalty. The Church made the colony a spiritual unit and
kept it so; undefiled by any taint of heresy. It furnished the one
strong, well-disciplined organization that New France possessed, and
its missionaries blazed the way for both yeoman and trader wherever
they went.
Many traits of the race have been carried on to the present day
without substantial change. The habitant of the old dominion was a
voluble talker, a teller of great stories about his own feats of skill
and endurance, his hair-raising escapes, or his astounding prowess
with musket and fishing-line.
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