Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/250

238 The Normans and Bretons who colonized New France were governed to the end of their nails, as they used to say, from the mother country. The local self-government of the American colonies, the town meeting and its ramifications, were unknown; they were not allowed to hold meetings nor even to tax themselves for improvements without the royal permission. There were no common schools; the Recollets, or begging friars, taught the A B C as they wandered from parish to parish, but only where they found lodging for the night. As late as 1835 an act of the legislature was passed permitting school trustees to sign their reports with a mark. The feu-follet, or Will o' the wisp, was either an unshriven soul or Satan himself; sorciers were witches and imps who held their sabbaths on the Isle of Orleans; the chasse-galerie, a huntsman with a pack of dogs, appeared on the eve of a storm; but the most formidable apparition was the were-wolf, or loup-garou, which was seen as late as 1767 in the county of Kamouraska, seeking whom it might devour. None of these ugly visitors could cross a stream which bore a saint's name. If encountered in the woods, the feu follet could generally be dodged by sticking a needle in the earth or holding out a half-open knife after first making the sign of the cross; but the only safeguards against the others short of making a race for the St. Lawrence or the St. Something-else was for the traveler to carry a bottle of holy water, Le Formulaire, a prayer-book originally got up for the Ursuline nuns, or the petit Albert, which contained the forms for exorcising evil spirits.

The Jesuits have described the Arcadian simplicity of life and manners and the extraordinary piety of the early settlers, kept fervid both by their ministrations and by the constant Indian attacks. Every church had its own saint and relic, not necessarily of that particular saint, and its own miracles. Laval's successor presented the parish of Saint Paul in the Isle of Orleans with an arm bone of the great apostle of the Gentiles. A few years afterward the parish changed its name to Saint Laurent, and the adjoining parish of Saint Peter thereupon called itself Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The curés agreed to exchange relics, but the Saint Laurent people refused to be bound by that arrangement, and one night entered the church of Saint Pierre, carried off their old relic, and left the other, which they deemed an inferior one. Miracles beyond number were reported and passed into popular belief without being vouched for by ecclesiastical authority, such as missionaries using their cloaks as rafts to cross lakes and rivers, checking bush fires by drawing a line on the ground, being directed when they had lost their way and providentially supplied with food.

The Acadians had miracles in plenty. In the introduction