one voice, "Let us go and demand the drum. He must give it up." So at eight or nine o'clock at night they set out to look for Bonneau. They came upon him unexpectedly in the streets of the town. He was accompanied by seven or eight persons with whom he had supped and all were armed with swords, pistols or other weapons. When Lanoraye demanded the drum, Bonneau was defiant and told him to go away or he should chastise him. The inevitable fight followed. Comporté, whose own account we have, says that it lasted some time and the results were fatal. Comporté declares that he himself struck no blows but the fact remains that two of Bonneau's party were so severely wounded that they died. Comporté and the rest of the Company soon went to Canada. In their absence he and others were sentenced to death.

In Canada he appears to have behaved himself. In France a simple volunteer, in New France he became an important citizen. Talon trusted him and made him Quarter-Master-General. In 1672 Comporté received an enormous grant of land stretching along the St. Lawrence from Cap aux Oies to Cap à l'Aigle, a distance of some eighteen miles, including Malbaie and a good deal more. About the same time he married Marie Bazire, daughter of one of the chief merchants in the colony, by whom he had a numerous family. So eminently respectable was he that we find him churchwarden at Quebec. In time he retired from trade, in which he had engaged, and became a judge of the newly established Court of the Prévôté at Quebec. This was not doing badly for a man under sentence of death. But over him still hung this affair in France and, in 1680, he petitioned the King to have the sentence annulled. For this petition he secured the support of the families of the men killed in the quarrel fifteen years earlier. In 1681 Louis XIV's pardon was registered with solemn ceremonial at Quebec, and at last Comporté was no longer an outlaw.

He had plans to settle his great fief. Working in his brain no doubt were dreams of a feudal domain, of a seigniorial chateau looking out across the great river, of respectful tenants paying annual dues to their lord in labour, kind, and money, of a parish church in which over the seigniorial pew should be displayed his coat of arms. But if these pictures inspired his fancy and cheered his spirit, they were never to become realities. In 1687 he was, apparently, in need of money, and he resolved to sell two-thirds of his interest in the seigniory of Malbaie. The price was a pitiful 1000 livres, or some $200, and the purchasers were François Hazeur, Pierre Soumande and Louis Marchand of Quebec, who were henceforth to get two-thirds of the profits of the seigniory. Then, in 1687, still young—he was only forty-six—Comporté died, as did also his wife, leaving a young family apparently but ill provided for. His name still survives at Malbaie. The portion of the village on the left bank of the river above the bridge is called Comporté, and a lovely little lake, nestling on the top of a mountain beyond the Grand Fond, and unsurpassed for the excellence of its trout fishing, is called Lac à Comporté; it may be that well-nigh two and a half centuries ago the first seigneur of Malbaie followed an Indian trail to this lake and wet a line in its brown and rippling waters.

Comporté and his partners in the seigniory had planned great things. They had begun the erection of a mill, an enterprise which Comporté's heirs could not continue. So the guardian of the children determined to sell at auction their third of the seigniory. The sale apparently took place in Quebec in October, 1688. We have the record of the bids made. Hazeur began with 410 livres; one Riverin offered 430 livres; after a few other bids Hazeur raised his to 480 livres; then Riverin offered 490 and finally the property was sold to Hazeur for 500 livres. Malbaie was cheap enough; one third of a property more than one hundred and fifty square miles in extent sold for about $100! In 1700 for a sum of 10,000 livres ($2,000) Hazeur bought out all other interests in the seigniory and became its sole owner. Its value had greatly improved in 22 years.

Of Hazeur we know but little. He was a leading merchant at Quebec and was interested in the fishing for "porpoises" or white whales. When he died in 1708 he left money to the Seminary at Quebec on condition that from this endowment, forever, two boys should be educated; for the intervening two centuries the condition has been faithfully observed; one knows not how many youths owe their start in life to the gift of the former seigneur of Malbaie. There, however, no memory or tradition of him survives. In his time some land was cleared. The saw mill and a grist mill, begun by Comporté, were completed and stood, it seems, near the mouth of the little river now known as the Fraser but then as the Ruisseau à la Chute. Civilization had made at Malbaie an inroad on the forest and was struggling to advance.

On Hazeur's death in 1708 his two sons, both of them priests, inherited Malbaie. Meanwhile the government developed a policy for the region. It resolved to set aside, as a reserve, a vast domain stretching from the Mingan seigniory below Tadousac westward to Les Eboulements, and extending northward to Hudson Bay. The wealth of forest, lake, and river, in this tract furnished abundant promise for the fur and other trade of which the government was to have here a complete monopoly. Malbaie was necessary to round out the territory and so the heirs of Hazeur were invited to sell back the seigniory to the government. The sale was completed in October, 1724, when the government of New France, acting through M. Begon, the Intendant, for a sum of 20,000 livres (about $4,000) found itself possessed of Malbaie "as if it had never been granted," of a saw mill and a grist mill, of houses, stables and barns, gardens and farm implements, grain, furniture, live stock, cleared land, cut wood and all other products of human industry there in evidence.[1]

Within the reserve, in addition to Malbaie, were a number of trading posts—Tadousac, Chicoutimi, Lake St. John, Mistassini, &c. In this great tract the government expected to reap large profits from its monopoly of trade with the Indians. Some of the fertile land was to be used for farms which should produce food supplies for the posts. The Intendant had sanguine hopes that the profit from trade and agriculture would aid appreciably in meeting the expense of government. It was, we may be well assured, an expectation never realized.

We get a glimpse of Malbaie in 1750 as a King's post. There were two farms, one called La Malbaie, the other La Comporté. The two farmers were both in the King's service and, in the absence of other diversions, quarrelled ceaselessly. The region, wrote the Jesuit Father Claude Godefroi Coquart, who was sent, in 1750, to inspect the posts, is the finest in the world. He reported, in particular, that the farm of Malbaie had good soil, excellent facilities for raising cattle, and other advantages. Only a very little land had been cleared, just enough wheat being raised to supply the needs of the farmer and his assistants. The place should be made more productive, M. Coquart goes on to say, and the present farmer, Joseph Dufour, is just the man to do it. He is able and intelligent and if only—and here we come to the inherent defect in trying to do such pioneer work by paid officials who had no final responsibility—he were offered better pay the farm could be made to produce good results. The old