poor French and half
castes, chose to stay under his command at Quebec, rather than undergo the
horrors of an Atlantic passage,"
(Page 74). Scanty, however, are the annals
of Kirke’s administration, at Quebec, (1629-32).
His Reverence, the Chaplain, pays a
visit to the Jesuits’ residence, opposite Hare Point, on the St. Charles.
They present him with paintings and books; a mutiny breaks out; the
Chaplain was suspected of having a finger in it; Governor Kirke has him
committed to prison.
In 1631, his services are sought to
christen Monsieur Couillard’s little daughter—the disciple of Luther
performs the ceremony. Henry Kirke, the historian and descendant of
Governor Louis Kirke, quotes from English State Papers, a curious
inventory of the armament of the Fort (St- Louis) sworn to, on the 9th
Nov., 1629, at London, by Samuel de Champlain, before the Right Worshipful
Sir Henry Martin, Knight, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty
(Page 75):
there were, it seems, Martins in London as well as at Quebec in those
days. We shall reserve this Inventory for another occasion.
The exhaustless research of our
antiquarians has unearthed curious particulars about this Scotch
sea-faring man—the number, [Anne born in 1614, Marguerite 1621, Hélène
1627, Marie 1635, Adrien 1638, Magdeleine 1640, Barbara 1643, Charles
Amador 1648, the first Canadian ordained as a Priest.] sex and age of his
children his speculations in real estate [A bequest in his favor of a lot
of land at Quebec on the 15th August, 1646, by Adrien Duchesne, surgeon on
board of M. de Repentigny’s ship, which lot of land of twenty arpents,
(afterwards named the Plains of Abraham,) had been conceded by the Company
of New France to Adrien Duchesne, on the 5th April, 1639.]—his fishing
ventures in the lower