The supplies we provided for the settlement at Quebec for the year 1619 should give you a good idea of the everyday needs of settlers. “There will be 80 persons, including the leader, three Recollet Fathers,clerks, officers, craftsmen, and field labourers. For every two persons there will be a mattress, a straw bed, two blankets, three pairs of new sheets, two coats apiece, six shirts, four pairs of shoes, and a cloak. For arms, 40 muskets with their shoulder belts, 24 pikes, 4 wheel-locks four to five feet long, 1000 lbs. Of fine powder, 1000 lbs. Of cannon-powder, 1000 lbs. of balls for the cannon, six thousand-weight of lead, a puncheon (a large cask) of cannon match. For the men, a dozen scythes with handles, hammers, and other tools, 12 sickles, 24 spades for turning up the soil, 12 pickaxes, 4000 lbs. Of iron, 2 barrels of steel, 10 tons of lime, ten thousand curved tiles or twenty thousand flat, ten thousand bricks for making an oven and chimneys, two mill-stones. For the service of the leader’s table, 36 platters, as many bowls and plates, 6 salt-cellars, 6 ewers, 2 basins, 6 jugs holding 2 pints each, 6 pint-pots, 6 half-pints, 6 quarter-pints, all of tin, two dozen table-cloths, 24 dozen napkins. For the kitchen, a dozen copper cauldrons, 6 pairs of andirons (pair of metal supports for logs in a fireplace), 6 frying pans, 6 gridirons. There will also be brought two yearling bulls, heifers, and sheep; as much as possible all kinds of grain for sowing.” (Biggar, Works of Samuel de Champlain, Vol 4, pp. 353-54) Return to Other Ways of Seeing... |
