He is usually a lazy settler.

His habits of life are formed in another mould from that of the farm.

He is apt to despise the hoe and the harrow and many even of the half-pay officers who came to hew out a home in the Canadian forest, never learned to cut down a tree or to hold a plough, though it may be admitted that they lived a useful life in their sons and daughters, while the culture and decision of character of the old officer or sturdy veteran were an asset of great value to the locality in which he settled.
But the De Meurons were not only bachelors, but they came from the peasantry of Austria and Italy, they had not fought for home and country, and their life of mercenary soldiering had made them selfish and deceitful.

A writer of the time speaks, and evidently with much prejudice, against the De Meurons.

"They were," he says, "a medley of almost all nations--Germans, French, Italians, Swiss and others.