Chapter 2

Waterlilies.

AFTER Champlain the story of Quebec takes a more sombre hue. Its pages tell of long-continued warfare with the savages; of a fierce though intermittent struggle with the “heretic” English, the papist-hating “Bostonnais.” The tale has no lack of heroes and of heroines, courageous, saintly, inspired by visions of the invisible, or driven to the supreme heights of self-sacrifice by the most awful sights ever shown to mortal eyes.

Ursuline Nun.

To this period belong the valiant Governor, Montmagny; brave Maisonneuve, founder of Montreal; gentle Jeanne Mance; the ecstatic Mother Marie de l’Incarnation; the Jesuit devotees, Jogues, Bréboeuf, and Lalemant; those other martyrs, Dollard and his sixteen defenders of the Long Sault; daring, ruthless D’Iberville; luckless, dauntless La Salle; and a host of others who in that dark period bravely played their parts on the blood-stained stage. But above them all, by force of circumstances and force of character, towers the stern military figure of Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac.

Prescott Gate.

Arrogant, imperious, fearless, defiant of danger, from his “Chateau” on the height he lorded it over the straggling settlements along the river that then made up New France. He imposed his will on restless traders, on his savage “children” of the forest, and he made a brave fight to impose it also on the spiritual leaders of New France, and on the Intendant, sent out specially to check and thwart him. His very faults served New France well in that time of agony, when the savages were ever at her throat, sucking away her life-blood and mangling her all but to dissolution.

CanadianGrenadier.

Cannon.

In contrast to timorous La Barre and vacillating Denonville, there is something fascinating about the stalwart Frontenac, who was as surely the saviour of New France as the nobler, gentler Champlain was its founder and father. A soldier and a courtier, Frontenac had left his youth far behind him, when, in 1672, he landed for the first time at Quebec; but he could adapt himself to circumstances, at least to any circumstances in which his imperious will could have free play. He was quickly at home in the little town on the St. Lawrence, “the future capital,” as he saw it, “of a great empire.” He was at home also in the camps and councils of the redmen, stooping, as a smaller man would not have dared to do, to the level of forest manners and forest eloquence.

Blockhouse.

During ten unquiet years he learned better and better how to deal with the savages, and was then called back to France, just as the Iroquois were preparing to make a fresh attack on Canada. The Iroquois had no lack of prey, for by this time pioneers and traders had scattered themselves far and wide through the wilderness. They did not, however, fall unresisting.

The dangers of the time had bred stern, relentless men, and women and children, too, ready, like the little heroine of Verchères, to fight to the death for home and dear ones. Each village had its loop-holed blockhouse or strong stone mill, but the log-cabins frequently stood far from these places of refuge, and the Iroquois dealt in night-attacks and sudden surprises. Whilst Denonville was governor there was a veritable reign of terror in New France, culminating, in August, 1689, in the frightful massacre of Lachine.

Old Wooden Bridge.

Frontenac, already on his way back to Quebec, was not the man to let the outrage pass unavenged. Unable to deal a telling blow at the shifting Iroquois, he struck savagely at the white foe, whom he suspected of encouraging the red braves in their barbarous warfare. From Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal, he sent out parties of bush-rangers and “Christian Indians” to carry fire and sword through the border settlements of New England. In the depth of winter the cruel task was duly accomplished, and loud were the plaudits of the savage allies of the French, whose friendship had wavered in the hour of their discomfiture. Speedily hundreds of canoes, deep-laden with furs, came down to Montreal, but the English colonists, thirsting for revenge, seized Port Royal, in Acadia, and then sent an expedition to attack Quebec.

At its head was Sir William Phips, a bold, rough seaman, who had won knighthood by the recovery of the cargo of a long-sunk Spanish treasure-ship; but he soon proved himself no match for the old lion Frontenac.

Cart.

Canadiantrapper.

The great French war-chief was at Montreal, feasting his Indian admirers on dog’s flesh and prunes, and leading them in the war-dance, when news reached him that Phips was in the river. Hastening down-stream in a birch-bark canoe, he reached his little capital long before the foe appeared. As he landed and strode up Mountain Hill, the people cheered him madly. Their delight was scarcely less when the Bishop, who had been visiting some outlying parishes, entered the city one night by torchlight. Whilst Frontenac looked to his defences, gathered fighting men into the fortress, and called out the “habitants” of Beauport and Beaupré to defend the shores, the Bishop urged his followers to do their part, and day and night prayers went up to all the saints in heaven to keep watch and ward over Quebec.

Chateau St. Louis.

At last, early on an October morning, the English fleet sailed into the Basin, and Phips sent a messenger to demand the surrender of the city. But his envoy was treated with scant courtesy. Dragged blindfold over obstructions and up the steep streets, while jeering women mocked him with cries of “Colin Maillard!” he was guided at last into a spacious hall of the Chateau St. Louis. Here were assembled Frontenac and his officers in all the glory of plumes and ribbons, gold lace and powdered curls; and when the bandage was snatched from his eyes the Englishman might well have been dazzled by their glittering finery. But he confronted the stern old Governor calmly, and, laying his watch on the table, demanded an answer to Phips’ summons within an hour.

QUEBEC, ABOUT 1690.From La Potherie’s HISTOIRE.

Frontenac was enraged by the effrontery of the demand. “I will answer your general only by the mouths of my cannon,” he replied, and the messenger, blindfolded again, was led off to make sport once more, on his roundabout way to his boat, for the shrill-voiced, laughing French women.

That same night there was another burst of merry-making in the city. The sound of drums, trumpets and joyous huzzas was loud enough to reach the ears of the English on the river. “You have lost the game,” declared a prisoner, with malicious delight. “It is the Governor of Montreal with the people from the country above. There is nothing for you now but to pack up and go home.” But Phips was not yet ready to take this advice.

Ruins of Notre Dame des Victoires.From a drawing by R. Short 1759.

Landing a portion of his force at Beauport, he moved his ships into position to bombard the town. Then Frontenac from the rock sent him his promised answer, and for hours the cannon roared and the smoke and din were horrible. Phips ploughed up the gardens of the Ursulines, shot away a corner of a nun’s apron, and wasted his ammunition against the rock, but made no impression whatever on the strong stone walls of Quebec. His enemies, laughing to scorn his futile efforts, riddled his vessels with their balls and shot away from his masthead the proud banner of St. George, which was brought ashore in triumph in a birch-bark canoe. At last Phips drew off from the contest, and patching up his sorely misused ships as best he could, dropped down the river. He was still pursued by ill-luck and misfortune. The annual supply ships for New France escaped him by hiding in the fogs that overhung the mouth of the grim Saguenay, while fever and smallpox, hurricane and shipwreck seemed to mark out his own fleet as under the wrath of heaven.

Father Jogues.

Frontenac.

But in Quebec all was joy and thanksgiving. The captured flag was carried in triumph to the Cathedral. “The Bishop sang a Te Deum, and amid the firing of cannon the image of the Virgin was carried to each church and chapel in the place by a procession in which priests, people and troops all took part.” At night there was a great bonfire in honor of the redoubtable old Governor, but the defeat of the English was generally regarded as miraculous, and it was therefore ordained that the fête of “Notre Dame de la Victoires” should be celebrated annually in the little church of the Lower Town.

Some twenty years later, in the summer of 1711, the people of Quebec again had cause to rejoice in a great deliverance. A mighty English armament, out-numbering by more than three times those who could be gathered to defend the city, was in the St. Lawrence, when a great storm arose, dashing to pieces eight or ten vessels on the rocks of the Egg Islands and drowning nine hundred men. Upon this the incompetent leaders of the expedition, Hill and Walker, turned homeward in dismay. Again Te Deums resounded in Quebec, and in memory of this second notable deliverance the little church was called “Notre Dame des Victoires.”

Nearly half a century later, the building was sorely damaged by the English guns, but its upper portions were afterwards rebuilt “on the old walls,” and to-day in its quiet little nook, just aside from the bustle of Champlain Market, it still stands a quaint memorial of those ancient victories and of a world now passed away.

Old Church St. Anne de Beaupré.

PHIPS’ siege of Quebec, with its awkward ship’s carpenter turned admiral, its Indian-mimicking French Governor, its noisy, ineffective bombardment, has more than a touch of comedy; but the drama in which Montcalm and Wolfe dispute the role of hero and contend for a prize of a value guessed at only by the statesmen seers of the time, never sinks beneath the dignity of tragedy.

Both the combatants were valiant, honorable, high-minded, and lovable. Both had already won laurels in battle. Each moved forward to the grand catastrophe by a path beset with difficulty and danger. Each gave his life for his cause and his country, and together they will live forever in the memory of the two peoples whom their great fight on the Plains of Abraham made one.

Montcalm, like Wolfe, had been a soldier from boyhood, gaining a varied experience in the European wars. Again in this resembling his rival, he was no mere soldier delighting in nothing but the clash of swords. He had some love of learning and taste for literature, and a heart that was very tender towards home and friends. Richer than Wolfe in one respect, he had a well-beloved wife and children, besides the mother to whom he wrote much the same kind of letters as the English hero sent to his mother at Greenwich.

Ship of the eighteenth century.

A corner of the Rampart.

Montcalm, nearly fifteen years older than his future antagonist, received his baptism of fire almost before Wolfe was out of his cradle. His experience of American warfare began two full years before his rival made his first painful passage of the Atlantic, and, on the July day when the young English brigadier was throwing up the redoubts which were to silence the batteries of Louisbourg, Montcalm, at Ticonderoga, hundreds of miles away, was flinging back from his bristling abatis of tree-tops a British force nearly four times the strength of his own.

Both men received their meed of honor and promotion. Whilst Montcalm was informed that “the king trusted everything to his zeal and generalship,” Wolfe was given a new opportunity to win distinction in the command of an expedition against Quebec.

Wharf at Isle of Orleans.

In his brief winter’s sojourn in his native land, Wolfe had spent some weeks at Bath, trying to recuperate his shattered health, and in that fashionable resort of invalids and hypochondriacs had made the acquaintance of a beautiful girl, Katherine Lowther, who soon consented to betroth herself to the gaunt, odd-looking young hero of Louisbourg.

General Montcalm.

Montcalm, meanwhile, though a great man in the gay little society of Quebec, was passing his time unpleasantly enough. Far from home, tortured by anxiety, and hampered by the jealousy of the Governor de Vaudreuil and the shameless corruption of the Intendant Bigot and his accomplices, the general declared that only a miracle could save the colony. The people, who had been cheated, robbed, and oppressed for years, were at the point of starvation, and were losing heart. Yet, when news came in May that Wolfe had sailed to attack Quebec, seigneurs and habitants alike rallied bravely to the call of their leaders, and men and boys, red warriors and white, came pouring into the city.

Soon the army of defence numbered 16,000 men, most of whom Montcalm posted in a long-extended camp, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, touching the St. Charles on the right and the Montmorency on the left. Taking up his quarters at Beauport, he set his men to erect batteries and throw up earthworks on the steep ridge that runs for miles along the river.

As for the city itself—its fortifications were garrisoned by between one and two thousand men, guns were mounted on the walls, and the gates were shut and barricaded, except Palace Gate, from which a road led to the camp at Beauport across a bridge of boats girdling the St. Charles. That river was defended by a great boom of logs, whilst floating batteries, gunboats, and fire-ships were prepared for the protection of the harbor.

Then when all was done came a lull of horrible suspense, and the impatient “habitants” grew weary of waiting behind the entrenchments. But some, with hopeful memories of “Notre Dame des Victoires” and the miracles of their grandsires’ days, pleased themselves with the fancy that wind and wave must again be doing their grim work on the foe.

‘Aux Braves.’

General Wolfe.From a painting by J. W. L. Forster.

Not so. The English fleet, of twenty-two ships of the line and a great number of smaller vessels, was close at hand. It was under the command of the gallant Admiral Saunders, without whose cordial co-operation Wolfe could never have conquered Quebec, and it had on board nearly nine thousand seasoned troops, in addition to the seamen.

Here died Wolfevictorious.

With the unwilling aid of French pilots, entrapped by stratagem, the vessels passed the perilous “traverse” at Cap Tourmente, and from that time the citizens of Quebec had no lack of excitement. The landing of the British on the Island of Orleans, the abortive attempt of the French to destroy the enemy’s fleet with their fire-ships, the erection of English batteries on Point Lévis and on the island, the encampment of the British below the Falls of Montmorency, the beginning of the bombardment, the passing of the invaders’ ships above the batteries of the city, all this kept the people of Quebec in a state of feverish expectancy. But Montcalm was not to be tempted nor provoked to descend for one moment from his inaccessible position.

At last Wolfe tried to force a battle. He landed a body of troops on a little beach about a mile above the Falls, and prepared to attack the French in their camp. But the men first on shore were too eager. Without waiting for orders or for their comrades, who were crossing to their assistance by a ford below the Falls, they tried to rush the heights where Montcalm’s army was gathered in force, and were beaten back with heavy loss.

For weeks after this battle there was a grim game of patience between the two skilled leaders. Unmoved by reverses on Lake Champlain which obliged him to send troops to Montreal, by the wasting of the parishes above and below Quebec, by threatened famine, present desolation, and the murmurs of his habitants, who were eager to escape from the army to gather in their harvests, Montcalm remained upon his heights, waiting for time and bad weather to rid the country of the foe.

Beauport Churchyard.

But he had to do with a man whose stock of endurance matched his own. Disease weakened the English forces and came near robbing them of their head; but Wolfe’s work was not yet done, and on his bed of pain he still bent every power of mind and body to the accomplishment of his task.

If Montcalm could not be made to fight below the town, was it impossible to force a battle on the plains above Quebec? Impossible is not a word that heroes love; much is possible that at the first blush seems foolhardiness. Wolfe’s rugged pathway to battle and victory, death and immortal fame, was there, waiting his need, and in due time he discerned it.

RECOLLET FRIARS’ CHURCH.From a drawing made by R. Short, 1759.

Wheel for spinning flax.

ChurchProcessionLantern.

Meanwhile there had begun mighty preparation in fleet and army for some last attempt on Quebec. There was movement of ships and bustle of men, re-disposition of forces, a noisy bombardment of the Beauport camp—the object of all concealed even from most of the British officers, lest some enlightening rumor should reach the ears of Montcalm.

On the night of September 12th, Wolfe made his last reconnaissance, and, haunted, it may be, by presentiments of his swiftly approaching death, repeated to his attendant officers some verses of Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” an incident that has seemed the more worthy of note because the young general’s own path of glory led so speedily to the grave.

Old drawing of a Calèche.

FrenchSoldier.

Wolfe well knew the desperate nature of his plan. From the opposite shore he had seen the white tents of the troops who were on guard above the Anse-au-Foulon, where he proposed to land; and he did not know that the post was commanded by the heedless coward Vergor, who had only escaped well-merited disgrace by the interposition of Bigot and Vaudreuil.

Wolfe and Montcalm Monument.

When, an hour before sunrise on the fateful morning of September 13th, Wolfe led his forlorn hope to the spot where the ascent was to be made, he did not guess that the guards above slept at their post; and his heart was heavy with misgivings.

The little path had been rendered impassable by obstructions, and the men had to clamber up the face of the rugged cliff, tree-covered then as it is to-day, whilst, below, the general waited in agonizing suspense till a ringing cheer told him that the guard was overpowered. Then the rough track was cleared, and, before day dawned grey and cloudy over the fortress, Wolfe’s little army of four thousand men (sadly small for the work in hand) had gained the top of the cliff, where now lies a sweet old-fashioned garden spread to the sun.

General Montcalm’s Headquarters.

Mortar.

A BritishSoldier.

Water Sluice.

But Wolfe chose his battle-ground nearer the town, on the world-famous Plains of Abraham. There he drew up his men “in the first of all thin red lines”; there the French, forced to fight at last, made their gallant charge; there “fell Wolfe victorious”; there noble Montcalm received his mortal wound; and there was sounded the death-knell of the dominion of France in North America. But “the dramatic ending of the old order blessed the birth of the new.” It has been well said that “in a sense, which it is easier to feel than to express—two rival races, under two rival leaders, unconsciously joined hands on the Plains of Abraham.”

Old St. Louis Gate.

Not yet, however, would all the French admit that their cause was irretrievably lost. Though Montcalm lay under the Ursuline Chapel, in “his soldier’s grave dug for him, while yet alive, by the bursting of a shell”; though Governor de Vaudreuil had fled and Quebec had opened her gates to the foe, the gallant De Lévis had no thought of acquiescing in the passing of New France.

Gathering ten thousand men at Montreal, he marched in the spring upon Quebec. The English general, Murray, came out, with a far inferior force, to meet him, and again French and English locked in desperate strife on the plateau behind the city. A tall shaft, surmounted by a statue of Bellona, on the Ste. Foy road, marks the battlefield where the French won their last victory in a lost cause.

The English had to retreat within their walls, but Murray, calling even on the sick and maimed for such aid as they could give, gallantly defended his crumbling battlements till a fleet from England came to his relief.

In his turn, De Lévis was forced to retreat, and, though the war smouldered on for a few months longer, the situation was hopeless for the French, and just before the anniversary of Wolfe’s great victory, their leaders signed the capitulation of Canada.

“Golden Dog”.

IN November, 1775, when the British flag had waved for sixteen years over Quebec, there marched into the village of Point Lévis a little army of gaunt half-starved, wayworn men, who for forty days had been pushing their way through the hungry wilderness from the settlements of Maine. On this terrible march the weaklings of their force had fallen or turned back, and those who reached the St. Lawrence (but two-thirds of the original eleven hundred) had proved their fitness for hard service by grim, dogged endurance to the very point of death.

At their head was a strong, dark-skinned, black-browed man, full of daring and energy—Benedict Arnold—ex-druggist, horse-trader, smuggler, future traitor, but at that moment, and for several years to come, one of the ablest and most inspiring officers in the recently formed army of the United Colonies.

Champlain Street.

Cow Shed.

He and his few hundred bush-rangers and Indian-fighters had come on a mighty errand. Without stores, artillery, or ships, Arnold proposed to do again Wolfe’s work and conquer Quebec.

Fort Chambly.

True, times had changed since Wolfe’s day. That general’s friend and subordinate, Sir Guy Carleton, who proved himself great alike in war and peace, was now in command. But, when Arnold reached the St. Lawrence, Carleton was absent in Montreal, whence came rumors of his discomfiture and capture, and there was but a feeble garrison of eighteen hundred men to defend the city. There was now no army encamped outside the walls to dispute the landing of the foe; the inhabitants of the country around were indifferent, if not hostile, to the English, and Colonel MacLean, Carleton’s second-in-command, found the situation disheartening.

St. John's Gate Erected 1865.

AncientCanadianClock.

“Chaudière”for washing clothes.

Arnold, trusting much to the friendship of the French, had proposed to take the city by surprise; but the St. Lawrence flowed deep and wide between him and his intended prey, and on the first rumor of his approach the English had taken the precaution of removing every possible means of transport out of the invaders’ reach. Not a bateau, not a canoe was to be had, and the eager Arnold had to send twenty miles inland for canoes before he could get within striking distance of Quebec.

Dog cart.

At last, on the evening of November 13th, he embarked five hundred of his men, leaving a hundred and fifty at Point Lévis, and stole in the darkness across the river to Wolfe’s Cove. Unopposed, he climbed the heights, and before daybreak drew up his little army on the Plains of Abraham; then, with characteristic audacity, he marched almost up to the St. Louis Gate, and, with loud cheers, challenged the enemy to sally forth. They refused to give him battle, however, and scorned his summons to surrender, so he retreated some twenty miles up the river to Point aux Trembles, there to await the arrival of reinforcements under General Montgomery—an Irishman of good family who had held a commission in the British army before taking up arms for the seceding Colonies. Entering Canada by way of Lake Champlain, he had captured the Forts of St. John’s and Chambly, and had received the submission of Montreal. Thus the whole country save Quebec was at his feet.

Bake oven at Beaupré.

Ancient combinationChair and Table.

Moss Rose.

But General Carleton had not submitted, and while Quebec held out for England he did not despair of saving the country. On the approach of the enemy he had left Montreal, which he judged indefensible, and had hastened down the river in a birch-bark canoe. He had slipped past some American vessels under cover of darkness; and Arnold, before he left the neighborhood of Quebec, had the mortification of hearing the great guns of the citadel thundering a welcome to the resolute Governor. Carleton’s arrival put new heart into the garrison, and he began instantly to take measures for a vigorous defence.

House at Beaupré.

It was early in December when Montgomery reached Point aux Trembles with clothing, stores and a few hundred ill-disciplined troops, most of whom were counting the days till the term of their enlistment ended with the close of the year.

Joined by a few Canadians, the little American army now returned to invest Quebec. Again the garrison was summoned to surrender. Again the demand was treated with contempt. In fact Carleton refused to “hold any parley with rebels”; but the American leaders hoped soon to humble his pride. Throwing up batteries of ice and snow, they began to bombard the walls; but their guns were too light to make any impression on the masonry, and the besieged kept vigilant guard against surprise. On moonless nights they lighted the great ditch surrounding their ramparts by lanterns hung on poles from the bastions, and thus not even a dog could approach unobserved.

Benedict Arnold.

Discouraged by ill-success and weakened by smallpox, the American army appeared to be in danger of melting away, but the two leaders resolved to try to capture Quebec by one bold stroke before more of the discontented troops left them.

Their plan was a complicated one. Montgomery was to advance along a narrow road skirting the base of Cape Diamond, while Arnold, from the suburb of St. Roch, already in possession of the Americans, was to enter the Lower Town from the opposite side, meet Montgomery’s division at the foot of Mountain Street, and join in an attempt to force the barrier (where later was erected the Prescott Gate) which guarded the approach to the Upper Town. Meanwhile, to distract the attention of the besieged, a feint was to be made against St. John’s Gate.

General Montgomery.

The time fixed for the attempt was the early hours of the thirty-first day of December. The weather was wild and blustering, promising that the planned surprise would be complete, and two hours after midnight Montgomery marched his troops down to Wolfe’s Cove, and thence along the narrow drifted path below the cliff, now known as Champlain Street.

QUEBEC FROM POINT LÉVIS.From a drawing by R. Short, 1759.

Sous le Cap.

That they might know each other in the darkness, his soldiers wore in their caps slips of white paper, on which they had written as a watchword, “Liberty or death!” Through the blinding snow they pressed on till they reached a barrier of palisades below the precipitous rock now crowned by the Citadel. Forcing this, they rushed forward, with their intrepid leader at their head, to capture a battery directly in their path. They had almost reached it, when the guns suddenly blazed forth a deadly storm of grapeshot. Montgomery fell dead, with several of his followers, and the rest broke and fled precipitately along the narrow path swept by the cannon, leaving behind them their dead and dying in the snow.

Palace Gate.

Arnold, meanwhile, at the head of his column, was pressing towards the rendezvous, though when he passed Palace Gate he knew that the attack would be no surprise, for bells were ringing and drums beating the call to arms. In single file, with bent heads, and guns covered with their coats, the Americans dashed forward, stormed the first barrier at the corner of Sault-au-Matelot Street, and captured its defenders. But Arnold was severely wounded in the leg by a musket-ball, and had to drag himself back to the General Hospital, whilst his men made a gallant attempt to seize the second barrier also.

Mountain Hill.

House to whichMontgomery’s Body was taken.

In this they failed. Many lost their lives or their liberty, and the remainder fled. Later in the day the British sallied out and set fire to the suburb of St. Roch, which had so long given shelter to the rebels. Amongst the buildings consumed was the Intendant’s Palace, where Bigot, not many years earlier, had dazzled with his shameless luxury the wretched people he was defrauding.

Again there was rejoicing in old Quebec; but Arnold, beaten, wounded, short of supplies as he was, kept up the blockade of the city till spring. Then Carleton received reinforcements from England, and sallying out of his fortifications swept the foe before him up the St. Lawrence. Thus Quebec was saved to the Empire, and with it was saved the possibility of the second British “Dominion” in North America.

A sliding Gate.

Flowers.

Since that time—though the old city has often rung with the stir of warlike preparations—though her steep streets have echoed to the tread of regiments coming and going—though the Basin has given anchorage to privateers and their prizes—though the wharves have witnessed the struggles of many a luckless fisherlad or townsman in the clutches of the press-gang—no hostile army has ever threatened the safety of the “Queen of the North.” Even during the fierce strife of the War of 1812, thanks to the valor of the descendants of those who at the side of Montcalm so long withstood Wolfe and his disciplined veterans, the invading army came no nearer to Quebec than the field of Chateauguay, where the valiant De Salaberry and his Voltigeurs earned the undying gratitude of all lovers of their country.

General Hospital.

GLANCING back over the pages of this brief sketch, it might seem that the memories connected with Quebec were all of war. The names of many soldier-heroes glorify the story of this City of Five Sieges, and even to-day the ancient stronghold makes a brave show, like a mediæval warrior, of being armed cap-à-pie.

The first glimpse of Quebec, whether from the River, Point Lévis, or Beauport, shows grey bastions and battlements above all other buildings, and it will be strange if further knowledge of the place does not remind you more and more of the warlike times gone by. The very notices in the shop-windows—bilingual and giving to the beginner in the Gallic tongue of our compatriots a pleasing sense of walking in the pages of a dictionary—are a reminder of the long struggle between French and English for the domination of this continent. The driver of your calèche (if you elect to make your first tour of the city in that quaint modern imitation of a quainter prototype) will take care that you miss nothing of the military flavor of the place.

St. Louis Gate.

Kent Gate.

He will tell you the story of “Notre Dame des Victoires”; call upon you to admire “the Golden Dog,” that strange memento of a bitter private quarrel; take you to handsome Parliament Buildings, where, in niches in the façade, you will behold statues of the warriors Frontenac, Wolfe, Montcalm, De Lévis and De Salaberry, besides one of that notable Governor-General, the Earl of Elgin, who risked his popularity by giving his assent to a measure for compensating the sufferers by the Rebellion of 1837.

Dalhousie Gate Citadel.

Flowers.

Close by the Parliament House is the great Drill Hall, for the use of the present-day citizen-soldiers of Quebec; and turning back, through the modern St. Louis Gate, which has replaced the portal through which the wounded Montcalm was swept by a rush of fugitives into the city to die, one comes to the site of the surgeon’s office where he breathed his last. Not far away there stood till 1889 another humble dwelling, where Montgomery’s corpse was prepared for burial. On the same street still stands the old Kent House—now a fascinating curiosity shop—once, towards the close of the eighteenth century, the town-residence of Queen Victoria’s father, then colonel of a regiment of Fusiliers stationed at Quebec. Some miles distant there is, by the way, another Kent House, where the Duke used to spend his summers on the heights from which the Montmorency takes its impetuous leap of two hundred and fifty feet to join the St. Lawrence. Quebec has also its Kent Gate, a modern structure, to commemorate the same prince, who, if he lacked opportunity to shine as a great military genius, at least succeeded in winning for himself a reputation as the strictest of disciplinarians.

Home-wovenPortières.

But the military suggestions of Quebec are not confined to historic associations. You have them in concrete form, from the picturesque Citadel—which, however, was not built till long after the latest siege—to the little groups of cannon-balls, piled up in odd corners like a young giant’s marbles. At any turn you may meet a red-coated soldier or a blue-jacket from some visiting iron-clad; you may chance on a long row of obsolete guns, or on an ancient mortar, now powerless for mischief, with a great gag of iron in its throat; and here, there and everywhere you will find tablets or monuments marking the spots once deeply stained with the heart’s blood of the brave.

Yet, after all, this is but one aspect of Quebec, and not the brightest. To some persons the fair old town speaks more insistently of peace than of war; for so quaint is it, so old-world, that it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary, that here life must have run on undisturbed for centuries. To one brought up in another community, the unfamiliar figures of quaintly-garbed nuns, long-robed priests, and brothers in russet gowns, suggest the long-ago. The very markets, with all their bustle and hurry of eager life, seem survivals of the past.

WOLFE'S COVE.From an old drawing.

Oxen at Beaupré.

Falls ofSt. Anne.

A charm and a glamor hangs over the generally commonplace business of buying and selling, getting gain and making provision for the humble needs of the day. The whole thing seems like a picture-book. The groups of voluble, good-humored habitant women; the queer little carts like ladders mounted on wheels; the small pink pigs, squealing their hardest as they are transferred from the crates of the vendors to the sacks of the purchasers; the background of tall, irregular buildings climbing the great cliff—these lend to the scene a color and character all its own.

Wandering from stall to stall, heaped with vegetables, home-grown tobacco, dark slabs of maple sugar, home-woven towelling curtains or carpets, firmly knit socks, elaborately plaited mats, you begin to wonder at the patience and industry of this vivacious people, and you will wonder at these qualities still more if you see the habitant at home.

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