"On the other hand, under that projecting rock, now crowned with the
guns of old England, the intrepid Dambourges, sword in hand, drove
Arnold and his men from the houses in which they had established
themselves. History is then everywhere around us. She rises as well
from these ramparts, replete with daring deeds, as from those
illustrious plains equally celebrated for feats of arms, and she again
exclaims: 'Here I am!'"
CHAPTER II.
QUEBEC FOUNDED, JULY 3, 1608.
Fancy borne on the outspread wings of memory occasionally loves to soar
o'er the dull, prosaic present, far away into the haunted, dream-land of a
hazy but hopeful past.
Let us recall one year, in the revolving cycle of time - one day above all
days - for dwellers in Champlain's eyry keep pre-eminently sacred that
auspicious 3rd of July, 1608, when his trusty little band, in all twenty-
eight, founded the city destined soon to be the great Louis's proud forta-
lice, - the Queen city of the French western world.
On that memorable July day, would you, kind reader, like to ascend the
lofty slope of Cape Diamond, at the hour when the orb of light is shedding
his fierce, meridian rays on the verdant shores and glancing waters below,
and watch with bated breath the gradually increasing gap in the primeval
forest, which busy French axes are cleaving in order to locate the
residence - "L'ABITATION" - of a loved commander, Samuel de Champlain?
Or else would you, in your partiality for the cool of the evening, prefer
from the dizzy summit, where now stands our citadel, to gaze - which would
be more romantic - over the silent strand at your feet, pregnant with a
mighty future, at the mystic hour of eve, when the pale beams of Diana
will lend incomparable witchery to this novel scene. Few indeed the
objects denoting the unwelcome arrival of Europeans in this forest home of
the red man: the prise de possession by the grasping outer barbarian -
for such Champlain must have appeared to the descendants of king
Donnacona. In the stream, the ripple of the majestic St. Lawrence caresses
the dark, indistinct hull of an armed bark: in Indian parlance, a "big
canoe [6] with wings"; on an adjoining height waves languidly with the
last breath of the breeze the lily standard of old France; on the shore, a
cross recently raised: emblems for us of the past and of the present:
State and Church linked together.
Such the objects decernible amid the hoary oaks, nodding pines, and green
hemlocks, below Cape Diamond, on that eventful 3rd of July, 1608.
THE DWELLING OF CHAMPLAIN.
