"Above The Point Of The Island Of Orleans," Says Parkman, "A Constriction
Of The Vast Channel Narrows It To A Mile; On One Hand, The Green Heights
Of Point Levi; On The Other, The Cliffs Of Quebec.
Here, a small stream,
the St. Charles, enters the St. Lawrence, and in the angle betwixt them
rises the promontory, on two sides a natural fortress.
Land among the
walnut-trees that formed a belt between the cliffs and the St. Lawrence.
Climb the steep height, now bearing aloft its ponderous load of churches,
convents, dwellings, ramparts, and batteries, - there was an accessible
point, a rough passage, gullied downward where Prescott Gate (in 1871)
opened on the Lower Town. Mount to the highest summit, Cape Diamond, [7]
now zig-zagged with warlike masonry. Then the fierce sun fell on the bald,
baking rocks, with its crisped mosses and parched lichens. Two centuries
and-a-half have quickened the solitude with swarming life, covered the
deep bosom of the river with barge and steamer and gliding sail, and
reared cities and villages on the site of forests; but nothing can destroy
the surpassing grandeur of the scene.
"Grasp the savin anchored in the fissure, lean over the brink of the
precipice, and look downward, a little to the left, on the belt of woods
which covers the strand between the water and the base of the cliffs. Here
a gang of axe-men are at work, and Point Levi and Orleans echo the crash
of falling trees.
"These axe-men were pioneers of an advancing host, - advancing, it is true,
with feeble and uncertain progress: priests, soldiers, peasants, feudal
scutcheons, royal insignia. Not the Middle Age, but engendered of it by
the stronger life of modern centralization; sharply stamped with parental
likeness, heir to parental weakness and parental force.
"A few weeks passed, and a pile of wooden buildings rose on the brink of
the St. Lawrence, on or near the site of the market-place of the Lower
Town of Quebec. The pencil of Champlain, always regardless of proportion
and perspective, has preserved its semblance. A strong wooden wall,
surmounted by a gallery loop-holed for musketry, enclosed three buildings,
containing quarters for himself and his men, together with a court-yard,
from one side of which rose a tall dove-cot, like a belfry. A moat
surrounded the whole, and two or three small cannon were planted on
salient platforms towards the river. There was a large magazine near at
hand, and a part of the adjacent ground was laid out as a garden."
(Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 301.)
CHIEF DONNACONA.
On the 14th of September, 1535, under the head "Shipping News, Port of
Quebec," history might jot down some startling items of marine
intelligence; the arrival from sea of three armed vessels - the "Grande
Hermine," the "Petite Hermine," and the "Emerillon." One would imagine
their entrance in port must have awakened as much curiosity among the
startled denizens of Stadacona - the Hurons of 1535 - as did the anchoring
in our harbour, in August, 1861, of Capt.
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