This Made It More
Difficult To Be Forced On That Side Than On Its Other Side Of
Earthworks Facing Beauport
Which had a more formidable appearance and
the hornwork certainly on that side was not in the least danger of
Being taken by the English by an assault from the other side of the
river. On the appearance of the English troops on the plain of the
lake house Montguet and La Motte, two old captains in the Regiment of
Bearn, cried out with vehemence to M. de Vaudreuil, that the hornwork
would be taken in an instant, by an assault sword in hand, that we
would all be cut to pieces without quarter and nothing else would save
us but an immediate and general capitulation of Canada giving it up to
the English.
Montreul told them that a fortification such as the hornwork was not
to be taken so easily. In short there arose a general cry in the
hornwork to cut the bridge of boats. [291] It is worth of remark that
not a fourth part of our army had yet arrived at it and the remainder
by cutting the bridge would have been left on the other side of the
river as victims to the victors. The regiment Royal Roussillon was at
that moment at the distance of a musket shot from the hornwork
approaching to pass the bridge. As I had already been in such
adventures, I did not lose my presence of mind, and having still a
shadow remaining of that regard which the army accorded me on account
of the esteem and confidence which M. de Levis and M. de Montcalm had
always shewn me publicly, I called to M. Hugon, who commanded, for a
pass in the hornwork and begged of him to accompany me to the bridge.
We ran there and without asking who had given the order to cut it, we
chased away the soldiers with their uplifted axes ready to execute
that extravagant and wicked operation.
"M. Vaudreuil was closeted in a house in the inside of the hornwork
with the Intendant and some other persons. I suspected they were busy
drafting the articles for a general capitulation and I entered the
house, where I had only time to see the Intendant with a pen in his
hand writing on a sheet of paper, when M. Vaudreuil told me I had no
business there. Having answered him that what he said was true, I
retired immediately, in wrath to see them intent on giving up so
scandalously a dependancy for the preservation of which so much blood
and treasure had been expended. On leaving the house, I met M.
Dalquier, an old, brave, downright honest man, commander of the
regiment of Bearn, with the true character of a good officer - the
marks of Mars all over his body. I told him it was being debated
within the house to give up Canada to the English by a capitulation,
and I hurried him in, to stand up for the King's cause, and advocate
the welfare of his country. I then quitted the hornwork to join
Poulanes at the Ravine [292] of Beauport, but having met him about
three or four hundred paces from the hornwork, on his way to it, I
told him what was being discussed there. He answered me, that sooner
than consent to a capitulation, he would shed the last drop of his
blood. He told me to look on his table and house as my own, advised me
to go there directly to repose myself, and clapping spurs to his
horse, he flew like lightning to the hornwork."
Want of space precludes us from adding more from this very interesting
journal of the Chevalier Johnstone, replete with curious particulars of
the disorderly retreat of the French regiments from their Beauport camp,
after dark, on that eventful 13th September, how they assembled first at
the hornwork, and then filed off by detachments on the Charlesbourg road,
then to Ancient Lorette, until they arrived, worn out and disheartened
without commanders, at day break at Cap Rouge.
On viewing the memorable scenes witnessed at Ringfield, - the spot where
the French discoverer wintered in 1535-36, and also the locality, where it
was decided to surrender the colony to England in 1759 - are we not
justified in considering it as both the cradle and the tomb of French
Dominion in the new world?
Ringfield has, for many years, been the family mansion of George Holmes
Parke, Esquire.
CASTOR VILLE
"In woods or glens I love to roam,
* * * *
Or by the woodland pool to rest."
In the deepest recesses of the Lorette woods, amongst the most shady
meanders of the sinuous Cahire Coubat, some five miles due north from
Castel-Coucy, we know a bank, not precisely where
"The wild thyme grows,"
but where you are sure, in spring and summer, to pluck handfuls of
trilliums, wild violets, ferns of rare beauty, columbines, kalmias,
ladies' slippers, ladies' tresses (we mean of course the floral subjects).
In this beauteous region, sacred to Pan, the Naiades, Dryades, and the
daughters of Mnemosyne, you might possibly, dear reader, were you
privileged with a pass from one of our most respected friends, be allowed
to wander; or perchance in your downward voyage from Lake Charles to the
Lorette Falls, in that vade mecum of a forester's existence - a birch
canoe - you might, we repeat, possibly be allowed to pitch your camp
on one of the mossy headlands of Castor Ville, and enjoy your luncheon, in
this sylvan spot, that is, always presuming you were deemed competent to
fully appreciate nature's wildest charms, and rejoice, like a true lover,
in her coyest and most furtive glances.
Castor Ville, a forest wild, where many generations of beavers, otters,
caribou, boars, foxes and hares once roamed, loved and died, covers an
area of more than one hundred acres. Through it glides the placid course
of the St. Charles - overhung by hoary fir trees - from the parent lake to
the pretty Indian Lorette Falls, a distance of about eight miles of fairy
scenery, which every man of taste, visiting Lake St. Charles, ought to
enjoy at least once in his life.
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