The Hill In St. John Suburbs Or Ascent Leading Up From The Valley Of The
St. Charles, Where St. Roch Has Since Been Built To The Table-Land Above,
Was From Time Immemorial Known As COTE D'ABRAHAM, Abraham's Hill.
Why did
it bear that name?
On referring to the Parish Register of Quebec, from 1621 to 1700, one
individual seems to have borne the name of Abraham, and that person is
Abraham Martin, to whom under the appellation of Maitre Abraham,
repeated reference is made both in the Register and the Jesuits' Journal.
Abraham Martin, according to the documents quoted by Col. Beatson, owned
in two separate lots - one of twenty and the other of twelve
arpents - thirty-two arpents of land, covering, as appears by the
subjoined Plan or Diagram copied from his work, a great portion of the
site on which St. John and St. Louis Suburbs have since been erected.
Abraham's property occupied, it would seem, a portion of the area - the
northern section - which, for a long period, also went under the name of
Abraham's Plains. It adjoined other land of the Ursuline Ladies then owned
on Coteau St. Louis, closer to the city, when 1667, [202] it was
purchased by them; at that time, the whole tract, according to Col.
Beatson, went under the general name of Plains of Abraham. Such appear to
be the results of recent researches on this once very obscure question.
THE BATTLE FIELD.
Two highways, lined with country seats, forest trees or cornfields run
parallel, at a distance varying from one to half a mile, leading into
Quebec: the Grande Allee, or St. Louis and the Ste. Foye road. They
intersect from east to west the expanse, nine miles in length, from Cap
Rouge to the city. These well known chief arteries of travel were solidly
macadamized in 1841. At the western point, looms out the oak and pine clad
cliffs of a lofty cape - Cap Rouge or Redclyffe. Here wintered, in
1541-2, the discoverer of Canada, Cartier and his followers, here, in
1543-4, his celebrated follower, Roberval, seems also to have sojourned
during the dreary months of winter.
A small stream, at the foot of the cape, meanders in a north westerly
direction through St. Augustin and neighbouring parishes, forming a deep
valley all around the cape. The conformation of the land has led
geologists to infer that, at some remote period, the plateau, extending to
Quebec, must have been surrounded on all sides by water, the Cap Rouge
stream and St. Charles being the outlets on the west, north and east. This
area increases in altitude until it reaches the lofty summit of Cape
Diamond, its eastern boundary. Nature itself seems to have placed these
rugged heights as an insurmountable barrier to invasion from the St.
Lawrence. With the walls, bastion and heavy city guns; with artillery in
position on the Cap Rouge promontory; cavalry patrolling the Sillery
heights; a numerous army on the only accessible portion of the coast -
Beauport, Quebec, if succoured in time, was tolerably safe; so thought
some of the French engineers, though not Montcalm.
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