As It Comes Sighing Through The Grove,
The Exhausted Gale, A Spirit There Awakes
That Wild And Melancholy Music Makes."
From the house verandah, the eye plunges westward down the high cape,
following the capricious windings of the Cap Rouge stream far to the
north, or else scans the green uplands of St. Augustin, its white cottages
rising in soft undulations as far as the sight can reach.
Over the extreme
point of the southwestern cape hangs a fairy pavilion, like an eagle's
eyrie amongst alpine crags, just a degree more secure than that pensile
old fir tree which you notice at your feet stretching over the chasm;
beneath you the majestic flood, Canada's pride, with a hundred merchantmen
sleeping on its placid waters, and the orb of day dancing blithely over
every ripple. Oh! for a few hours to roam with those we love under these
old pines, to listen to the voices of other years, and cull a fragrant
wreath of those wild flowers which everywhere strew our path.
Is there not enough of nature's charm around this sunny, truly Canadian
home? And how much of the precious metal would many an English duke give
to possess, in his own famed isle, a site of such exquisite beauty? We
confess, we denizens of Quebec, we do feel proud of our Quebec scenery;
not that on comparison we think the less of other localities, but that on
looking round we get to think more of our own.
Cap Rouge, from it having been the location of Europeans, early in the
sixteenth century, must claim the attention of every man of cultivated
mind who takes a pleasure in scrutinizing the past, and in tracing the
advent on our shores of the various races of European descent, now
identified with this land of the West, yearning for the bright destinies
the future has in store.
At the foot of the Cape, on which the Cape Rouge Cottage now stands,
Jacques Cartier and Roberval wintered, the first in 1541-2; the second in
1543-4. Recent discoveries have merely added to the interest which these
historical incidents awaken. The new Historical Picture of Quebec,
published in 1834, thus alludes to these circumstances: -
"We now come to another highly interesting portion of local history. It
has been stated that the old historians were apparently ignorant of this
last voyage of Cartier. Some place the establishment of the fort at Cape
Breton, and confound his proceedings with those of Roberval. The exact
spot where Cartier passed his second winter in Canada is not mentioned in
any publication that we have seen. The following is the description given
of the station in Hakluyt: 'After which things the said captain went, with
two of his boats, up the river, beyond Canada' - the promontory of Quebec
is meant - 'and the port of St. Croix, to view a haven and a small river
which is about four leagues higher, which he found better and more
commodious to ride in, and lay his ships, than the former.
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