What were the thoughts, hopes, fears of the grim
chieftain on that fateful September day which brought in across the
Atlantic the first wave of foreign invasion - the outer barbarian to his
forest abode?
One would fain depict king Donnacona roaming, solitary and sad; mayhap, on
the ethereal heights of Cape Diamond, watching, with feelings not
unmingled with alarm, the onward course of the French ships - to him
phantoms of ill-omen careering over the dreary waters - until their white
shrouds gradually disappeared under the shadow of the waving pines and
far-spreading oaks which then clad the green banks of the lurking,
tortuous St Charles.
Chief Donnacona, beware! O beware!
CHAPTER III.
THE "ANCIENT CAPITAL."
QUEBEC - ITS HIGHWAYS AND BY-WAYS, EDIFICES, MONUMENTS, CITIZENS,
LEGENDS, CHRONICLES, AND ANTIQUITIES.
"I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes
With the memorials and the things of fame
That do renown this city." - (Shakespeare.)
What a field here for investigation? Has not each thoroughfare its
distinctive feature - its saintly, heathenish, courtly, national, heroic,
perhaps burlesque, name? Its peculiar origin? traceable sometimes to a
dim - a forgotten past; sometimes to the utilitarian present time.
