Here is everything in the
way of well-kept lawns, graperies and greenhouses, outhouses for every
possible contingency of weather, gardens, redolent of the finest flowers,
in which bulbs of the best lilies make a conspicuous figure, and every
species of fruit that can be grown. The traveller who does not see
Woodfield hah not seen Canada in its best trim.'
"The remains of one redoubt [238] are visible near Belle Borne Brook, just
above Pont Bonvoisin, or Bridge of Friendship, no doubt intended to guard
the approach to Quebec by the footpath from Pointe a Puiseaux. Another
large one was on the west side of Samos road, nearly opposite the entrance
gate of the new approach to Woodfield, it commanded the Samos road.
"Woodfield once could boast of a well-stocked aviary. The garden, of large
extent, has always been celebrated for its fruit and flowers, for the
taste in which it was laid out, and for the beautiful prospect obtained
from it of the Citadel of Quebec, of the intervening portion of the St.
Lawrence, with the numerous shipping in the harbour busily engaged in
taking in their return cargoes of the staple article of exportation."
Since this sketch was published in the Maple Leaves for 1865, death
has borne heavily on the estimable Gibb family we then knew at Woodfield;
and in 1879, Mr. John Lawson Gibb sold the old homestead as a site for an
ornate rural cemetery.
