Quebec, Has, Then, A Right To Call Herself An Old, A Very Old,
City Of The West.
The colonization of Canada, or, as it was formerly called, New France, was
undertaken by French merchants engaged in
The fur trade, close on whose
steps followed a host of devoted missionaries who found, in the forests of
this new and attractive country, ample scope for the exercise of their
religious enthusiasm. It was at Quebec that these Christian heroes landed,
from hence they started for the forest primeval, the bearers of the olive
branch of Christianity, an unfailing token of civilization.
A fatal mistake committed at the outset by the French commanders, in
taking sides in the Indian wars, more than once brought the incipient
colony to the verge of ruin. During these periods, scores of devoted
missionaries fell under the scalping knife or suffered incredible tortures
amongst the merciless savages whom they had come to reclaim. Indian
massacres became so frequent, so appalling, that on several occasions the
French thought seriously of giving up the colony forever. The rivalry
between France and England, added to the hardships and dangers of the few
hardy colonists established at Quebec. Its environs, the shores of its
noble river, more than once became the battle-field of European armies.
These are periods of strife, happily gone by, we hope, forever.
In his "Pioneers of France in the New World," the gifted Francis
Parkman mournfully reviews the vanished glories of old France in her
former vast dominions in America: -
"The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its
departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange
romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the
fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black robed priest,
mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship
on the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us: an untamed
continent, vast wastes of forest verdure, mountains silent in primeval
sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling
with the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for
civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests;
priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism.
Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the
cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage
hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst
shapes of death. Men of a courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a
far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to
shame the boldest sons of toil."
Of all this mighty empire of the past, Quebec was the undisputed capital,
the fortress, the keystone.
It would be a curious study to place in juxtaposition the impressions
produced on Tourists by the view of Quebec and its environs - from the era
of Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of Canada, down to that of the Earl of
Dufferin, one of its truest friends.
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