The Ice-Covered Bay Was Lit Up With
Glowing Shades, In Contrast With The Deep Blue Of The Clear Water
Beyond;
from which the island rose, and into which the point jutted with grand
picturesqueness; the light played through the
Frost-adorned, but still
sombre pines, and spread out over deserted fields. Levis and the south
shore received not so much of the illumination, and the grimness of the
Citadel served as a contrast and a relief to the eye bewildered with the
unaccustomed grandeur. But as the sun sank deeper behind the eternal
hills, shadows began to fall, and the bright colours toned down to the
grey of dusk, stars shone out, the grey was chased away, and the azure,
diamond-dotted skies told not of the glory of sunset which had so shortly
before suffused them." - (Morning Chronicle.)
We have just seen described the incomparable panorama which a winter
sunset disclosed from the lofty promenade, to which the Earl of Dufferin
has bequeathed his name. Let us now accompany one of our genial summer
butterflies, fluttering through the mazes of old Stadacona escorting a
bride; let us listen to W. D. Howells in the WEDDING JOURNEY. "Nothing, I
think, more enforces the illusion of Southern Europe in Quebec than the
Sunday-night promenading on the Durham (now Dufferin) Terrace. This is the
ample span on the brow of the cliff to the left of the Citadel, the
noblest and most commanding position in the whole city, which was formerly
occupied by the old Castle of St. Louis, where dwelt the brave Count
Frontenac and his splendid successors of the French regime. The
castle went the way of Quebec by fire some forty years ago (23rd January,
1834), and Lord Durham levelled the site and made it a public promenade. A
stately arcade of solid masonry supports it on the brink of the rock, and
an iron parapet incloses it; there are a few seats to lounge upon, and
some idle old guns for the children to clamber over and play with. A soft
twilight had followed the day, and there was just enough obscurity to hide
from a willing eye the Northern and New World facts of the scene, and to
leave in more romantic relief the citadel dark against the mellow evening,
and the people gossiping from window to window across the narrow streets
of the Lower Town. The Terrace itself was densely thronged, and there was
a constant coming and going of the promenaders, and each formally paced
back and forth upon the planking for a certain time, and then went quietly
home, giving place to new arrivals. They were nearly all French, and they
were not generally, it seemed, of the first fashion, but rather of
middling condition in life; the English being represented only by a few
young fellows, and now and then a red-faced old gentleman with an Indian
scarf trailing from his hat. There were some fair American costumes and
faces in the crowd, but it was essentially Quebecian. The young girls,
walking in pairs, or with their lovers, had the true touch of provincial
unstylishness, the young men had the ineffectual excess of the second-rate
Latin dandy, the elder the rude inelegance of a bourgeoisie in them; but
a few better-figured avocats or notaires (their profession was as
unmistakable as if they carried their well-polished door-plates upon their
breasts), walked and gravely talked with each other. The non-American
character of the scene was not less vividly marked in the fact, that each
person dressed according to his own taste, and frankly indulged private
shapes and colours. One of the promenaders was in white, even to his
canvas shoes; another, with yet bolder individuality, appeared in perfect
purple. It had a strange, almost portentous effect when these two
startling figures met as friends and joined with each other in the
promenade with united arms; but the evening was beginning to darken round
them, and presently the purple comrade was merely a sombre shadow beside
the glimmering white.
The valleys and the heights now vanished; but the river defined itself by
the varicolored light of the ships and steamers that lay, dark, motionless
hulks upon its broad breast; the lights of Point Levis swarmed upon the
other shore; the Lower Town, two hundred feet below them, stretched an
alluring mystery of clustering roofs and lamp-lit windows, and dark and
shining streets around the mighty rock, mural-crowned. Suddenly a
spectacle peculiarly Northern and characteristic of Quebec revealed
itself; a long arch brightened over the northern horizon; the tremulous
flames of the aurora, pallid violet or faintly tinged with crimson, shot
upward from it, and played with a vivid apparition and evanescence to the
zenith. While the stranger looked, a gun boomed from the Citadel, and the
wild, sweet notes of the bugle sprang out upon the silence."
THE LOWER TOWN.
On bidding adieu to the lofty plateau which constitutes the Upper Town, on
our way to an antiquarian ramble in the narrow, dusty, or muddy
thoroughfares of the Lower (as it was formerly styled) the Low Town, we
shall cast a glance, a glance only, at the facade of the City Post Office,
on the site of which, until razed in 1871, stood that legendary, haunted
old house, "LE CHIEN D'OR." Having fully described it elsewhere, [81] let
us hurry on, merely looking up as we pass, to the gilt tablet and
inscription and its golden dog, gnawing his bone, pretty much as he
appeared one hundred and twenty-two years ago, to Capt. John Knox, of the
43rd Regt., on his entering Quebec, after its capitulation on the 18th
September, 1759. History has indeed shed very little light on the Golden
Dog and its inscription since that date, but romance has seized hold of
him, and Kirby, Marmette, Soulard and others have enshrined both with the
halo of their imagination. In 1871 the corner stone of the "Chien d'Or"
was unearthed; a leaden plate disclosed the following inscription:
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