In Vain Do We Search For Several Of The Leading Characteristics
On Which Mr. Papineau Descants So Eloquently; Time, The Great Destroyer,
Has Obliterated Many Traces.
Nothing meets one's view but mouldering
walls, over which green moss and rank weeds cluster profusely.
Unmistakable indications of a former garden there certainly are, such as
the outlines of walks over which French cherry, apple and gooseberry trees
grow in wild luxuriance.
I took home from the ruins a piece of bone; this
decayed piece of mortality may have formed part of Caroline's big toe, for
aught I can establish to the contrary; Chateau-Bigot brought back to my
mind other remembrances of the past. I recollected reading that pending
the panic consequent on the surrender of Quebec in 1759, the non-
combatants of the city crowded within its walls; this time not to
realized, but to seek concealment until Mars had inscribed another victory
on the British flag. Who would be prepared to swear that later, when
Arnold and Montgomery had possession of the environs of Quebec, during the
greater portion of the winter, of 1775-6, some of those prudent English
merchants, (Adam Lymburner at their head), who awaited at Charlesbourg and
Beauport the issue of the contest, did not take a quiet drive, to Chateau-
Bigot, were it only to indulge in a philosophical disquisition on the
mutability of human events?
We are indebted to Mr. John D. Stewart of Quebec for a copy of the
following letter from his grandfather, written in 1776, from the Chateau.
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