There Are Many Landscapes Which Can Never Be Painted,
Photographed, Or Described, But Which The Mind Carries Away
Instinctively To Look At Again And Again In The After-Time - These Are
The Celebrated Views Of The World, And They Are Not Easy To Find.
From
the Queen's rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye sweeps over a
greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found in any one
spot in the universe.
Blue mountain, far-stretching river, foaming
cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of many-
sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its
fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many shades of
colour from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field - in what other
spot on the earth's broad bosom lie grouped together in a single
glance so many of these "things of beauty" which the eye loves to
feast on and to place in memory as joys for ever?" (The Great Lone
Land.)
Let us complete this mosaic of descriptions and literary gems, borrowed
from English, French and American writers, by a sparkling tableau of the
historic memories of Quebec, traced by a French Canadian litterateur,
the Honourable P. J. O. Chauveau: -
"History is everywhere - around us, beneath us; from the depths of
yonder valleys, from the top of that mountain, history rises up and
presents itself to our notice, exclaiming: 'Behold me!'
"Beneath us, among the capricious meanders of the River St. Charles,
the Cahir-Coubat of Jacques Cartier, is the very place where he first
planted the cross and held his first conference with the Seigneur
Donnacona. Here, very near to us, beneath a venerable elm tree,
which, with much regret, we saw cut down, tradition states that
Champlain first raised his tent. From the very spot on which we now
stand, Count de Frontenac returned to Admiral Phipps that proud
answer, as he said, from the mouth of his cannon, which will
always remain recorded by history. Under these ramparts are spread the
plains on which fell Wolfe and where, in the following year, the
Chevalier de Levis and General Murray fought that other battle, in
memory of which the citizens of Quebec are erecting (in 1854) a
monument. Before us, on the heights of Beauport, the souvenir of
battles not less heroic, recall to our remembrance the names of
Longueuil, St. Helene, and Juchereau Duchesnay. Below us, at the foot
of that tower on which floats the British flag, Montgomery and his
soldiers all fell, swept by the grape-shot of a single gun pointed by
a Canadian artilleryman.
"On the other hand, under that projecting rock, now crowned with the
guns of old England, the intrepid Dambourges, sword in hand, drove
Arnold and his men from the houses in which they had established
themselves. History is then everywhere around us. She rises as well
from these ramparts, replete with daring deeds, as from those
illustrious plains equally celebrated for feats of arms, and she again
exclaims: 'Here I am!'"
CHAPTER II.
QUEBEC FOUNDED, JULY 3, 1608.
Fancy borne on the outspread wings of memory occasionally loves to soar
o'er the dull, prosaic present, far away into the haunted, dream-land of a
hazy but hopeful past.
Let us recall one year, in the revolving cycle of time - one day above all
days - for dwellers in Champlain's eyry keep pre-eminently sacred that
auspicious 3rd of July, 1608, when his trusty little band, in all twenty-
eight, founded the city destined soon to be the great Louis's proud forta-
lice, - the Queen city of the French western world.
On that memorable July day, would you, kind reader, like to ascend the
lofty slope of Cape Diamond, at the hour when the orb of light is shedding
his fierce, meridian rays on the verdant shores and glancing waters below,
and watch with bated breath the gradually increasing gap in the primeval
forest, which busy French axes are cleaving in order to locate the
residence - "L'ABITATION" - of a loved commander, Samuel de Champlain?
Or else would you, in your partiality for the cool of the evening, prefer
from the dizzy summit, where now stands our citadel, to gaze - which would
be more romantic - over the silent strand at your feet, pregnant with a
mighty future, at the mystic hour of eve, when the pale beams of Diana
will lend incomparable witchery to this novel scene. Few indeed the
objects denoting the unwelcome arrival of Europeans in this forest home of
the red man: the prise de possession by the grasping outer barbarian -
for such Champlain must have appeared to the descendants of king
Donnacona. In the stream, the ripple of the majestic St. Lawrence caresses
the dark, indistinct hull of an armed bark: in Indian parlance, a "big
canoe [6] with wings"; on an adjoining height waves languidly with the
last breath of the breeze the lily standard of old France; on the shore, a
cross recently raised: emblems for us of the past and of the present:
State and Church linked together.
Such the objects decernible amid the hoary oaks, nodding pines, and green
hemlocks, below Cape Diamond, on that eventful 3rd of July, 1608.
THE DWELLING OF CHAMPLAIN.
"Above the point of the Island of Orleans," says Parkman, "a constriction
of the vast channel narrows it to a mile; on one hand, the green heights
of Point Levi; on the other, the cliffs of Quebec. Here, a small stream,
the St. Charles, enters the St. Lawrence, and in the angle betwixt them
rises the promontory, on two sides a natural fortress. Land among the
walnut-trees that formed a belt between the cliffs and the St. Lawrence.
Climb the steep height, now bearing aloft its ponderous load of churches,
convents, dwellings, ramparts, and batteries, - there was an accessible
point, a rough passage, gullied downward where Prescott Gate (in 1871)
opened on the Lower Town. Mount to the highest summit, Cape Diamond, [7]
now zig-zagged with warlike masonry.
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