We landed....
"Away we went, climbing the steep streets at a canter with little
horses hardly bigger than flies, with an aptitude for climbing
perpendicular walls. It was strange to enter a walled city through low
and gloomy gates, on this continent of America. Here was a small bit
of mediaeval Europe perched upon a rock, and dried for keeping, in
this north-east corner of America, a curiosity that has not its equal,
in its kind, on this side of the ocean....
"We rode about as if we were in a picture-book, taming over a new leaf
at each street!... The place should always be kept old. Let people go
somewhere else for modern improvements. It is a shame, when Quebec
placed herself far out of the way, up in the very neighbourhood of
Hudson's Bay, that it should be hunted and harassed with new-fangled
notions, and that all the charming inconveniences and irregularities
of narrow and tortuous streets, that so delight a traveller's eyes,
should be altered to suit the fantastic notions of modern people....
"Our stay in Quebec was too short by far. But it was long enough to
make it certain that we shall come back again. A summer in Canada
would form one of the most delightful holidays that we can imagine. We
mean to prove our sincerity by our conduct. And then, if it is not all
that our imagination promises, we will write again and confess."
Professor Benjamin Silliman discourses thus: -
"A seat of ancient dominion - now hoary with the lapse of more than two
centuries - formerly the seat of a French empire in the west - lost and
won by the blood of gallant armies, and of illustrious commanders -
throned on a rock, and defended by all the proud defiance of war! Who
could approach such a city without emotion? Who in Canada has not
longed to cast his eyes on the water-girt rocks and towers of
Quebec." - (Silliman's Tour in Canada, 1819.)
Charles Lever has left a curious glimpse of Quebec from Diamond Harbour,
as seen, by his incomparable Irish Gil Blas, Mr. Cornelius Cregan, the
appreciated lodger of Madam Thomas John Davis at the "Hotel Davis."
"As viewed from Diamond Harbour, a more striking city than Quebec is
seldom seen. The great rock rising above the Lower Town, and crowned
with its batteries, all bristling with guns, seemed to my eyes the
very realization of impregnability. I looked upon the ship that lay
tranquilly on the water below, and whose decks were thronged with
blue-jackets - to the Highlander who paced his short path as sentry,
some hundred feet high upon the wall of the fortress, and I thought to
myself with such defenders as these that standard yonder need never
carry any other banner. The whole view is panoramic, the bending of
the river shuts out the channel by which you have made your approach,
giving the semblance of a lake, on whose surface vessels of every
nation lie at anchor, some with the sails hung out to dry, gracefully
drooping from the taper spars; others refitting again for sea, and
loading the huge pine-trunks moored as vast rafts to the stern.
