Picturesque Quebec : a sequel to Quebec past and present

by Sir J. M. Le Moine

CHAPTER 1.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC.

Quebec, founded by Samuel de Champlain, in 1608, has certainly much to recommend her, by her monuments, her historical memories and her scenery, to the traveller—the scholar—the historian. The wintering of the venturesome Jacques Cartier on the banks of the St. Charles in 1535-6, by its remoteness, is an incident of interest, not only to Canadians, but also to every denizen of America. It takes one back to an era nearly coeval with the discovery of the continent by Columbus—much anterior to the foundation of Jamestown, in 1607—anterior to that of St Augustine, in Florida. 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.

Champlain, La Potherie, La Houtan, Le Beau, Du Creux (Creuxius), Peter
Kalm, Knox, Silliman, Ampère, Mrs. Moodie, Dickens, Lever, Anthony
Trollope, Sala, Thoreau, Warburton, Marmier, Capt. Butler, Sir Charles
Dilke, Henry Ward Beecher, have all left their impressions of the rocky
citadel: let us gaze on a few of their vivid pictures.

"The scenic beauty of Quebec has been the theme of general eulogy. The majestic appearance of Cape Diamond and the fortifications, the cupolas and minarets, like those of an eastern city, blazing and sparkling in the sun, the loveliness of the panorama, the noble basin, like a sheet of purest silver, in which might ride with safety a hundred sail of the line, the graceful meandering of the river St. Charles, the numerous village spires on either side of the St. Lawrence, the fertile fields dotted with innumerable cottages, the abode of a rich and moral peasantry,—the distant falls of Montmorency,—the park like scenery of Point Levis,—the beauteous Isle of Orleans,—and more distant still, the frowning Cape Tourmente, and the lofty range of purple mountains of the most picturesque form, which, without exaggeration, is scarcely to be surpassed in any part of the world." (Hawkins' Picture of Quebec.)

"Quebec recalls Angoulême to my mind: in the upper city, stairways, narrow streets, ancient houses on the verge of the cliff; in the lower city, the new fortunes, commerce, workmen;—in both, many shops and much activity." (M. Sand.)

"Take mountain and plain, sinuous river, and broad, tranquil waters, stately ship and tiny boat, gentle hill and shady valley, bold headland and rich, fruitful fields, frowning battlement and cheerful villa, glittering dome and rural spire, flowery garden and sombre forest,—group them all into the choicest picture of ideal beauty your fancy can create; arch it over with a cloudless sky, light it up with a radiant sun, and lest the sheen should be too dazzling, hang a veil of lighted haze over all, to soften the lines and perfect the repose, —you will then have seen Quebec on this September morning." (Eliot Warburton.)

"I rubbed my eyes to be sure I was in the nineteenth century, and not entering one of those portals which sometimes adorn the frontispiece of old black-letter volumes. I though it would be a good place to read Froissart's Chronicles. It was such a reminiscence of the Middle Ages as Scott's Novels.

"Too much has not been said about the scenery of Quebec. The fortifications of Cape Diamond are omnipresent. You travel ten, twenty, thirty miles up or down the river's banks, you ramble fifteen miles among the hills on either side, and then, when you have long since forgotten them, perchance slept on them by the way, at a turn of the road or of your body, there they are still with their geometry against the sky….

"No wonder if Jacques Cartier's pilot exclaimed in Norman-French Que bec! ("What a peak!") when he saw this cape, as some suppose. Every modern traveller uses a similar expression….

"The view from Cape Diamond has been compared by European travellers with the most remarkable views of a similar kind in Europe, such as those from Edinburgh Castle, Gibraltar, Cintra, and others, and preferred by many. A main peculiarity in this, compared with other views which I have beheld, is that it is from the ramparts of a fortified city, and not from a solitary and majestic river cape alone that this view is obtained…. I still remember the harbour far beneath me, sparkling like silver in the sun,—the answering headlands of Point Levis on the south-east,—the frowning Cape Tourmente abruptly bounding the seaward view in the north-east,—the villages of Lorette and Charlesbourg on the north,—and farther west, the distant Val Cartier, sparkling with white cottages, hardly removed by distance through the clear air,—not to mention a few blue mountains along the horizon in that direction. You look out from the ramparts of the citadel beyond the frontiers of civilization. Yonder small group of hills, according to the guide-book, forms the portals of the wilds which are trodden only by the feet of the Indian hunters as far as Hudson's Bay." (Thoreau).

Mrs. Moodie (Susannah Strickland), in her sketches of Canadian life, graphically delineates her trip from Grosse Isle to Quebec, and the appearance of the city itself from the river:—

"On the 22nd of September (1832), the anchor was weighed, and we bade a long farewell to Grosse Isle. As our vessel struck into mid-channel, I cast a last lingering look at the beautiful shore we were leaving. Cradled in the arms of the St. Lawrence, and basking in the bright rays of the morning sun, the island and its sister group looked like a second Eden just emerged from the waters of chaos. The day was warm, and the cloudless heavens of that peculiar azure tint which gives to the Canadian skies and waters a brilliancy unknown in more northern latitudes. The air was pure and elastic; the sun shone out with uncommon splendour, lighting up the changing woods with a rich mellow colouring, composed of a thousand brilliant and vivid dyes. The mighty river rolled flashing and sparkling onward, impelled by a strong breeze that tipped its short rolling surges with a crest of snowy foam.

"Never shall I forget that short voyage from Grosse Isle to Quebec. What wonderful combinations of beauty and grandeur and power, at every winding of that noble river!

"Every perception of my mind became absorbed into the one sense of seeing, when, upon rounding Point Levis, we cast anchor before Quebec. What a scene! Can the world produce another? Edinburgh had been the beau ideal to me of all that was beautiful in nature—a vision of the Northern Highlands had haunted my dreams across the Atlantic; but all these past recollections faded before the present of Quebec. Nature has ransacked all our grandest elements to form this astonishing panorama. There, frowns the cloud-capped mountain, and below, the cataract foams and thunders; woods and rock and river combine to lend their aid in making the picture perfect, and worthy of its Divine originator. The precipitous bank upon which the city lies piled, reflected in the still, deep waters at its base, greatly enhances the romantic beauty of the situation. The mellow and serene glow of the autumn day harmonized so perfectly with the solemn grandeur of the scene around me, and sank so silently and deeply into my soul, that my spirit fell prostrate before it, and I melted involuntarily into tears."

Such the poetic visions which were awakened in the poetic mind of the brilliant author of "Roughing it, in the Bush." Charles Dickens also had his say in this matter, on his visit to Quebec, in May 1842, where he was the guest of the President of the Literary and Historical Society, Dr. John Charlton Fisher:—

"The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of America, its giddy heights, its citadel suspended, as it were, in the air; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways; and the splendid views which burst upon the eye at every turn, is at once unique and lasting. It is a place not to be forgotten or mixed up in the mind with other places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from the realities of this most picturesque city, there are associations clustering about it which would make a desert rich in interest. The dangerous precipice along whose rocky front Wolfe and his brave companions climbed to glory; the Plains of Abraham, where he received his mortal wound; the fortress so chivalrously defended by Montcalm; and his soldier's grave, dug for him when yet alive, by the bursting of a shell, are not the least among them, or among the gallant incidents of history. That is a noble monument too, and worthy of two great nations, which perpetuates the memory of both brave Generals, and on which their names are jointly written.

"The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic churches and charities, but it is mainly in the prospect from the site of the Old Government House and from the Citadel, that its surpassing beauty lies. The exquisite expanse of country, rich in field and forest, mountain-heights and water, which lies stretched out before the view, with miles of Canadian villages, glancing in long white streaks, like veins along the landscape; the motley crowd of gables, roofs and chimney tops in the old hilly town immediately at hand; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and the tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets; all this framed by a sunken window [1] in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures that the eye can rest upon." (Dickens' American Notes.)

A distinguished French littérateur, fresh from the sunny banks of the Seine, thus discourses anent the Ancient capital; we translate:—

"Few cities," says M. Marmier, [2] "offer as many striking contrasts as Quebec, a fortress and a commercial city together, built upon the summit of a rock as the nest of an eagle, while her vessels are everywhere wrinkling the face of the ocean; an American city inhabited by French colonists, governed by England, and garrisoned with Scotch regiments; [3] a city of the middle ages by most of its ancient institutions, while it is submitted to all the combinations of modern constitutional government; an European city by its civilization and its habits of refinement, and still close by, the remnants of the Indian tribes and the barren mountains of the north, a city of about the same latitude as Paris, while successively combining the torrid climate of southern regions with the severities of an hyperborean winter; a city at the same time Catholic and Protestant, where the labours of our (French) missions are still uninterrupted alongside of the undertakings of the Bible Society, and where the Jesuits driven out of our own country (France) find a place of refuge under the aegis of British Puritanism!"

An American tourist thus epitomises the sights:—

"As the seat of French power in America until 1759, the great fortress of English rule in British America, and the key of the St. Lawrence, Quebec must possess interest of no ordinary character for well- informed tourists. To the traveller, there are innumerable points and items vastly interesting and curious—the citadel and forts of Cape Diamond, with their impregnable ramparts that rival Gibraltar in strength and endurance against siege, the old walls of the city and their gates each of which has its legend of war and bloody assault and repulse, the plains of Abraham, every foot of which is commemorated with blood and battle; Wolfe's monument, where the gallant and brave soldier died with a shout of victory on his lips, the Martello towers, with their subterranean communications with the citadel; the antique churches, paintings, and all their paraphernalia, treasures, and curiosities that are religiously preserved therein, the falls of Montmorency, the natural steps. Montcalm's house, and a thousand other relics of the mysterious past that has hallowed these with all the mystic interest that attaches to antiquity, great deeds, and beautiful memories. To see all these, a tourist requires at least two days' time, and surely no one who pretends to be a traveller, in these days of rapid transit will fail to visit Quebec, the best city, the most hospitable place, and richer in its wealth of rare sights and grand old memorials. French peculiarities and English oddities, than any other city on this broad continent."

"Leaving the citadel, we are once more in the European Middle ages. Gates and posterns, cranky steps that lead up to lofty, gabled houses, with sharp French roofs of burnished tin, like those of Liège; processions of the Host; altars decked with flowers; statues of the Virgin; sabots, blouses, and the scarlet of the British lines-man,— all these are seen in narrow streets and markets that are graced with many a Cotentin lace cap, and all within forty miles of the down-east, Yankee state of Maine. It is not far from New England to Old France…. There has been no dying out of the race among the French Canadians. They number twenty times the thousand that they did 100 years ago. The American soil has left physical type, religion, language, and laws absolutely untouched. They herd together in their rambling villages, dance to the fiddle after Mass on Sundays,—as gayly as once did their Norman sires,—and keep up the fleur-de- lys and the memory of Montcalm. More French than the French are the Lower Canada habitans. The pulse-beat of the continent finds no echo here."—(Sir Charles Dilke.)

In the rosy days of his budding fame, the gifted Henry Ward Beecher discoursed as follows of the Rock City [4]:—

"Curious old Quebec!—of all the cities on the continent of America, the quaintest…. It is a populated cliff. It is a mighty rock, scarped and graded, and made to hold houses and castles which, by a proper natural law, ought to slide off from its back, like an ungirded load from a camel's back. But they stick. At the foot of the rocks, the space of several streets in width has been stolen from the river…. 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. There were people everywhere, all was motion, life and activity. Jolly-boats with twenty oars, man-of-war gigs bounding rapidly past them with eight; canoes skimming by without a ripple, and seemingly without impulse, till you caught sight of the lounging figure, who lay at full length in the stern, and whose red features were scarce distinguishable from the copper-coloured bark of his boat. Some moved upon the rafts, and even upon single trunks of trees, as, separated from the mass, they floated down on the swift current, boat-hook in hand to catch at the first object chance might offer them. The quays and the streets leading down to them were all thronged, and as you cast your eye upwards, here and there above the tall roofs might be seen the winding of stairs that lead to the Upper Town, alike dark with the moving tide of men. On every embrasure and gallery, on every terrace and platform, it was the same. Never did I behold such a human tide.

"Now there was something amazingly inspiriting in all this, particularly when coming from the solitude and monotony of a long voyage. [5] The very voice that ye-hoéd; the hoarse challenge of the sentinels on the rock; the busy hum of the town—made delicious music to my ear; and I could have stood and leaned over the bulwark for hours, to gaze at the scene. I own no higher interest invested the picture—for I was ignorant of Wolfe. I had never heard of Montcalm— the plains of "Abraham" were to me but grassy slopes, and "nothing more." It was the life and stir,—the tide of that human ocean, on which I longed myself to be a swimmer—these were what charmed me. Nor was the deck of the old "Hampden" inactive all the while, although seldom attracting much of my notice: soldiers were mustering, knapsacks packing, rolls calling, belts buffing, and coats brushing on all sides; men grumbling, sergeants cursing; officers swearing; half- dressed invalids popping up their heads out of hatchways, answering to wrong names, and doctors ordering them down again with many an anathema: soldiers in the way of sailors, and sailors always hauling at something that interfered with the inspection-drill: every one in the wrong place, and each cursing his neighbour for stupidity. At last the shore-boats boarded us, as if our confusion wanted anything to increase it. Red-faced harbour-masters shook hands with the skipper and pilot, and disappeared into the "round-house" to discuss grog and the gales. Officers from the garrison came out to welcome their friends—for it was the second battalion we had on board of a regiment whose first had been some years in Canada;—and then what a rush of inquiries were exchanged. "How is the Duke?"—"All quiet in England"— "No sign of war in Europe!"—"Are the 8th come home!"—"Where is Forbes?"—"Has Davern sold out?" with a mass of such small interests as engage men who live in coteries." (Confessions of Con. Cregan, Chap XIII.)

There are yet among the living in Quebec many who can recall the good olden times when our garrison contained two regiments and more of the red- coated soldiers of England, at the beck of the "Iron Duke"—him of Waterloo.

A Haligonian tourist thus writes:—

"HALIFAX, N. S., 1880.—I reached Halifax on the Saturday after leaving Quebec…..Nothing was wanting to make my impressions of Quebec perfect, but a little more time to widen, deepen and strengthen the friendships made; alas! to be severed (for a time) so soon. I went expecting to see a city perched on a rock and inhabited by the descendants of a conquered race with a chasm between them and every Englishman in the Dominion. In place of this, I found the city more picturesque, more odd, more grand, than I had ever imagined, and peopled by a race who, if conquered in 1759, have had sweet revenge ever since, by making a conquest of every stranger who has entered Quebec—through his higher nature. It is no wonder that Quebec has such a story of song and adventure. There is romance in the river and tragedy on the hill, and while the memory of Wolfe and Montcalm is green, the city will be the Mecca of the Dominion. But keep the hand of the Goth—the practical man—from touching the old historic landmarks of the city. A curse has been pronounced on those who remove their neighbours' landmark, but what shall be said of those who remove the landmarks which separate century from century and period from period." (J. T. Bulmer.)

The following affords a good specimen of Capt W. F Butler's pictorial style:—

"Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec—that portion of America known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the subjects of the Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But when the young trees begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep of winter, they do it quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple trees are all green—the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has Canada made the symbol of her new nationality that tree whose green gives the spring its earliest freshness, whose autumn-dying tints are richer than the clouds of sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are drowsy through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring. When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are scarcely budding at Kingston, they are leafless at Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow. Even between Montreal and Quebec, a short night's steaming, there exists a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But late as comes the summer to Quebec, it comes in its loveliest and most enticing form, as though it wished to atone for its long delay in banishing from such a landscape the cold tyranny of winter. And with what loveliness does the whole face of plain, river, lake and mountain turn from the iron clasp of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome his bridal gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to look at him—the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of gladness—"the birch tree," as the old Saxon said," becomes beautiful in its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath of heaven"—the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the transparent waters—far into the depths of the great forest speeds the glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern, and soft velvet moss, and white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and wreck of last year's autumn in one great sea of foliage. 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 littérateur, 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 Lévis 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. Hélène, 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 Dambourgès, 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!'"