From “The Bible,” Book of Daniel, Chap. V.
THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC.
FRANCIS PARKMAN.
Francis Parkman was born in Boston in 1823. He was graduated from Harvard College when he was twenty-one. He visited Europe and on his return went on a tour in the far West, across the prairies and among the Rocky Mountains. He became well acquainted with the Indians, sharing their camps and hunting buffaloes with them. His book, “The California and Oregon Trail,” contains a vivid account of his explorations. This book was followed by “The History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac” and a novel called “Vassal Morton.”
Mr. Parkman devoted a number of years to writing histories of the attempts of the French and English to settle North America. His qualities as a writer were of a high order. His style is marked by uncommon vigor. His pages are alive with thrilling adventure, brilliant description, and romantic episodes. He has left no room for a competitor in the same field. Mr. Parkman died in 1893.
The eventful night of the 12th was clear and calm, with no light but that of the stars. Within two hours before daybreak thirty boats, crowded with sixteen hundred soldiers, cast off from the vessels and floated downward, in perfect order, with the current of the ebb tide. To the boundless joy of the army, Wolfe’s malady had abated, and he was able to command in person. His ruined health, the gloomy prospects of the siege, and the disaster at Montmorenci had oppressed him with the deepest melancholy, but never impaired for a moment the promptness of his decisions or the impetuous energy of his action. He sat in the stern of one of the boats, pale and weak, but borne up to a calm height of resolution. Every order had been given, every arrangement made, and it only remained to face the issue. The ebbing tide sufficed to bear the boats along, and nothing broke the silence of the night but the gurgling of the river and the low voice of Wolfe, as he repeated to the officers about him the stanzas of Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” which had recently appeared and which he had just received from England. Perhaps, as he uttered those strangely appropriate words,—