But others also came to New France besides priests and martyrs; the adventurers and beggared noblemen—poor, uneducated, yet bold and courageous. The historian tells us of "the beggared noble of the early time" who came over, "never forgetting his quality of gentilhomme; scrupulously wearing its badge the sword, and copying, as well as he could, the fashions of the court which glowed on his vision across the sea with all the effulgence of Versailles and beamed with reflected ray from the Chateau of Quebec. He was at home among his tenants, at home among the Indians, and never more at home than when, a gun in his hand and a crucifix on his breast, he took the warpath with a crew of painted savages and Frenchmen almost as wild, and pounced like a lynx from the forest on some lonely farm or outlying hamlet of New England. How New England hated him, let her records tell. The reddest blood-streaks on her old annals mark the track of the Canadian gentilhomme."
QUAINT OLD QUEBEC.
Thus created a thoroughly French region, Lower Canada still maintains the religious character of the original colony. The geographical names are mostly those of the saints and fathers of the Church, and much of the land is owned by religious bodies. The population is four-fifths French, and nowhere does the Church to-day show more vitality or command more thorough devotion. The city of Quebec almost stands still in population, having about seventy thousand, of whom five-sixths are French. It is now just as Champlain made it, though larger, a fortress, trading-station and church combined, and quaintly attractive in all three phases. No finer location could have been selected for a town and seaport, and no more impregnable position found to guard the St. Lawrence passage than its junction with the river St. Charles. An elevated tongue of land stretches along the northwestern bank of the St. Lawrence for several miles, and from behind it comes out the St. Charles. Below their junction the broad Isle of Orleans blocks the way, dividing the St. Lawrence into two channels, while above, the noble river contracts to the "Narrows," less than a mile in width, making a strait guarded all along by bold shores. At the northern extremity of this tongue of land, and opposite the "Narrows" of the river, rises the lofty cliff of Cape Diamond, three hundred and fifty feet above the water, the citadel crowning the hill and overlooking the town nestling at its foot. The fortifications spread all around the cliff and its approaches, completely guarding the rivers and the means of access by land; but it is now all peaceful, being only a show-place for sight-seers. As may be imagined, this grand fortress is magnificent to look at from the water approach, while the outlook from the ramparts and terraces on top of the cliff is one of the finest sights over town and rivers, hills and woods, in the world.
Quebec is quaint, ancient and picturesque, presenting strange contrasts. A fortress and commercial mart have been built together on the summit of a rock, like an eagle's nest. It is a French city in America, ruled by the English, and was held mainly by Scotch and Irish troops; a town with the institutions of the middle ages under modern constitutional government, having torrid summers and polar winters, and a range of the thermometer from thirty degrees below zero to one hundred degrees above. When Charles Dilke came here he thought he was back in the European Middle Ages. He found "gates and posterns, cranky steps that lead up to lofty gabled houses with steep French roofs of burnished tin like those of Liége; processions of the Host; altars decked with flowers; statues of the Virgin; sabots and blouses; and the scarlet of the British linesmen. 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. The American soil has left their physical type, religion, language and laws absolutely untouched. They herd together in their rambling villages; dance to the fiddle after mass on Sundays as gaily 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." Henry Ward Beecher thought Quebec the most curious city he had ever seen, saying, "It is a peak thickly populated, a gigantic rock, escarped, echeloned, and at the same time smoothed off to hold firmly on its summit the houses and castles, although, according to the ordinary laws of nature, they ought to fall off, like a burden placed on a camel's back without a fastening. Yet the houses and castles hold there as if they were nailed down. At the foot of the rock some feet of land have been reclaimed from the river, and that is for the streets of the Lower Town. Quebec is a dried shred of the Middle Ages hung high up near the North Pole, far from the beaten paths of the European tourists—a curiosity without parallel on this side of the ocean. The locality ought to be scrupulously preserved antique. Let modern progress be carried elsewhere. When Quebec has taken the pains to go and perch herself away up near Hudson's Bay, it would be cruel and unfitting to dare to harass her with new ideas, and to speak of doing away with the narrow and tortuous streets that charm all travellers in order to seek conformity with the fantastic ideas of comfort in vogue in the nineteenth century."
THE FORTRESS OF QUEBEC.
Up on the cliff, in 1620, Champlain built the ancient castle of St. Louis, which stood on the verge of the rock, where now is the eastern end of the Dufferin Terrace, at an elevation of about one hundred and eighty feet above the river. This was of timber, afterwards replaced by a stone structure used for fort and prison, and burnt in the early part of the nineteenth century, the site being now an open square, with some relics, on the verge of the cliff. The great Quebec Citadel upon the summit of the promontory, three hundred and fifty feet above the river, is one of the most formidable of the former systems of stone fortifications. It covers forty acres, and has outlying walls, batteries and defensive works enclosing the entire ancient city, the circuit being nearly three miles. There are batteries guarding the water approach, gates on the landward side (some now dismantled), and four massive martello towers on the edge of the Plains of Abraham above the city, with long subterranean passages leading to them and other outlying works. The Quebec rock is a dark slate, with an almost perpendicular stratification, and shining quartz crystals found in it gave it the name of Cape Diamond. The portion of the works overlooking the St. Lawrence is called the Grand Battery, while the surmounting pinnacle of the Citadel, containing a huge Armstrong gun, is the King's Bastion. While Quebec's magnificent scenery and its tremendous rock-crowned fortress remain as they were during the great colonial wars, yet the military glory is gone. England long ago withdrew the regular garrison, and only a handful of Canadian militia now hold the place, and the guns are harmless from age and rust, only two or three smaller ones doing the present ceremonious duties. In fact the old rock is so given to sliding, that salutes are forbidden, excepting on rare occasions, lest the concussion may bring some of the fatal rock-slides down upon the people of the Lower Town. There is a little bronze gun preserved as a trophy in the centre of the Parade, which the British captured at Bunker Hill. Grand as this Citadel is, it no longer protects Quebec, for in fact the defense against an enemy is provided by the newer modern forts across the river behind Point Levis, which command the river approach and cost some $15,000,000 to construct.
Yet great has been the conflict around this noted rock fortress in the past. The earliest battles were at the old Castle of St. Louis, and after the repulse of the New England colonial expeditions sent against Quebec in 1711 it was determined to fortify the whole of Cape Diamond, and then the Citadel and chief works were built. Two monuments, however, record the greatest events in its history. The Wolfe-Montcalm monument is the chief, erected just behind the Dufferin Terrace, in a little green enclosure known as the "Governor's Garden," recording the result of the greatest battle fought in Colonial America, the fateful contest in 1759, on the Plains of Abraham, where both commanders fell, which changed the sovereignty of Canada from France to England, and the crowning victory of the "Seven Years' War," which Parkman says "began the history of the United States." This is a plain shaft, almost without ornamentation, and bears the names of both Generals. The other monument is the little stone set up in the face of the cliff on the river-front below the citadel, marking where the American General Montgomery fell, in the winter of 1775. He had crossed the St. Lawrence on the ice, and in imitation of Wolfe's previous exploit, rashly tried to scale the almost perpendicular cliff with a handful of troops, but was defeated and slain. Wolfe's successful ascent of the bluff in 1759 had been made from the river three miles above Quebec, at what is now known as Wolfe's Cove, where the timber ships load. A little stream makes a ravine in the bank, and Wolfe and his intrepid followers, having floated down from above with the tide, landed and climbed through this gorge, the route they took being at present a steep road ascending the face of the bluff among the trees, a small flag-staff being planted at the top. The Plains of Abraham—so called from Abraham Martin, a pilot living there—are now occupied by the modern residences of the city and the massive buildings of the Quebec Provincial Parliament. There is also a prison, and near it a monument marking where Wolfe fell, being the second column erected, the first having been carried away piecemeal by relic-hunters. Upon it is the inscription: "Here died Wolfe victorious, Sept. 13, 1759." This marks the most famous event in the history of the great fortress. Wolfe had evidently a premonition. A young midshipman who was in the boat with him, as they floated on the river at midnight to the ravine, told afterwards how Wolfe, in a low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about him, including the line his own fate was soon to illustrate, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave," saying, as the recital ended, "Gentlemen, I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec." William Pitt, describing the great result of the battle, said, "The horror of the night, the precipice scaled by Wolfe, the empire he, with a handful of men, added to England, and the glorious catastrophe of contentedly terminating life where his fame began—ancient story may be ransacked and ostentatious philosophy thrown into the account, before an episode can be found to rank with Wolfe's."
QUEBEC RELIGIOUS HOUSES.
Various streets and stairways mount the great Quebec rock in zigzags, and there is also an inclined-plane passenger elevator. In the Lower Town, the narrow streets display quaint old French houses with queer-looking porches and oddly-built steps, high steep roofs, tall dormer windows and capacious stone chimneys. The French population cluster in the Lower Town and along St. Charles River. Churches and religious houses seem distributed everywhere. The great Catholic establishments are prominent in the Upper Town, nearly all founded in the seventeenth century. The Holy Father at Rome, recognizing the exalted position Quebec occupies in the Church, has made its Cathedral, like the patriarchal churches of Rome, a Basilica, its Archbishop being a Cardinal. It occupies the place of the first church built by Champlain, is not very large, but is magnificently decorated and contains fine paintings. Within are buried Champlain and Frontenac, and the great Bishop Laval de Montmorency. Adjoining is the palace of the Cardinal Archbishop, who is the Canadian Primate. Also adjoining are the spacious buildings of the Seminary, founded and richly endowed by Laval,—one of the wealthiest institutions and most extensive landowners of Quebec Province. This is still regarded as the controlling power of the Church in Lower Canada, as it has been for two centuries. There is also a Cathedral of the Church of England, a smaller and plain building, where the war-worn battle-flags of the British troops, carried in the Crimea, hang in the chancel, and the fine communion service was presented by King George III. Here is also the memorial of the early Anglican bishop of Quebec, Jacob Mountain, of whom it was said he happened to be in the presence of that king when the king expressed doubt as to who should be appointed bishop of the new See of Quebec, then just created. Said Dr. Mountain, "If your Majesty had faith there would be no difficulty." "How so?" asked the king; whereupon Mountain answered, "If you had faith you would say to this Mountain, be thou removed into that See, and it would be done." It was; Quebec getting a most excellent bishop, who labored over thirty years there, dying in 1825. There are also the splendid building of Laval University, one of the first educational institutions of the Dominion; the Hotel Dieu, and Ursuline Convent originally started by Madame de la Peltrie, in the Upper Town.
These establishments all had their origin in the religious enthusiasm attending the settlement of Canada, in which France took great pride, although Voltaire afterwards derided it as "Fifteen hundred leagues of frozen country." From Sillery, where the first Jesuit Mission was founded, went out the zealous missionaries and martyrs, who followed the Hurons into the depths of the forest, and sought to reclaim the Iroquois, as has been well said, "with toil too great to buy the kingdoms of this world, but very small as a price for the Kingdom of Heaven." From Sillery went the Jesuit Fathers, who explored all America, and also Jogues, Brébeuf, Lalemont, and others, to martyrdom in founding the primitive Canadian mission church. It was also the religious French women as well as the devoted men, who laid so deep and strong the pious foundation of Canada. Little do we really know of the nun, who in her religious devotion practically buries herself alive. Down in the Lower Town, near the Champlain Market, originally lived the first colony of Ursuline nuns, who came out with Madame de la Peltrie to teach and nurse the Indians. She afterwards left them, as already stated, and went to help settle Montreal. Later their establishment was removed to the Upper Town, where it now has an impressive array of buildings, with about fifty nuns, who educate most of the leading Quebec young ladies. The great success of this Order was due to its Superioress, Marie Gruyart, known as Mother Marie de l'Incarnation, a remarkable woman, who mastered the Huron and Algonquin languages, and devoted herself and her nuns to the special work of educating Indian girls, being called by Bossuet the "St. Theresa of the New World." In the shrines of this convent are relics of St. Clement Martyr, and other saints, brought from the Roman Catacombs. Its most famous possession is the remains of Montcalm, who was carried mortally wounded from the battlefield into the convent to die. His skull is preserved in a casket covered with glass, and is regarded with the greatest veneration. His body is buried in the chapel, and his grave is said to have been dug by a shell which burst there during the fierce bombardment preceding his death. This convent has had a chequered history, being repeatedly bombarded, and twice burnt during attacks on the city, and at times occupied as barracks by the troops of both friend and foe. Of late, however, the lives of these sisters of St. Ursula have been more tranquil.