"Upon our coquettish rivers in Europe they may whisper of loves along their flowery banks and under the vine-clad terraces that overhang them, like the curtains of a saloon; but here, in this grand severity of nature, upon these immense, half desert plains, in the silence of these gloomy forests, on the banks of this majestic river that is ever speeding onward to the eternal ocean, we may feel emotions that are truly sublime. If, in this quiet solitude, should we open the soul to a dream of love, it takes the serious tone; it needs must be a pure being that dares to breathe to the heavens and to the waves these sacred words, 'I love thee,' and that can add the promise and the pledge of the Canadian song:
"Jamais je ne t'oublierai."
"Ne'er will I forget thee!" [106]
Among the streets of Quebec, most celebrated in our annals by reason of the incidents which attach thereto, one may name the frowsy and tortuous highway which circulates from the foot of Mountain Hill, running for a distance of two hundred feet below the Cape, up to the still narrower pathway which commences west of St. James street and leads to the foot of the hill "de la canoterie;" [107] all will understand we mean the leading commercial thoroughfare of olden time, [108] Sault-au-Matelot street. Is it because a sailor, no doubt only partially relieved from the horrors of sobriety, there made a wild leap? or are we to attribute the name to the circumstance of a dog named "Matelot" ("Sailor") there taking a leap? [109] Consult Du Creux. Our friend, Joseph Marmette, appropriated it for the reception of his hero, "Dent de Loup," who escaped without broken bones after his leap. [110]
The western portion of the still narrower pathway of which we have just spoken, rejoices in the name of "Ruelle des Chiens," (Dog Lane); [111] the directories name it Sous-le-Cap street. It is so narrow that, at certain angles, two carts passing in opposite directions, would be blocked. Just picture to yourself that up to the period of 1816, our worthy ancestors had no other outlet in this direction at high water to reach St. Roch, (for St. Paul street was constructed subsequently to 1816, as M. de Gaspé has informed us.) Is it not incredible? As, in certain passes of the Alps, a watchman no doubt stood at either extremity of this lane, provided with a speaking trumpet to give notice of any obstruction and thus prevent collisions. This odoriferous locality, especially during the dog-days, is rather densely populated. The babes of Green Erin, with a sprinkling of young Jean Baptistes, here flourish like rabbits in a warren. Miss Kitty Ellison and her friend. Mr. Arbuton, in their romantic wanderings, were struck with the mise en scène of Dog Lane:—
"Now that Prescott Gate, by which so many thousands of Americans have entered Quebec since Arnold's excursionists failed to do so, is demolished, there is nothing left so picturesque and characteristic as Hope Gate (alas! since razed), and I doubt if anywhere in Europe there is a more mediaeval-looking bit of military architecture. The heavy stone gateway is black with age, and the gate, which has probably never been closed in our century, is of massive frame, set thick with mighty bolts and spikes. The wall here sweeps along the brow of the crag on which the city is built, and a steep street drops down, by stone-parapeted curves and angles, from the Upper to the Lower Town, when, in 1775, nothing but a narrow lane bordered the St. Lawrence. A considerable breadth of land has since been won from the river, and several streets and many piers now stretch between this alley and the water, but the old Sault-au-Matelot still crouches and creeps along under the shelter of the city wall and the overhanging rock, which is thickly bearded with weeds and grass, and trickles with abundant moisture. It must be an ice pit in winter, and I should think it the last spot on the continent for the summer to find; but when the summer has at last found it, the old Sault-au-Matelot puts on a vagabond air of southern leisure and abandon, not to be matched anywhere out of Italy. Looking from that jutting rock near Hope Gate, behind which the defeated Americans took refuge from the fire of their enemies, the vista is almost unique for a certain scenic squalor and gypsy luxury of colour—sag-roofed barns and stables, and weak-backed, sunken- chested workshops of every sort, lounge along in tumble-down succession, and lean up against the cliff in every imaginable posture of worthlessness and decrepitude, light wooden galleries cross to them from the second stories of the houses which back upon the alley, and over these galleries flutters from a labyrinth of clothes-lines a variety of bright-coloured garments of all ages, sexes and conditions, while the footway underneath abounds in gossiping women, smoking men, idle poultry, cats, children, and large, indolent Newfoundland dogs." —(A Chance Acquaintance, p, 175.)
Adventurous tourists who have risked themselves there in the sultry days of July, have found themselves dazed at the sight of the wonders of the place. Among other indigenous curiosities, they have there noticed what might be taken for any number of aerial tents, improvised no doubt as protection from the scorching rays of a meridian sun. Attached to ropes stretched from one side of the public way to the other, was the family linen, hung out to dry. When shaken by the wind over the heads of the passers-by, these articles of white under-clothing (chemisettes), flanked by sundry masculine nether-garments, presented a tableau, it is said, in the highest degree picturesque. As regards ourselves, desirous from our earliest days to search into the most recondite arcana of the history of our city and to portray them in all their suggestive reality, for the edification of distinguished tourists from England, France and the United States, it has been to us a source of infinite mortification to realize that the only visit which we ever made to Dog Lane was subsequent to the publication of the Album du Touriste; a circumstance which explains the omission of it from that repository of Canadian lore. Our most illustrious tourists, [112] the eldest son of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, his brothers, the Princes Alfred and Arthur, the Dukes of Newcastle, of Athol, of Manchester, of Beaufort, of Argyle, of Sutherland, Generals Grant and Sherman, and Prince Napoleon Bonaparte, it is said, took their leave of Quebec without having visited that interesting locality, "la Ruelle des Chiens," Sous-le-Cap street, probably unconscious of its very existence! Nevertheless, this street possesses great historical interest. It has re-echoed the trumpet sounds of war, the thundering of cannon, the briskest musketry; there fell Brigadier-General Arnold, wounded in the knee: carried off amid the despairing cries of his soldiers, under the swords of Dambourgès, of the fierce and stalwart Charland, of the brave Caldwell, followed by his friend Nairn and their chivalrous militiamen. Our friends, the annexationists of that period, were so determined to annex Quebec, that they threw themselves as if possessed by the evil one upon the barriers (there were two of them) in Sous-le-Cap street and in Sault-au-Matelot street; each man, says Sanguinet, wearing a slip of paper on his cap on which was written "Mors aut Victoria," "Death or Victory!" One hundred years and more have elapsed since this fierce struggle, and we are not yet under Republican rule!
A number of dead bodies lay in the vicinity, on the 31st December, 1775; they were carried to the Seminary. Ample details of the incidents of this glorious day will be found in "QUEBEC PAST AND PRESENT." It is believed that the first barrier was placed at the foot of the stone demi-lune, where, at present, a cannon rests on the ramparts; the second was constructed in rear of the present offices of Mr. W. D. Campbell, N.P., in Sault-au-Matelot street.
Sault-au-Matelot street has lost the military renown which it then possessed; besides the offices of M. Ledroit, of the Morning Chronicle, and of the timber cullers, it now is a stand for the carters, and a numerous tribe of pork merchants, salmon preservers and coopers, whose casks on certain days encumber the sidewalks.
St. Paul street does not appear on the plan of the city of Quebec of 1660, reproduced by the Abbé Faillon. This quarter of the Lower Town, so populous under the French _régime, and where, according to Monseigneur de Laval, there was, in 1661, "magnus numerus civium" continued, until about 1832, to represent the hurry-scurry of affairs and the residences of the principal merchants, one of the wealthiest portions of the city. There, in 1793, the father of our Queen, Colonel of the 7th Fusiliers, then in garrison at Quebec, partook of the hospitality of M. Lymburner, one of the merchant princes of that period. Was the chère amie, the elegant Baronne de St. Laurent, of the party? We found it impossible to ascertain this from our old friend, Hon. William Sheppard, of Woodfield, near Quebec (who died in 1867), from whom we obtained this incident. Mr. Sheppard, who had frequently been a guest at the most select drawing-rooms of the ancient capital, was himself a contemporary of the generous and jovial Prince Edward.
The Sault-au-Matelot quarter, St. Peter street, and St. James street, down to the year 1832, contained the habitations of a great number of persons in easy circumstances; many of our families of note had their residences there: John Wm. Woolsey, Esq., in 1808, and later on first President of the Quebec Bank; the millionaire auctioneer, Wm. Burns, the god-father to the late George Burns Symes, Esq.; Archbishop Signai—this worthy prelate was born in this street, in a house opposite to La Banque Nationale. Evidences of the luxuriousness of their dwelling rooms are visible to this day, in the panelling of some doors and in decorated ceilings.