Crossing a long wooden bridge, whose toll was collected by a sturdy old invalid soldier, we entered, soon after, a perfect French village of interminable length, closely flanking the highway, and possessing a very large and well-built church, fronted, after the fashion universal here, by a couple of spires, with a large dome in the centre, all coated over with bright tin, and so glittering famously in the morning sun.
A tolerable road brought us in ten miles or so to the object of our early gallop. Hitching the horses beneath a near shed, we roamed about looking how best to descend; until discovering a ladder planted against the face of the precipice, we took to this, and going down it about seventy feet, were landed upon a table-rock exactly on a level with the torrent, and at the very point whence it makes its down leap into a bay of the St. Lawrence, a portion of it being arrested, and turned to the ignoble use of a wool-carding mill, which abuts on the very edge of the cataract.
I have no sort of doubt that, had I been brought hither before seeing Niagara, I should have felt duly impressed by its grandeur, which is unquestionably of a character sufficiently striking to inspire a much less sensitive admirer of the sublime in nature; as it was, this fall only brought fresh to my recollection the scene I had looked upon the year before, no feature of which can ever be effaced by any other object.
At this day I can find no adequate language wherein to dress my impressions of that wonder. Of Montmorency I only know that I felt, whilst viewing it, as though other doings of Nature might be found every way fellow to it: that such things, in fact, were existing elsewhere, or might be.
But Niagara in its greatness makes all else little. It stands, incomparable and alone, a time-defying monument of creation as first called from chaos; one feels that the waters of the deluge may have risen above it and subsided, leaving it unaltered. It is possible to imagine all other worldly things either changed, or within the scope of mutation and the power of Time. You feel that with most earthly things you have a right to speculate, to calculate on their endurance, to control and to direct them: but never so with old Niagara. Its aspect awes man into nothing, it mocks at his dreams, and defies alike his wisdom and his power.
Certain points on this Montmorency road afford, I fancy, the finest view of Quebec. Two sides of the city are presented, with its close streets, and bright-roofed buildings, rising irregularly tier over tier, and crowned by the formidable lines of defence over which the cross of Old England waves proudly in the breeze. Opposite swells the softer outline of Point Levi, sprinkled with pretty cottages, and separated from the mountain by a narrow channel. As a foreground, the smooth bay lies spread between, and over all bends a sky without a cloud, glowing in the colour of the early morning sun.
With this scene before us, we rattled back at a merry pace, reaching our quarters by a little after eight A.M. We found horses here awaiting to carry us to the Chateau to breakfast, an attention of Captain Doyle's which, after a hasty toilet, we availed ourselves of.
My steed, who had probably an eye to his own breakfast rather than to mine, made a bolt for the stable just as we gained the house; I strove to persuade him to take me to the door by the only means I possessed—patience, civility, and a stick: but he would not be 'ticed; I lost my patience, forgot my civility, and broke my stick, yet he fairly bullied me, till, finding my saddle turning, I left him to go his own way, and ungraciously ceded the point in dispute.
After breakfast, my American soldier companion being naturally solicitous to witness guard mounting, I accompanied him on to the parade, and had the pleasure of seeing the 79th Highlanders come on the ground, with the band and pipes playing alternately. It was really quite refreshing to see this fine corps in such order; the men were uncommonly good-looking fellows, and fairly shook the ground with their measured tread.