SHARPE'S LONDON MAGAZINE. QUEBEC. BY W. H. BARTLETT. is a singular mass of antique constructions, resembling some dilapidated feudal town on the European continent, with pointed roofs and curious gables, and so completely French in style as to carry us at once from the remote banks of the St. Lawrence to those of the Loire or the Garonne. It consists of wharfs, warehouses, and a maze of dark and narrow streets, perilously overhung by the perpendicular rock of Ir is the proud privilege of the Englishman alone, to whatever part of the globe he may wander, to find traces of the almost omnipresent energy of his country, and none can tell, but he who has experienced it, the feeling with which he hears the thrilling swell of the national anthem, or beholds the time-honoured stand-which an avalanche of mighty fragments has more ard of his native land "The flag that's braved a thousand years proudly waving on the crested battlements or floating bulwarks of a chain of colonial dependencies, which stretches" from Indus to the Pole." Of these Canada is undoubtedly among the most important, and the key of Canada is Quebec. This city, magnificent in position as it is heroic in associations, was founded by the first French settlers in the fifteenth century. The river that bathes its walls-the mighty St. Lawrence -is the outlet of a chain of fresh-water lakes, whose extent imagination almost labours to grasp the inland seas of a vast continent rapidly passing from the wildness of primeval nature into the cultured dwelling-place of civilized millions of British blood and British hearts. That stream which expands before us from the crested heights of Quebec has been churned into foam over the rocks of Niagara, and threaded its mazy course among the romantic intricacies of "the Thousand Isles." It has yet a course of some hundreds of miles to fulfil before it pours into the Atlantic its immense accumulation of waters. The rock on which Quebec is built is provided, as it were, expressly by nature to guard and sentinel the passage of the river, and to command the surrounding territory, as from a throne. Viewed from below, nothing can be more striking than its black and perpendicular ridges, crested with frowning battlements and quaint foreign-looking steeples, unless, indeed, the view from the summit of the citadel, which is here presented to our readers. We stand on the utmost height of the ramparts-behind us expand the memorable Plains of Abraham, the "death-bed of fame" of the English and French commanders, Wolfe and Montcalm, reared to whose common memory a pyramidal monument appears conspicuous in the midst of the city. Before our eyes is seen, occupying the crest of the rock, the upper city of Quebec, with its walls and bastions, the residence of the governor, and another building, formerly a convent,-together with the dwellings of the upper classes of society. Crouching at the foot of these embattled bulwarks VOL. VIII. than once fallen and crushed all beneath into a heap of ruins. The whole of this part of the city has been gradually won, by piles and embankments, from the bed of the river, which formerly washed the base of the precipice. All sorts of craft are grouped about the bustling quays, from the hollow "dug out," or bark canoe of the Indian, and light market boats, conveying hay or provisions to vessels of large burden from Europe, and the noble ships of war which guard the passage, and which, huge as is their bulk, seem almost insignificant from the immensity of the stream on which they are anchored. In the midst of the river, in the distance, appears the Isle of Orleans, where Jacques Cartier, the first explorer of the St. Lawrence, and founder of Quebec, first anchored his roving bark. The main channel of the river appears between this and the village of Point Levi, on the right of the picture, while on the opposite shore is seen a long suburb of white cottages, leading to the Falls of Montmorenci. A range of dusky mountains encloses the whole scene as with a magnificent frame. We cannot here attempt a minute description of the city, which is not of any great extent, exceedingly irregular, with steep and winding streets, break-neck flights of steps, and the most picturesque and fantastic variety of dwellings. Nothing here of the "Jack of the Beanstalk" towns of the United States, as Mrs. Trollope calls them, all bran new and shining, and looking as if built in a night, or chopped off per mile to order, with churches, hotels and museums ready made to hand. Quebec has a dingy old-world look about it, particularly refreshing to the lover of the picturesque, as we come from the gay, but formal cities of New York and Philadelphia. The population is equally curious and mixed; here are few or none of the spruce and "spry" American citizens, but a motley collection of Indians, now submissive to the faith whose first apostles they tortured and ate; halfbreeds and voyageurs, who cut and conduct the rafts of timber from the distant recesses of the forests, in fantastic variety of costume; Canadian "habitans," descendants of the original French settlers, the very counterpart of the peasants of some remote corner of B France, haters of innovation and invincible in their prejudices; while groups of hardy Scotch or squalid Irish emigrants linger about the quays, whose forlorn appearance might well excite our pity, did we not know that a few years will witness a change in their condition, from pauperism to competence, from the saddening consciousness that they are the miserable outcasts of an overburdened land, to the proud feeling that they are become the founders of future states. Among this mingling crowd are seen the more aristocratic inhabitants, traders or merchants, Catholic priests in long black robes, the noblesse of French origin, and especially the military, who move among the denizens of the land to which they are for a while exiled, with proud independence, like the Roman legionaries upon a distant and barbarous frontier. town and the steep streets of the lower are abund antly defended, and the place may be pronounced almost impregnable. If it was gallantly won, it has been no less gallantly defended. We will leave to another occasion the comparatively well known circumstances of the triumph and death of General Wolfe, who at the price of his own life purchased Canada as a possession for his country. It was not long after Quebec had passed under the English rule, that the struggle for independence of the United States commenced. The spirit of the American people once fully aroused That raw militia, who had hitherto acted upon the defensive, soon became animated by so daring and resolute a spirit that their commanders were encouraged to carry the war into the heart of the enemy's territory, and to assail him in his strongest defences. Washington, in his camp at Boston, had projected an enterprise as startling by its novelty, as it was formidable by the obstacles and dangers of its execution. He believed a path to exist, which, though unfrequented and known but to mountaineers in the summer season, led from the upper parts of New Hampshire and Maine, across an almost impassable wilderness of marshes, forests and mountains, into Lower Canada, in the direction of Quebec. He judged that an attack upon that city from this point would produce the greatest effect—that it must prove wholly unexpected; for not only had an army never passed through these frightful solitudes, but no one had even imagined such a thing to be possible. Washington, moreover, knew that Quebec was in no degree prepared for defence. This plan perfectly coincided with that to be executed by the army under Montgomery, destined to penetrate into Upper Canada, by the lakes and the river Sorel. well knew the insufficiency of the English governor's forces, who, obliged to divide them, could not hope to resist the simultaneous attack of two corps, one on the side of Montreal, the other on that of Quebec. If he persisted in defending the neighbourhood of the former city, the second must fall into the But one should see Quebec in winter, fully to appreciate its picturesque peculiarities. From the heights of the citadel, the eye then rests upon what seems one boundless lake of milk; all irregularities of ground, fences, boundaries, and copsewoods are obliterated; the tops of villages, with their Catholic steeples, from which the bell booms plaintive and solitary through the wintry air, and scattered farms, peep up like islets in an ocean, with here and there dark lines of pine-forest, the mast of some ice-locked schooner, or the curling smoke of a solitary Indian wigwam. The town has its strange dark gables and pointed roofs all relieved with the lustrous white snow; its rugged streets are one day choked with heaped-up ice and drift, and, upon slight thaw, flooded with dirty kennels and miniature cascades, which the next frost converts into a dangerous and slippery surface. Cloth or carpet boots, goloshes with spikes to their heels, iron-pointed walking sticks, are the only weapons defensive against broken limbs and necks. All the world are muffled in furs and skins: the Indian is seen with his singular snow-shoes, and the gay sledging parties dash about to the merry music of the jingling bells upon their horses, over the glittering and frosty waste. That branch of the river to the north of the Isle of Orleans is always frozen over, and sometimes, but rarely, the main channel, when produce of all sorts is conveyed across the river to the city from the surrounding country, and groups of habitans and Indians are seen tracking their way across the far-stretching expanse of snow-power of the Americans; if, on the contrary, he covered ice. In general, however, the main channel remains open, and encumbered with vast masses of ice, and a strange sight it is, to see the dexterous and fearless boatmen striving with iron-pointed poles to raise their vessels upon the surface of these floating ice-bergs, and thus descend the stream with them, till they find open water on which to launch their barks anew upon the troubled and perilous flood. Quebec, as the bulwark of British America, is, as may be supposed, fortified with the greatest care. About forty acres of the level table-land which crowns the precipice are covered with works, carried to its edge and connected by massive walls and batteries with the other defences of the place. Both the upper He turned to the assistance of Quebec, Montreal and its neighbourhood could not hope to escape them. The command of this adventurous enterprise was confided to Colonel Arnold, a man courageous even to rashness; of a mind fertile in expedients, and of immovable resolution. Ten companies of fusileers, three of riflemen, and one of artillery, under the command of Captain Lamb, were selected to accompany him. To these were added some volunteers, among whom was Colonel Burr, afterward Vice President of the United States. The total number of the corps amounted to 1,100 men. The State of Maine is traversed by the Kennebec river, which rises in the mountains which separate |