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 "What heroes from the woodland sprung, When through the fresh awakened land That raw militia, who had hitherto acted upon the 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 unfre He 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|quented and known but to mountaineers in the 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 a 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 snowcovered 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 descond the stream with them, till they find open water on which to launch their barks anew upon the troubled and perilous flood. summer season, led from the upper parts of New He 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. 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 The State of Maine is traversed by the Kennebec with the other defences of the place. Both the upper river, which rises in the mountains which separate stragglers. Maine from Canada, and, running from north to south,¦ success, or rather, all prospect of deliverance. Death falls into the sea a little above Casco-bay. On the was desired rather than dreaded by his forlorn followopposite side of these mountains, and not far from ers, overwhelmed amidst these fearful wilds by every the sources of the Kennebec, rises another river, called privation, and by every suffering. Their constancy the Chaudière, which flows into the St. Lawrence, a was still proof; stern necessity maintained as yet little above Quebec. From one of these springheads their powers of endurance. Arrived at the summit to the other there was no way but across precipitous of the mountains which divide the waters of the mountains, intersected with torrents and marshes, Kennebec from those of the Chaudière and St. Lawand not a living being was to be seen for the entire rence, the miserable remnant of their provisions was distance. Such was the wilderness through which equally distributed among all the companies, and Arnold had now to penetrate. Arnold urged his soldiers to press forward in search His preparations completed, and the troops dis- of subsistence, since henceforth in doing so lay their playing extreme ardour, he left the camp at Boston sole resource from perishing. It was yet thirty towards the middle of September, and on reaching miles to the nearest habitation when every sort of the Kennebec found two hundred boats assembled at provision was exhausted; they were giving way to the town of Gardiner. Loading them with arms, utter despair, when Arnold, whose activity was almost ammunition and provisions, he ascended the river as preternatural, suddenly appeared from a forage, bringfar as Fort Wester, erected on its right bank. Here ing with him wherewithal to satisfy the extremest he divided his corps into three detachments; the cravings of nature. Recommencing their march, with first composed of riflemen, commanded by Captain inexpressible joy they reached at length the Chaudière Morgan, forming the advanced guard, to explore the river, and soon after, the nearest dwellings of the country, ascertain the fords, open the road, and espe- French Canadians, who embraced their cause, and cially reconnoitre the frequent "portages," spots so offered them every assistance in their power. Arnold, called because, the rivers there becoming unnavigable, impatient to snatch the fruit of so much toil and it was necessary to carry by hand, or on beasts of danger, would only halt as long as was necessary to burden, not only the cargo, but also the boats them-give the rear guard time to come up, and assemble the selves, until the state of the river admitted of their being launched anew. Their progress was full of almost insuperable difficulties, the current being swift, the bed of the river rocky, and often interrupted by dangerous falls and rapids. To pene-ceived-they could not comprehend how and by what trate by land was even more difficult than by water; they had to make their way through dense tangled forests, climb rugged and overhanging precipices, and thread unknown and perilous morasses, and while opening a road through all the formidable obstacles of a wilderness in a state of nature, the soldiers, compelled to carry their own baggage, could of course advance but slowly, so that even before they reached the head waters of the Kennebec, their provisions began to fail. Many were already spent with fatigue and exhaustion, and when they had reached the source of the Rivière Morte, a branch of the Kennebec, Colonel Enoss was ordered to send back to the rear all the sick and such as could not be supplied with provisions. This officer profited by the opportunity to return with his entire detachment to the camp at Boston. The whole army, on seeing him appear, gave way to the liveliest indignation against a man who had abandoned his companions in arms, in the midst of danger, and whose desertion might compromise the success of the whole enterprise. He was brought before a courtmartial, but acquitted from the acknowledged impossibility of procuring provisions for his men in those desolate and savage regions. Arnold, undaunted, pursued his onward march; he had consumed thirty-two days in traversing a frightful solitude without meeting with a single habitation, a single human creature. Swamps, mountains, precipitous and pathless ravines, encountered him at every step, and seemed to forbid all expectation of On the 9th November he reached Point Levi, opposite to Quebec. The amazement of the inhabitants of that city at such an apparition can hardly be con road the Americans had reached them: the success of such an enterprise seemed to them little less than miraculous. Had Arnold, in this first moment of their panic been able to cross the river, he must have made himself master of Quebec, but Colonel Maclean, the commandant, had received timely warning through a fugitive Indian of the approach of the Americans, and the English had consequently withdrawn all the boats from the right bank of the river. Moreover, it blew on that day so furiously that it was manifestly impossible to cross without peril. These circumstances were the salvation of the city. Arnold, foaming with impatience, was compelled to lose scveral days, and to make a nocturnal passage, the river being guarded by the Lizard frigate and several other light vessels anchored under the walls of the town. For several nights successively, the wind was as high as during the day; but the Canadians having at length furnished Arnold with sufficient boats, he only awaited the favourable moment for attempting the passage. The commandant of Quebec was aware how small were his means of defending the city; the spirit that prevailed there could not but alarm him, and the garrison was very weak, consisting only of the Royal Irishmen of Colonel Maclean, and some militia hastily called out by the vice-governor. The merchants and English inhabitants were extremely discontented at the recent introduction of French laws into the province. It appeared, moreover, that no reliance was |