Part 8 (2/2)
”Oh, that is the citadel!” exclaimed May, breathless with delight.
”And that is Dufferin Terrace, with the straight line of railing and the little pavilions,” explained Kate, while the grim old grey houses above them recalled to Hugh and Flora memories of the old French towns they had seen abroad. As soon as they could disengage themselves from the bustle and confusion of the crowded quay, Kate, who had declared that a _caleche_ was as much ”the thing” in Quebec as a gondola in Venice, signalled to two _caleche_ drivers, and the junior members of the party were soon perched on their high seats, while Mrs. Sandford and the luggage went up more comfortably in a commonplace cab. As they rattled over the rough pavements and through the tortuous narrow streets, which--as Kate remarked to Flora--”are just like Europe, I'm sure,” they drove up Mountain Hill, pa.s.sing the spot where Prescott Gate used to be of old, and catching a glimpse of the Basilica, or cathedral, _en route_. They clattered rapidly over the hard paved streets of the upper town, and drove, to May's delight, through a ma.s.sive old gate with deep, round arches, which the smiling driver announced as ”Porte St. Jean.” Just outside it they pa.s.sed a little French marketplace, and then, after pa.s.sing one or two crowded streets, they were finally set down in front of a tall, three-story stone house with a red door.
The travelers were, of course, expected, and received with kind courtesy by their hostess, Mrs. Dale, who took them at once up two flights of stairs. ”If they _are_ high, they have the better view,”
she said, smiling. And so they had. The girls broke out into exclamations of delight, as they gazed from the old-fas.h.i.+oned open windows. In front they looked across streets and houses to the _glacis_ of the Citadel, crowned by its line of ramparts, and could follow, for some distance, the city wall without. The back window commanded a glorious picture. Across a dusky ma.s.s of brown, steep-roofed houses, only half lighted up yet by the morning sun, they looked out on a green, undulating champaign country, flecked with patches of deep green woodland, and little white villages cl.u.s.tering here and there round their great church spires; while, for background, rose a grand range of hills, stretching far away in interminable blue vista--all grey and violet in shadow and silvery blue in the sunlight, as the morning mists drifted away, and a wandering sunbeam caught and glorified a tiny white hamlet nestling in the folds of a wooded hill.
Just where the sunbeams straggled away into the green country a silver stream wound glittering in the sun, making a bright loop round a point, on which, amid some trees, stood a large stone building.
”That is the St. Charles, you know,” explained Kate, ”and there, where you see it twisted like a silver loop, is the place where stood the first mission house of the Recollets, and the Jesuits afterwards.”
”Oh!” said May quickly, ”I know! Notre Dame des Anges, was it not? So _that_ was the place where they had their thatched log cabin and where they used to be half frozen in winter, when they were trying to learn the Indian language from their interpreter, while their biggest wood fires could not keep them warm, or their ink from freezing!”
”And, just a little farther down is the place where they suppose Jacques Cartier laid up his s.h.i.+ps, when he first came; as you were reading to us the other day, Hugh.”
”Ah, and so that is the place where they went through so much suffering, that terrible winter, when the s.h.i.+ps and masts and rigging were all cased in ice, like ghostly s.h.i.+ps at the North Pole, and when the cold and the scurvy were killing them off so fast, that it seemed as if none of them would be left to see the spring. How they must have welcomed its coming at last!”
Then Kate pointed out the green, low-lying meadow beyond the St.
Charles, called _La Canardiere_, because wild ducks used there to abound, and their eyes followed the long white line of the village of Beauport, running between the grand Laurentian hills and the green slopes that edged the blue St. Lawrence, studded with white sails, and winding away between the Island of Orleans and the northern sh.o.r.e; while, far down the high river bank, they could just distinguish the dark purple cleft of the Montmorency Falls. But they were presently reminded that breakfast was waiting, and, after their early start they were quite ready thoroughly to enjoy the fresh rolls and eggs and delicious raspberries and cream, while they planned their day's sight-seeing, so as to accomplish the utmost that could be done in the hours before them.
They determined first of all to scale the Citadel, taking Dufferin Terrace on their way. They went round by the new Parliament buildings, entering the city by the St. Louis gate, with its new Norman towers and embrasures. Kate, to whom the place was familiar of old, grew indignant over the ravages made in the solid old fortifications just outside the walls, and thought the fine new Parliament buildings did not by any means make up for it. ”One could see new buildings any day, but that wasn't what one came to Quebec for,” she remarked. They pa.s.sed by the Esplanade and the winding ascent to the Citadel, and the sedate old-fas.h.i.+oned houses of St. Louis Street, and the little steep-roofed wooden cottage near the hotel, now a saloon, where once lay the body of the brave Montcalm. Presently they came to the ”Ring,”
as the old _Place d'Armes_ is often called--the scene, as May reminded them, of so many interesting events in the old French _regime_.
”For there, you know,” she said, ”the gate of the old Chateau St.
Louis fronted the square, and here there used to be state receptions of the Indians, when treaties were concluded; and here, too, they let the poor Hurons build a fort when they had been almost exterminated by the Iroquois.”
Hugh was much interested, as they pa.s.sed on, in the sight of the old Chateau near the shady walks of the Governor's Gardens, and in the monument erected to the joint memory of the two brave heroes, Wolfe and Montcalm. And then they came out on the long promenade, now known as Dufferin Terrace, and stopped to take in the magnificent panorama, the wide river, with the picturesque heights of Levis immediately opposite, and the crowded s.h.i.+pping below; and then, immediately beneath them, they looked down into the depths of the Lower Town at their feet, in which May was eager to discover the site of the old ”_Abitation_” of Champlain.
”I think it was just about where the Champlain Market is now,” Kate replied--”that open s.p.a.ce with all the market-carts of the _habitans_, and all the people doing their marketing.”
Then they gazed down into the narrow alleys of Little Champlain Street, with the tall, grimy houses that rose up just below them, which, as Flora said, reminded her so much of some of the old ”wynds”
of Edinburgh; and were shown the little old church, ”_Notre Dame des Victoires_,” which played so important a part in the early history of Quebec. May could have remained all day dreaming over these old historic a.s.sociations, nor did Hugh Macnab seem much inclined to tear himself away from the fascinating scene. But Kate was determined to keep them up to ”schedule time,” and she and her watch were relentless, so they reluctantly tore themselves away, being promised a still finer view from above, and mounted a long steep stair rising from the end of the Terrace. They could not resist the temptation of looking around from time to time as the view widened at every step, till at last, drawing a deep breath, they stood at the top of the _glacis_ and gazed at the superb view around them, the closely built Lower Town, the forest of s.h.i.+pping, the steamboats darting to and fro, the opposite heights, fringed with steep-roofed, balconied houses and sprinkled with distant white villages creeping up their receding sides, and large, stately convents peeping out of cl.u.s.tered and embosoming trees; while just beneath their feet a black ocean steamer was getting up her steam to sail away down the great river to the sea.
Walking back along the _glacis_, they reached the winding ascent to the Citadel, which they followed, between its high stone-faced banks, till they reached the ancient, curiously-woven chain gates, said to be impregnable, and leading into the wide green ditch. Then they pa.s.sed through the ma.s.sive portals of Dalhousie Gate, with its guardrooms and casemates built into the solid walls on either side, where the warlike-looking sentries politely saluted the ladies and put them under the charge of a soldier guide. He led them first across the wide court-yard to the King's Bastion by the flagstaff, from whence they could feast their eyes on such a view as May, at least, had never seen before. All about them lay the city, mapped out with its walls and ramparts, its church towers and steeples; at their feet, far below them, the Terrace on which they had been recently standing; and below that again, the grim old town, the docks and s.h.i.+pping and flitting boats diminished to the size of playthings; then the green heights opposite, and the bold blue outline of the Isle of Orleans, and the calm broad river stealing silently away through the vista of distant hills. It seemed like a dream that held them in its spell, till the French soldier, to whom the view was an every-day affair, shrugged his shoulders and said, ”_allons_.”
They continued their walk past the Officers' Quarters, in one of which was the Governor General's summer residence;--past the magazine and stables, where many little dogs were playing about, and came out at last on what they thought the most glorious view of all,--that from the Prince's Bastion, so called, because a Prince's feather, carved in stone on the wall, marks the spot where the Prince of Wales once laid his hand when visiting Quebec. From it they could see, far away to the south, rank after rank of distant blue hills, some of them in Maine and Vermont. To westward they could follow the river till it was hidden behind a green projecting point which shut in the Bay of Sillery, while away to the west and north stretched a long succession of blue hills, with white villages gleaming among their wooded sides, amidst which, too, they could trace the silvery ribbon of the St.
Charles, winding its way down out of the shadowy recesses of the distant mountains.
The travellers found no words adequate to express the delight awakened by the glorious picture, and gazed on in silence, while light mists floated away from the summits of the hills, and sudden glints of suns.h.i.+ne gave them an added touch of glorious beauty.
But they could not stay there all day, and all too soon they turned away from the beautiful picture, which they would often hereafter see before the inner eye; and returned along the walls, past little piles of cannon b.a.l.l.s and gun-mounted embrasures, till they came down again into the court-yard and the wide, green ditch, on the slope of which sleek cows were peacefully grazing, close to the now harmless guns.
Whither should they go next? They would just have time, Kate said, to take in the Basilica and the Ursuline convent before luncheon.
Thither, accordingly, they went, meeting long-robed ecclesiastics and bright-eyed academy boys in their trim gray uniforms;--pretty French nurse-maids and British orderlies, hurrying along laden with packages of official papers, all just as it had been described in ”A Chance Acquaintance.” The Basilica, or great French Cathedral, they found rather disappointing within, for the impression of ma.s.siveness made by the exterior seemed incongruous with the gaudy white and gold of the interior decorations.
”It seems rather out of keeping,” said Hugh, a little discontentedly, ”with what one reads of its history, in those stormy old times, when the French colonists used to come here to pray for deliverance from Iroquois raids, or to offer up thanksgiving for some timely succor.”
”But you know, it has been rebuilt more than once since those old times,” said Kate; and May tried to recall in imagination the great bare-raftered building of those old days, and found much satisfaction in the high porcelain stoves at the entrance, which gave a ”foreign look” to the building at once.
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