Picturesque Quebec | Page 4

rural spire, flowery garden and sombre
forest,--group them all into the choicest picture of ideal beauty your
fancy can create; arch it over with a cloudless sky, light it up with a
radiant sun, and lest the sheen should be too dazzling, hang a veil of
lighted haze over all, to soften the lines and perfect the repose, --you
will then have seen Quebec on this September morning." (Eliot
Warburton.)
"I rubbed my eyes to be sure I was in the nineteenth century, and not
entering one of those portals which sometimes adorn the frontispiece of
old black-letter volumes. I though it would be a good place to read
Froissart's Chronicles. It was such a reminiscence of the Middle Ages
as Scott's Novels.
"Too much has not been said about the scenery of Quebec. The
fortifications of Cape Diamond are omnipresent. You travel ten, twenty,
thirty miles up or down the river's banks, you ramble fifteen miles
among the hills on either side, and then, when you have long since
forgotten them, perchance slept on them by the way, at a turn of the
road or of your body, there they are still with their geometry against the
sky....
"No wonder if Jacques Cartier's pilot exclaimed in Norman-French
_Que bec!_ ("What a peak!") when he saw this cape, as some suppose.
Every modern traveller uses a similar expression....
"The view from Cape Diamond has been compared by European
travellers with the most remarkable views of a similar kind in Europe,
such as those from Edinburgh Castle, Gibraltar, Cintra, and others, and
preferred by many. A main peculiarity in this, compared with other
views which I have beheld, is that it is from the ramparts of a fortified
city, and not from a solitary and majestic river cape alone that this view
is obtained.... I still remember the harbour far beneath me, sparkling
like silver in the sun,--the answering headlands of Point Levis on the
south-east,--the frowning Cape Tourmente abruptly bounding the

seaward view in the north-east,--the villages of Lorette and
Charlesbourg on the north,--and farther west, the distant Val Cartier,
sparkling with white cottages, hardly removed by distance through the
clear air,--not to mention a few blue mountains along the horizon in
that direction. You look out from the ramparts of the citadel beyond the
frontiers of civilization. Yonder small group of hills, according to the
guide-book, forms the portals of the wilds which are trodden only by
the feet of the Indian hunters as far as Hudson's Bay." (Thoreau).
Mrs. Moodie (Susannah Strickland), in her sketches of Canadian life,
graphically delineates her trip from Grosse Isle to Quebec, and the
appearance of the city itself from the river:--
"On the 22nd of September (1832), the anchor was weighed, and we
bade a long farewell to Grosse Isle. As our vessel struck into
mid-channel, I cast a last lingering look at the beautiful shore we were
leaving. Cradled in the arms of the St. Lawrence, and basking in the
bright rays of the morning sun, the island and its sister group looked
like a second Eden just emerged from the waters of chaos. The day was
warm, and the cloudless heavens of that peculiar azure tint which gives
to the Canadian skies and waters a brilliancy unknown in more
northern latitudes. The air was pure and elastic; the sun shone out with
uncommon splendour, lighting up the changing woods with a rich
mellow colouring, composed of a thousand brilliant and vivid dyes.
The mighty river rolled flashing and sparkling onward, impelled by a
strong breeze that tipped its short rolling surges with a crest of snowy
foam.
"Never shall I forget that short voyage from Grosse Isle to Quebec.
What wonderful combinations of beauty and grandeur and power, at
every winding of that noble river!
"Every perception of my mind became absorbed into the one sense of
seeing, when, upon rounding Point Levis, we cast anchor before
Quebec. What a scene! Can the world produce another? Edinburgh had
been the beau ideal to me of all that was beautiful in nature--a vision of
the Northern Highlands had haunted my dreams across the Atlantic; but
all these past recollections faded before the present of Quebec. Nature

has ransacked all our grandest elements to form this astonishing
panorama. There, frowns the cloud-capped mountain, and below, the
cataract foams and thunders; woods and rock and river combine to lend
their aid in making the picture perfect, and worthy of its Divine
originator. The precipitous bank upon which the city lies piled,
reflected in the still, deep waters at its base, greatly enhances the
romantic beauty of the situation. The mellow and serene glow of the
autumn day harmonized so perfectly with the solemn grandeur of the
scene around me, and sank so silently and deeply