Picturesque Quebec | Page 8

Montcalm is
green, the city will be the Mecca of the Dominion. But keep the hand of
the Goth--the practical man--from touching the old historic landmarks
of the city. A curse has been pronounced on those who remove their
neighbours' landmark, but what shall be said of those who remove the
landmarks which separate century from century and period from
period." (J. T. Bulmer.)
The following affords a good specimen of Capt W. F Butler's pictorial
style:--
"Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec--that portion of
America known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the
subjects of the Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But
when the young trees begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep
of winter, they do it quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple
trees are all green--the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has
Canada made the symbol of her new nationality that tree whose green
gives the spring its earliest freshness, whose autumn-dying tints are
richer than the clouds of sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than
honey, and whose branches are drowsy through the long summer with
the scent and the hum of bee and flower! Still the long line of the

Canadas admits of a varied spring. When the trees are green at Lake St.
Clair, they are scarcely budding at Kingston, they are leafless at
Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow. Even between Montreal and
Quebec, a short night's steaming, there exists a difference of ten days in
the opening of the summer. But late as comes the summer to Quebec, it
comes in its loveliest and most enticing form, as though it wished to
atone for its long delay in banishing from such a landscape the cold
tyranny of winter. And with what loveliness does the whole face of
plain, river, lake and mountain turn from the iron clasp of icy winter to
kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome his bridal
gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to look at
him--the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of gladness--"the
birch tree," as the old Saxon said," becomes beautiful in its branches,
and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath
of heaven"--the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their mimic shores
steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the transparent
waters--far into the depths of the great forest speeds the glad message
of returning glory, and graceful fern, and soft velvet moss, and white
wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and wreck of last
year's autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many landscapes
which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but which the
mind carries away instinctively to look at again and again in the
after-time--these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not
easy to find. From the Queen's rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the
eye sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be
found in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, far-stretching
river, foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks
of many- sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling
amidst its fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many
shades of colour from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field--in
what other spot on the earth's broad bosom lie grouped together in a
single glance so many of these "things of beauty" which the eye loves
to feast on and to place in memory as joys for ever?" (_The Great Lone
Land._)
Let us complete this mosaic of descriptions and literary gems,
borrowed from English, French and American writers, by a sparkling

tableau of the historic memories of Quebec, traced by a French
Canadian _littérateur_, the Honourable P. J. O. Chauveau:--
"History is everywhere--around us, beneath us; from the depths of
yonder valleys, from the top of that mountain, history rises up and
presents itself to our notice, exclaiming: 'Behold me!'
"Beneath us, among the capricious meanders of the River St. Charles,
the Cahir-Coubat of Jacques Cartier, is the very place where he first
planted the cross and held his first conference with the Seigneur
Donnacona. Here, very near to us, beneath a venerable elm tree, which,
with much regret, we saw cut down, tradition states that Champlain
first raised his tent. From the very spot on which we now stand, Count
de Frontenac returned to Admiral Phipps that proud answer, as he said,
from the mouth of his cannon, which will always remain recorded by
history. Under these ramparts are spread the plains on which fell Wolfe
and where, in the following year,