Picturesque Quebec | Page 4

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 into my soul, that my spirit fell prostrate before it, and I melted involuntarily into tears."
Such the poetic visions which were awakened in the poetic mind of the brilliant author of "_Roughing it, in the Bush._" Charles Dickens also had his say in this matter, on his visit to Quebec, in May 1842, where he was the guest of the President of the Literary and Historical Society, Dr. John Charlton Fisher:--
"The impression made upon the