United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They were burnt down in 1803, at the same time as the Château de Vaudreuil was destroyed, by one of the disastrous fires which have so frequently swept the cities of Montreal and Quebec, and in which many quaint historical structures disappeared.
Even Vaudreuil saw that. Pouchot was left at Niagara with 1,000 men. De la Corne had another 1,000 on the shores of Lake Ontario. Bourlamaque held Lake Champlain with 3,000. But the key of all Canada was Quebec; and so every man who could be spared was brought down to defend it. Saunders and Wolfe had 27,000 men of all kinds, 9,000 soldiers and 18,000 sailors, mostly man-of-war's-men.
In the main it was a vestibule to the vast region which extended westward from Gaspé to Lake Michigan and thence to the Mississippi. But while a highway it was also a barrier, cutting off Acadia from the main route that led to the heart of the interior. Port Royal, on the Bay of Fundy, was one centre and Quebec another. Between them stretched either an impenetrable wilderness or an inland sea.
'Nothing is too absurd for them to believe, wrote Carleton, who felt all the old troubles of 1775 coming back in a greatly aggravated form. He lost no time in vain regrets, however, but got a militia bill through parliament, improved the defences of Quebec, and issued a proclamation enjoining all good subjects to find out, report, and seize every sedition-monger they could lay their hands on.
On Saturday there were no sections. John and E Lansdownes and many others went to Quebec. Owing to showers of rain the festivities there were rather a failure. Miss Angus drove H and me to Mount Royal, where we had a splendid view; Dick walked up. We then went to the market, and saw there all sorts of new vegetables, fruits, and fish.
The girls of the colony were no less well looked after than the boys; at Quebec, the Ursuline nuns, established in that city by Madame de la Peltrie, trained them for the future irreproachable mothers of families. The attempts made to Gallicize the young savages met with no success in the case of the boys, but were better rewarded by the young Indian girls.
The traveller who passed along the great river from Quebec to Montreal in the early autumn might see, as Peter Kalm in his Travels tells us he saw, field upon field of waving grain extending from the shores inward as far as the eye could reach, broken only here and there by tracts of meadow and woodland. The outposts of an empire at least had been established.
"I thought that his instructions were precise, that he was to permit himself to be taken prisoner, and was to remain quietly in Quebec, until we could either exchange him or take the place." "That was how he understood his instructions, sir," James said; "but I would rather that you should question him, yourself, as to his reasons for escaping.
A few days after he met the same individual to whom he had made this uncomplimentary observation, and confided to him that he thought Quebec "the most delightful place in the whole world; for, do you know," he said, "I have got a muffin."
The body was carried to the parish church in his bed of state and interred beneath the altar; and the De Vargas celebration remains to this day one of the quaintest ceremonies of the old Governor's Palace. As Quebec is the shrine of historical pilgrims in the North, and Salem in New England; so Taos is the Mecca of students of history and lovers of art in the Southwest.
Word Of The Day