Quebec

“ And high and grey and serene above the morning lay the citadel of Quebec. Is there any city in the world that stands so nobly as Quebec? The citadel crowns a headland, three hundred feet high, that juts boldly out into the St Lawrence. Up to it, up the side of the hill, clambers the city, houses and steeples and huts, piled one on the other. It has the individuality and the pride of a city where great things have happened, and over which many years have passed. Quebec is as refreshing and as definite after the other cities of this continent as an immortal among a crowd of stockbrokers. ”

“ I cannot speak of the place as an engineer, but only as a tourist, and the tourist is chiefly concerned with the view. This is altogether superb, and if Quebec is not the most picturesque city in America, this is no fault of its incomparable site. Perched on its mountain of rock, washed by a river as free and ample as an ocean-gulf, sweeping from its embattled crest, the villages, the forests, the blue undulations of the imperial province of which it is warden—as it has managed from our scanty annals to squeeze out a past, you pray in the name of all that's majestic that it may have a future. ”

“ But Quebec is too real a city to be 'seen' in such a manner. And a better way of spending a few days, or years, is to sit on Dufferin Terrace, with the old Lower Town sheer beneath you, and the river beyond it, and the citadel to the right, a little above, and the Isle of Orleans and the French villages away down-stream to your left. Hour by hour the colours change, and sunlight follows shadow, and mist rises, and smoke drifts across. And through the veil of the shifting of lights and hues there remains visible the majesty of the most glorious river in the world. ”

“ Is not Quebec the cradle of our nationality—the spot whereon is engraved the most illustrious pages of our history—heroic annals, touching souvenirs, all combining with the marvels of nature to speak here the soul of the historian and of the poet. What a flourishing field for the historian and poet is not the tale of that handful of Breton heroes, who, three centuries ago, planted on the rock of Quebec the flag of Christianity and civilization! ”

“ I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like and flashing air, which may be peculiar to that season of the year, in which the blue flowers of the succory and some late golden-rods and buttercups on the summit of Cape Diamond were almost my only companions,—the former bluer than the heavens they faced. ”

“ Seen from the river, Quebec is noble, grand, and superb. Its cupolas, minarets, steeples and battlements give it the appearance of an Oriental city. Some find here a resemblance to Angoulême, Innspruck and Edinburgh; and the surrounding scenery has been likened to the unsurpassed views of the Bosphorus. The whole prospect of mountain, river and citadel-capped city cannot be surpassed in any part of the world.
The great interest excited by a near approach to the old capital is heightened as one steps ashore, thrilled by the novelty and beauty of all the surroundings. ”

“ He had always thought of Quebec as a rare old bit of time-yellowed lace among cities—the heart of the New World as it had once been, still beating, still whispering of its one-time power, still living in the memory of its mellowed romance, its almost forgotten tragedies—a ghost that lived, that still beat back defiantly the destroying modernism that would desecrate its sacred things. ”

“ 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! ”

“ In place of this, I found the city more picturesque, more odd, more grand, than I had ever imagined, and peopled by a race who, if conquered in 1759, have had sweet revenge ever since, by making a conquest of every stranger who has entered Quebec—through his higher nature. It is no wonder that Quebec has such a story of song and adventure. There is romance in the river and tragedy on the hill, and while the memory of Wolfe and Montcalm is green, the city will be the Mecca of the Dominion. ”

“ The carriage-drivers resumed their chase of the tourists, and the unvoiceful stir of the new week had begun again. Quebec, in fact, is but a pantomimic reproduction of France; it is as if two centuries in a new land, amidst the primeval silences of nature and the long hush of the Northern winters, had stilled the tongues of the lively folk and made them taciturn as we of a graver race. They have kept the ancestral vivacity of manner; the elegance of the shrug is intact; the talking hands take part in dialogue; the agitated person will have its share of expression. ”

“ Quebec combines every object which is requisite to make a scene truly magnificent—woods, mountains, rivers, cataracts; and all on the most stupendous scale. A lover of nature cannot fail to be delighted with the rock-defended fortress of British North America.”
“You have made me quite happy, Captain Forbes,” said Flora; “I have contemplated a residence in Canada with feelings of such antipathy, that your description of Quebec almost reconciles me to my lot. ”

“ And then Quebec, the old-world city, the capital of the province, the historic centre of Canada and all America, the city of Wolfe and Montcalm! Surely the thought of her glories brings a flush of pride to the faces of French and British alike. No city in all America is more famous than this. ”

“ He looked something like Uncle Jack, and I wished it had been he,—to see the smoke curling softly up from the Lower Town, the bustle about the market-place, and the shipping in the river, and the haze hanging over the water a little way off, and the near hills all silver, and the distant ones blue.
But if we are coming to the grand and the beautiful, why, there is no direction in which you can look about Quebec without seeing it; and it is always mixed up with something so familiar and homelike, that my heart warms to it. ”

“ Every traveller in Canada, from Baron La Hontan, who "preferred the forests of Canada to the Pyrénées of France," to the Hon. Amelia Murray, Charlevoix, LaGalissonière, Peter Kalm, Isaac Weld, John Lambert, Heriot, Silliman, Dickens, Lever, Ampère, Marmier, Rameau, Augustus Sala, have united in pronouncing our Quebec landscape so wild, so majestic, and withal so captivating, as to vie in beauty with the most picturesque portions of the Old or the New World. ”

“ Rejoice and be worthy of her—for few, very few, of the sons of men can point to such a spot as Quebec—and exclaim, "She is ours!—God gave her to us, in her beauty and strength!—We will live for her glory—we will die to defend her liberty and rights—to raise her majestic brow high above the nations!" ”

“ More French than the French are the Lower Canada habitans. The pulse-beat of the Continent finds no echo here." Henry Ward Beecher thought Quebec the most curious city he had ever seen, saying, "It is a peak thickly populated, a gigantic rock, escarped, echeloned, and at the same time smoothed off to hold firmly on its summit the houses and castles, although, according to the ordinary laws of nature, they ought to fall off, like a burden placed on a camel's back without a fastening. ”

“ At Quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a coal-chute, whence rise the heights that Wolfe's men scaled on their way to the Plains of Abraham. Perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands the affair of Quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any other. ”

“ Slowly out of our work-day, business-suited, modern world the vessel steamed up to this city of an olden time and another ideal,—to her who was a lady from the first, devout and proud and strong, and who still, after two hundred and fifty years, keeps perfect the image and memory of the feudal past from which she sprung. Upon her height she sits unique; and when you say Quebec, having once beheld her, you invoke a sense of medieval strangeness and of beauty which the name of no other city could intensify. ”

“ Our sires their old traditions brought,
⁠Their lives of faithful toil,
For home and liberty they fought
⁠On our Canadian soil;
Quebec to us is sacred still,
⁠Nor less is Lundy's Lane,—
Long may a loyal people fill
⁠The land they fought to gain. ”

“ The first glimpse of Quebec, whether from the River, Point Lévis, or Beauport, shows grey bastions and battlements above all other buildings, and it will be strange if further knowledge of the place does not remind you more and more of the warlike times gone by. The very notices in the shop-windows—bilingual and giving to the beginner in the Gallic tongue of our compatriots a pleasing sense of walking in the pages of a dictionary—are a reminder of the long struggle between French and English for the domination of this continent. ”

“ As the poet says,
"Drive away the natural, and it returns at full speed."
Yes, dear old City of Quebec, so old and so glorious, so beautiful in your ensemble and so characteristic in your details, so cordial and so hospitable, in presence of your noblest children assembled here to welcome me, within your old walls, let me give this testimony, that if I have had the happiness of causing the Canadian name to be heard in the immortal shrine of French literature it is to you I owe it, and to you is my gratitude offered. ”

“ No other desire prompted us but that of attempting to place prominently before the public the spots with which history or nature has more specially enriched Quebec. Quebecers ought to be proud of their scenery and of the historical ivy which clings to the old walls of Stadacona. Neighbouring cities may grow vast with brick and mortar; their commerce may advance with the stride of a young giant; their citizens may sit in high places among the sons of men, but can they ever compare with our own fortress for historical memories or beautiful scenery? ”

“ Quebec is blamed for being the great obstacle to the realization of the dreams of our nationalizers. Quebec, we maintain, is the most sane Province of the Dominion, and the greatest help to the maintenance of Confederation. This is now an admitted fact by every serious and broad minded Canadian. ”

“ Quebec, has, then, a right to call herself an old, a very old, city of the west.
The colonization of Canada, or, as it was formerly called, New France, was undertaken by French merchants engaged in the fur trade, close on whose steps followed a host of devoted missionaries who found, in the forests of this new and attractive country, ample scope for the exercise of their religious enthusiasm. It was at Quebec that these Christian heroes landed, from hence they started for the forest primeval, the bearers of the olive branch of Christianity, an unfailing token of civilization. ”

“ Lawrence, Quebec was reached by the Royal fleet. The succeeding day was marked by His Royal Highness' first public entry into Canada.
THE ROYAL WELCOME AT QUEBEC
No more splendid natural setting for a national event can be found in the world than that afforded by the crowning heights, the broad sweep of river, the ancient and towering fortress of Quebec. Upon this occasion the old-fashioned French city, nestling upon the sides of the cliff, was vivid with flags and the narrow streets filled with arches, while crowds of interested people thronged every part of the place. ”

“ On this long journey eastward travellers do not enter the city of
Quebec. They pass by on the other side of the river, and thus gain the
advantage of seeing Quebec as a picture should be seen, from a
convenient distance. Moreover, like many celebrated paintings, Quebec
will not stand inspection at the length of the nose. But even taken in
detail, walking through its narrow and steep streets, there is much to
delight the eye. ”

“ Quebec, where we have been staying, is beautiful. A fortress is always delightful to me; my destructiveness rejoices in guns and drums, and all the circumstance of glorious war. The place itself, too, is so fiercely picturesque—such crags, such [586] dizzy, hanging heights, such perpendicular rocky walls, down to the very water's edge, and such a broad, bright bay. The scenery all round Quebec is beautiful, and we went to visit two fine waterfalls in the neighborhood, but of course to us just now there is but one waterfall in the world.... ”

“ The Frenchmen, who expected to find there the climate of their native land, and ripen her wines in as kindly a sun, have perpetuated the image of home in so many things, that it goes to the heart with a painful emotion to find the sad, oblique light of the North upon them. As you ponder some characteristic aspect of Quebec,—a bit of street with heavy stone houses opening upon a stretch of the city wall, with a Lombardy poplar rising slim against it,—you say, to your satisfied soul, "Yes, it is the real thing!" ”

“ As the Canadian French were at the conquest, their descendants remain to this day—a race isolated and apart from all others on the continent, having little in common with their neighbors, or even with their kindred in France. While the great tide of modern progress and civilization is surging everywhere else through the continent, the Province of Quebec is the one stagnant pool which is never rippled by a freshening current, and over which hangs the miasma of mediæval superstition. ”