spectacular effect of the conflagration which crowned the battlements
and reflected over crag and river, as the old fort, which had stubbornly
resisted all its enemies during five sieges, fell before the devouring
element.

Its stones were permeated with the military and religious history of the
"old rock city," for, in the fifteen years of its occupancy by
Champlain, it was as much a mission as a fort. The historian says:--"A
stranger visiting the Fort of Quebec would have been astonished at its
air of conventual decorum. Black-robed Jesuits and scarfed officers
mingled at Champlain's table. There was little conversation, but in its
place histories and the lives of the saints were read aloud, as in a
monastic refectory. Prayers, masses and confessions followed each other,
and the bell of the adjacent chapel rang morning, noon and night. Quebec
became a shrine. Godless soldiers whipped themselves to penitence, women
of the world outdid each other in the fury of their contrition, and
Indians gathered thither for the gifts of kind words and the polite
blandishments bestowed upon them."

The site where the old Chateau St. Louis once stood, with its halo of
romance and renown, is now partially covered by the great Quebec
hostelry, the Chateau Frontenac, which in its erection and appointments
has not destroyed, but rather perpetuated, the traditions of the
"Sentinel City of the St. Lawrence."

"Chateau Frontenac has been planned with the strong sense of the fitness
of things, being a veritable old-time Chateau, whose curves and cupolas,
turrets and towers, even whose tones of gray stone and dulled brick
harmonize with the sober quaint architecture of our dear old Fortress
City, and looks like a small bit of Mediaeval Europe perched upon a
rock."

Under the promenade of Durham Terrace is still the cellar of the old
Chateau; and standing upon it, the patriot, whether English or French,
cannot but thrill as he looks on the same scene upon which the heroes of
the past so often gazed, and from which they flung defiance to their
foes.

On almost the same spot upon which Champlain had landed at Montreal, and
about seven years after his death, a small band of consecrated men and
women, singing a hymn, drew up their tempest-worn pinnace, and raised
their standard in the name of King Louis, while Maisonneuve, the ascetic
knight, planted a crucifix, and dedicated the land to God.

The city as it stands on this spot is a fulfilme