h wooden pales. The weather to-day is agreeably warm. A light fog
sometimes hangs over the highlands, but in the river we have a fine
clear air. In the curve of the river, while we were under sail, we had a
transient view of a stupendous natural curiosity called the waterfall of
Montmorenci."

That night Lieutenant Meech, with forty New England rangers, landed on
the Island of Orleans, and found a body of armed inhabitants, who tried
to surround him. He beat them off, and took possession of a neighboring
farmhouse, where he remained till daylight; then pursued the enemy, and
found that they had crossed to the north shore. The whole army now
landed, and were drawn up on the beach. As they were kept there for some
time, Knox and several brother officers went to visit the neighboring
church of Saint-Laurent, where they found a letter from the parish
priest, directed to "The Worthy Officers of the British Army," praying
that they would protect the sacred edifice, and also his own adjoining
house, and adding, with somewhat needless civility, that he wished they
had come sooner, that they might have enjoyed the asparagus and radishes
of his garden, now unhappily going to seed. The letter concluded with
many compliments and good wishes, in which the Britons to whom they were
addressed saw only "the frothy politeness so peculiar to the French."
The army marched westward and encamped. Wolfe, with his chief engineer,
Major Mackellar, and an escort of light infantry, advanced to the
extreme point of the island.

Here he could see, in part, the desperate nature of the task he had
undertaken. Before him, three or four miles away, Quebec sat perched
upon her rock, a congregation of stone houses, churches, palaces,
convents, and hospitals; the green trees of the Seminary garden and the
spires of the Cathedral, the Ursulines, the Recollets, and the Jesuits.
Beyond rose the loftier height of Cape Diamond, edged with palisades and
capped with redoubt and parapet. Batteries frowned everywhere; the
Chateau battery, the Clergy battery, the Hospital battery, on the rock
above, and the Royal, Dauphin's, and Queen's batteries on the strand,
where the dwellings and warehouses of the lower town clustered beneath
the cliff.

Full in sight lay the far-extended camp of Montcalm, stretching from the
St. Charles, beneath the city walls, to the chasm and cataract of the
Montmorenci. From the cataract to the river of Beauport, its front was
covered