hat she called an English breakfast; and though
the repast answered to nothing within his experience, he says
that he "fared exceedingly well, and passed near two hours
most agreeably in the society of this ancient lady and her
virgin sisters."

The excellent nuns of the General Hospital are to-day what
their predecessors were, and the scene of their useful labors
still answers at many points to that described by the careful
pen of their military guest. Throughout the war they and the
nuns of the Hotel-Dieu had been above praise in their assiduous
devotion to the sick and wounded.

Brigadier Murray, now in command of Quebec, was a gallant
soldier, upright, humane, generous, eager for distinction,
and more daring than prudent. He befriended the Canadians,
issued strict orders against harming them in person or property,
hanged a soldier who had robbed a citizen of Quebec, and
severely punished others for slighter offences of the same sort.
In general the soldiers themselves showed kindness towards the
conquered people; during harvest they were seen helping them
to reap their fields, without compensation, and sharing with
them their tobacco and rations. The inhabitants were disarmed,
and required to take the oath of allegiance. Murray reported
in the spring that the whole country, from Cap-Rouge downward,
was in subjection to the British Crown.[820]

[Footnote 820: _Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760_. Murray, _Journal,
1759, 1760_.]

Late in October it was rumored that some of the French
ships in the river above Quebec were preparing to run by the
batteries. This was the squadron which had arrived in the
spring with supplies, and had lain all summer at Batiscan, in
the Richelieu, and at other points beyond reach of the English.
After nearly a month of expectancy, they at length appeared,
anchored off Sillery on the twenty-first of November, and tried
to pass the town on the dark night of the twenty-fourth. Seven
or eight of them succeeded; four others ran aground and were
set on fire by their crews, excepting one which was stranded
on the south shore and abandoned. Captain Miller, with a lieutenant
and above forty men, boarded her; when, apparently through their
own carelessness, she blew up.[821] Most of the party were killed
by the explosion, and the rest, including the two officers, were
left in a horrible condition between life and death. Thus they
remained till a Canadian, venturing on board in search of plunder,