eading from the Litany of the Saints. And, passing the last of them,
we saw across the narrowed St. Lawrence a trail of lace against the
darkness of the Laurentine hills, a mass of filigree that moved and
writhed, so that we understood when some one said:

"The Montmorency Falls."

A moment later we saw across the stream the city of Quebec, a hanging
town of fairyland, with pinnacle and spire, bastion and citadel
delicate against the quick sky. A city of romance and charm, to which
we hurried by the very humdrum route of the steam ferry that crosses to
it from the Levis side.

CHAPTER VI

QUEBEC

I

Quebec is not merely historic: it suggests history. It has the grand
manner. One feels in one's bones that it is a city of a splendid past.
The first sight of Quebec piled up on its opposite bluff where the
waters of the St. Charles swell the mighty volume of the St. Lawrence
convinces one that this grave city is the cradle of civilization in the
West, the overlord of the river road to the sea and the heart of
history and romance for Canada.

One does not require prompting to recognize that history has to go back
centuries to reach the day when Cartier first landed here; or that
Champlain figured bravely in its story in a brave and romantic era of
the world, and that it was he who saw its importance as a commanding
point of the great waterway that struck deep into the heart of the rich
dominion--though he did think that dominion was a fragment of the
fabulous Indies with a door into the rich realms of China.

Instinct seems to tell one that on the lifting plain behind the bulldog
Citadel, Montcalm lost and died, and Wolfe died and won.

One knows, too, that from this city thick with spires, streams of
Christianity and civilization flowed west and north and south to
quicken the whole barbaric continent; that it was the nucleus that
concentrated all the energy of the vast New World.

II

From the decks of the three war vessels, the _Renown_ and the escorting
cruisers, Quebec must have seemed like a city of a dream hanging
against the quiet sky of a glorious evening.

The piled-up mass of the city on its abrupt cape is romantic, and
suggests the drama of a Rhine castle with a grace and a significance
that is French. On that evening of August 21st, when the strings and
blobs of colour from a multitude of flags picked out the clustering of
houses that climbed Cape Diamond to the grey walls of the Cita