XIX - QUEBEC

Summary

A traveller who combines a taste for old towns with a love of letters ought not, I suppose, to pass through “the most picturesque city in America” without making an attempt to commemorate his impressions. His first impression will certainly have been that not America, but Europe, should have the credit of Quebec. I came, some days since, by a dreary night–journey, to Point Levi, opposite the town, and as we rattled toward our goal in the faint raw dawn, and, already attentive to “effects,” I began to consult the misty window–panes and descried through the moving glass little but crude, monotonous woods, suggestive of nothing that I had ever heard of in song or story, I felt that the land would have much to do to give itself a romantic air. And, in fact, the feat is achieved with almost magical suddenness. The old world rises in the midst of the new in the manner of a change of scene on the stage. The St. Lawrence shines at your left, large as a harbour–mouth, gray with smoke and masts, and edged on its hither verge by a bustling water–side faubourg which looks French or English, or anything not local that you please; and beyond it, over against you, on its rocky promontory, sits the ancient town, belted with its hoary wall and crowned with its granite citadel. Now that I have been here a while I find myself wondering how the city would strike one if the imagination had not been bribed beforehand.