The Siege of Quebec

Extract

We commonly speak of America as “the New World,” and deem its grand scenery a negative illustration of the truth that human association is an essential quality in our enjoyment of natural loveliness. And the fact that we discover Longfellow at Bruges, Washington Irving “within bounds ” at the Charterhouse, Motley at Dresden, and Prescott at Madrid, gives colour to this impression of prevailing novelty. But for all that, the threads of history are woven rapidly on that continent as elsewhere, and the tapestry record—the warp and woof of life—is unfolded, with its enigmas and its dramatic characters and situations, forthe student's unravelling or enjoyment. There is in that New World an aristocracy that is not parvenu, and territory that is not lacking in the venerable qualities of a grand history. The discovery of the St. Lawrence river by Jacques Cartier, the counterpart in feature and in energy of our own Sir Francis Drake, his sojourn at theIndian villages of Stadacona and Hochelaga, the modern Quebec and Montreal, and his erection of a huge cross instead of an ensign on the shores of Gaspé, in claiming the future New France for Christ and the king, are as much an old-time story as that of the Spanish Armada and the game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. From the Atlantic to the Ohio, and from Virginia to the great lakes, the land is rich in history and fruitful of romance. The exile from Grandpr£ and Port Royal, and the scattering of the Acadian families over the States of Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and Virginia, are full. of heart-break to us who read the story even now, whether we gather it from the page of history or from the poetic setting of “Evangeline ”; and the associations of Forefathers Rock and the Puritan graveyard, ” beautiful for situation,” at New Plymouth, together with the quaint laws and customs which prevailed in that new England town, must be of interest to English-speaking people the wide world over.