Thus created a thoroughly French region, Lower Canada still maintains
the religious character of the original colony. The geographical names
are mostly those of the saints and fathers of the Church, and much of
the land is owned by religious bodies. The population is four-fifths
French, and nowhere does the Church to-day show more vitality or
command more thorough devotion. The city of Quebec almost stands still
in population, having about seventy thousand, of whom five-sixths are
French. It is now just as Champlain made it, though larger, a
fortress, trading-station and church combined, and quaintly attractive
in all three phases. No finer location could have been selected for a
town and seaport, and no more impregnable position found to guard the
St. Lawrence passage than its junction with the river St. Charles. An
elevated tongue of land stretches along the northwestern bank of the
St. Lawrence for several miles, and from behind it comes out the St.
Charles. Below their junction the broad Isle of Orleans blocks the
way, dividing the St. Lawrence into two channels, while above, the
noble river contracts to the "Narrows," less than a mile in width,
making a strait guarded all along by bold shores. At the northern
extremity of this tongue of land, and opposite the "Narrows" of the
river, rises the lofty cliff of Cape Diamond, three hundred and fifty
feet above the water, the citadel crowning the hill and overlooking
the town nestling at its foot. The fortifications spread all around
the cliff and its approaches, completely guarding the rivers and the
means of access by land; but it is now all peaceful, being only a
show-place for sight-seers. As may be imagined, this grand fortress is
magnificent to look at from the water approach, while the outlook from
the ramparts and terraces on top of the cliff is one of the finest
sights over town and rivers, hills and woods, in the world.
Quebec is quaint, ancient and picturesque, presenting strange
contrasts. A fortress and commercial mart have been built together on
the summit of a rock, like an eagle's nest. It is a French city in
America, ruled by the English, and was held mainly by Scotch and Irish
troops; a town with the institutions of the middle ages under modern
constitutional government, having torrid summers and polar winters,
and a range of the thermometer from thirty degrees below zero to one
hundred degrees above. When Charles Dilke came here he thought he was
back in the European Middle Ages. He found "gates and posterns, cranky
steps that lead up to lofty gabled houses with steep French roofs of
burnished tin like those of Liége; processions of the Host; altars
decked with flowers; statues of the Virgin; sabots and blouses; and
the scarlet of the British linesmen. All these are seen in narrow
streets and markets that are graced with many a Cotentin lace cap, and
all within forty miles of the Down East Yankee State of Maine. It is
not far from New England to Old France. There has been no dying out of
the race among the French Canadians. The American soil has left their
physical type, religion, language and laws absolutely untouched. They
herd together in their rambling villages; dance to the fiddle after
mass on Sundays as gaily as once did their Norman sires; and keep up
the _fleur de lys_ and the memory of Montcalm. More French than the
French are the Lower Canada _habitans_. The pulse-beat of the
Continent finds no echo here." Henry Ward Beecher thought Quebec the
most curious city he had ever seen, saying, "It is a peak thickly
populated, a gigantic rock, escarped, echeloned, and at the same time
smoothed off to hold firmly on its summit the houses and castles,
although, according to the ordinary laws of nature, they ought to fall
off, like a burden placed on a camel's back without a fastening. Yet
the houses and castles hold there as if they were nailed down. At the
foot of the rock some feet of land have been reclaimed from the river,
and that is for the streets of the Lower Town. Quebec is a dried shred
of the Middle Ages hung high up near the North Pole, far from the
beaten paths of the European tourists--a curiosity without parallel
on this side of the ocean. The locality ought to be scrupulously
preserved antique. Let modern progress be carried elsewhere. When
Quebec has taken the pains to go and perch herself away up near
Hudson's Bay, it would be cruel and unfitting to dare to harass her
with new ideas, and to speak of doing away with the narrow and
tortuous streets that charm all travellers in order to seek conformity
with the fantastic ideas of comfort in vogue in the nineteenth
century."