("What A Peak!") When He Saw This Cape, As Some Suppose.
Every Modern Traveller Uses A Similar Expression....
"The view from Cape Diamond has been compared by European travellers
with the most remarkable views of a similar kind in Europe, such as
those from Edinburgh Castle, Gibraltar, Cintra, and others, and
preferred by many.
A main peculiarity in this, compared with other
views which I have beheld, is that it is from the ramparts of a
fortified city, and not from a solitary and majestic river cape alone
that this view is obtained.... I still remember the harbour far
beneath me, sparkling like silver in the sun, - the answering headlands
of Point Levis on the south-east, - the frowning Cape Tourmente
abruptly bounding the seaward view in the north-east, - the villages of
Lorette and Charlesbourg on the north, - and farther west, the distant
Val Cartier, sparkling with white cottages, hardly removed by distance
through the clear air, - not to mention a few blue mountains along the
horizon in that direction. You look out from the ramparts of the
citadel beyond the frontiers of civilization. Yonder small group of
hills, according to the guide-book, forms the portals of the wilds
which are trodden only by the feet of the Indian hunters as far as
Hudson's Bay." (Thoreau).
Mrs. Moodie (Susannah Strickland), in her sketches of Canadian life,
graphically delineates her trip from Grosse Isle to Quebec, and the
appearance of the city itself from the river: -
"On the 22nd of September (1832), the anchor was weighed, and we bade
a long farewell to Grosse Isle.
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