Picturesque Quebec, By James Macpherson Le Moine










































































































































 - 

    M. Vaudreuil was closeted in a house in the inside of the hornwork
    with the Intendant and some other persons - Page 318
Picturesque Quebec, By James Macpherson Le Moine - Page 318 of 451 - First - Home

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"M. Vaudreuil Was Closeted In A House In The Inside Of The Hornwork With The Intendant And Some Other Persons.

I suspected they were busy drafting the articles for a general capitulation and I entered the house, where I had only time to see the Intendant with a pen in his hand writing on a sheet of paper, when M. Vaudreuil told me I had no business there.

Having answered him that what he said was true, I retired immediately, in wrath to see them intent on giving up so scandalously a dependancy for the preservation of which so much blood and treasure had been expended. On leaving the house, I met M. Dalquier, an old, brave, downright honest man, commander of the regiment of Bearn, with the true character of a good officer - the marks of Mars all over his body. I told him it was being debated within the house to give up Canada to the English by a capitulation, and I hurried him in, to stand up for the King's cause, and advocate the welfare of his country. I then quitted the hornwork to join Poulanes at the Ravine [292] of Beauport, but having met him about three or four hundred paces from the hornwork, on his way to it, I told him what was being discussed there. He answered me, that sooner than consent to a capitulation, he would shed the last drop of his blood. He told me to look on his table and house as my own, advised me to go there directly to repose myself, and clapping spurs to his horse, he flew like lightning to the hornwork."

Want of space precludes us from adding more from this very interesting journal of the Chevalier Johnstone, replete with curious particulars of the disorderly retreat of the French regiments from their Beauport camp, after dark, on that eventful 13th September, how they assembled first at the hornwork, and then filed off by detachments on the Charlesbourg road, then to Ancient Lorette, until they arrived, worn out and disheartened without commanders, at day break at Cap Rouge.

On viewing the memorable scenes witnessed at Ringfield, - the spot where the French discoverer wintered in 1535-36, and also the locality, where it was decided to surrender the colony to England in 1759 - are we not justified in considering it as both the cradle and the tomb of French Dominion in the new world?

Ringfield has, for many years, been the family mansion of George Holmes Parke, Esquire.

CASTOR VILLE

"In woods or glens I love to roam, * * * * Or by the woodland pool to rest."

In the deepest recesses of the Lorette woods, amongst the most shady meanders of the sinuous Cahire Coubat, some five miles due north from Castel-Coucy, we know a bank, not precisely where

"The wild thyme grows,"

but where you are sure, in spring and summer, to pluck handfuls of trilliums, wild violets, ferns of rare beauty, columbines, kalmias, ladies' slippers, ladies' tresses (we mean of course the floral subjects). In this beauteous region, sacred to Pan, the Naiades, Dryades, and the daughters of Mnemosyne, you might possibly, dear reader, were you privileged with a pass from one of our most respected friends, be allowed to wander; or perchance in your downward voyage from Lake Charles to the Lorette Falls, in that vade mecum of a forester's existence - a birch canoe - you might, we repeat, possibly be allowed to pitch your camp on one of the mossy headlands of Castor Ville, and enjoy your luncheon, in this sylvan spot, that is, always presuming you were deemed competent to fully appreciate nature's wildest charms, and rejoice, like a true lover, in her coyest and most furtive glances.

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