"Of All The Historic Monuments Connecting Modern Quebec With Its
Eventful And Heroic Past, None Have Deservedly Held A Higher Place In
The Estimation Of The Antiquarian, The Scholar And The Curious
Stranger Than The Former Gates Of The Renowned Fortress.
These relics
of a by-gone age, with their massive proportions and grim, medieval
architecture, no longer exist, however, to carry the mind back to the
days which invest the oldest city in North America with its peculiar
interest and attraction.
Nothing now remains to show where they once
raised their formidable barriers to the foe or opened their hospitable
portals to friends, but graceful substitutes of modern construction or
yawning apertures in the line of circumvallation, where until 1871
stood Prescott and Hope Gates which represented the later defences of
the place erected under British rule. Of the three gates - St. Louis,
St. John and Palace - which originally pierced the fortifications of
Quebec under French dominion, the last vestige disappeared many years
ago. The structures with which they were replaced, together with the
two additional and similarly guarded openings - Hope and Prescott
gates - provided for the public convenience or military requirements by
the British Government since the Conquest, have experienced the same
fate within the last decade to gratify what are known as modern ideas
of progress and improvement - vandalism would, perhaps, be the better
term. No desecrating hand, however, can rob those hallowed links, in
the chain of recollection, of the glorious memories which cluster
around them so thickly.
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