Mr. Panet, one of the signers, was Speaker of our Commons for twenty-
two years later on. The city journals contain the names and amounts
subscribed, as follows: -
See Quebec Gazette, 4th July, 1799.
See Quebec Gazette, 29th August, 1799.
AN ANTIQUE STONE.
"Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't" -
(The Antiquary)
[Illustration: THE OLD CHATEAU STONE]
Some years back a spicy little controversy was waged among our Quebec
antiquarians as to the origin and real date of the stone in the wall
adjoining the Old Chateau, the two last figures of the inscription
being indistinct.
Was it 1646, 1647 or 1694? After deep research, profound cogitation
and much ink used in the public prints, 1647, the present date,
prevailed, and Mr. Ernest Gagnon, then a City Councillor, had this
precious relic restored and gilt at his cost.
The date 1647 also agrees with the Jesuits Relation, which states
that, in 1647, under Governor de Montmagny, one of the bastions was
lined with stone; additional light was thrown on this controversy, by
the inspection of a deed of agreement, bearing date at Fort St. Louis,
19th October, 1646, exhumed from the Court House vaults, and signed by
the stonemasons who undertook to revetir de murailles un bastion qui
est au bas de l'allee du Mont Caluaire, descendant au Fort St. Louis,
for which work they were to receive from Monsieur Bourdon, engineer
and surveyor, 2,000 livres and a puncheon of wine.
This musty, dry-as-dust, old document gives rise to several enquiries.
One not the least curious, is the luxurious mode of life, which the
puncheon of wine supposes among stonemasons at such a remote period of
Quebec history as 1646. Finally, it was decided that this stone and
cross were intended to commemorate the year in which the Fort St.
Louis Bastion, begun in 1646, was finished, viz., 1647.
This historic stone, which has nothing in common with the
"Stone of Blarney
On the banks of Killarney,"
cropped up again more than a century later, in the days when Sergeant
Jas. Thompson, one of Wolfe's veterans, was overseer of public works
at Quebec - (he died in 1830, aged 98.) We read in his unpublished
diary. "The cross in the wall, September 17th, 1784. The miners at the
Chateau, in levelling the yard, dug up a large stone, from which I
have described the annexed figure (identical with the present), I
could wish it was discovered soon enough to lay conspicuously in the
wall of the new building, (Haldimand Castle), in order to convey to
posterity the antiquity of the Chateau St. Louis. However, I got the
masons to lay the stone in the cheek of the gate of new building."
Extract from James Thompson's Diary, 1759-1830.
Col. J. Hale, grandfather to our esteemed fellow townsman, E. J. Hale,
Esq., and one of Wolfe's companions-at-arms, used to tell how he had
succeeded in having this stone saved from the debris of the Chateau
walls, and restored a short time before the Duke of Clarence, the
sailor prince (William IV), visited Quebec in 1787.
Occasionally, the Castle opened its portals to rather unexpected but, nor
the less welcome, visitors. On the 13th March, 1789, His Excellency Lord
Dorchester had the satisfaction of entertaining a stalwart woodsman and
expert hunter, Major Fitzgerald of the 54th Regiment, then stationed at
St. John, New Brunswick, the son of a dear old friend, Lady Emilia Mary,
daughter of the Duke of Richmond. This chivalrous Irishman was no less
than the dauntless Lord Edward Fitzgerald, fifth son of the Duke of
Leinster, the true but misguided patriot, who closed his promising career
in such a melancholy manner in prison, during the Irish rebellion in 1798.
Lord Edward had walked up on snowshoes through the trackless forest, from
New Brunswick to Quebec, a distance of 175 miles, in twenty-six days,
accompanied by a brother officer, Mr. Brisbane, a servant and two
"woodsmen." This feat of endurance is pleasantly described by himself.
Tom Moore, in his biography of this generous, warmhearted son of Erin,
among other dutiful epistles addressed by Lord Edward to his mother, has
preserved the following, of which we shall give a few extracts: -
QUEBEC, March 14, 1789.
DEAREST MOTHER, - I got here yesterday after a very long and, what some
people would think, a very tedious and fatiguing journey; but to me it
was, at most, only a little fatiguing, and to make up for that, it was
delightful and quite new.
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