Nor Had We Long To Wait Before Obtaining Ocular
Demonstration Of The Minute Exactitude With Which Our Old Friend, The
Abbe, Had Investigated And Measured Every Stone, Every Crumbling Remain Of
Brick And Mortar.
The first and most noticeable relic pointed out was the
veritable house of the missionaries, facing the St. Lawrence, on the north
side of the road, on Sillery Cove; it was the property of the late Henry
Le Mesurier, Esquire, of Beauvoir.
Were it in the range of possible events
that the good fathers could revisit the scene of their past apostolical
labours and view their former earthly tenement, hard would be the task to
identify it. The heavy three-feet-thick wall is there yet, as perfect, as
massive, as defiant as ever; the pointed gable and steep roof, in spite of
alterations, still stands - the true index of an old French structure in
Canada. Our forefathers seemed as if they never could make the roof of a
dwelling steep enough, doubtless to prevent the accumulation of snow. But
here ends all analogy with the past; so jaunty, so cosy, so modern does
the front and interior of Sillery "Manor House" look - thus styled for many
years past. Paint, paper and furniture have made it quite a snug abode.
Nor was it without a certain peculiar feeling of reverence we, for the
first time, crossed that threshold, and entered beneath those fortress-
like walls, where for years had resounded the orisons of the Jesuit
Fathers, the men from whose ranks were largely recruited our heroic band
of early martyrs - some of whose dust, unburied, but not unhonoured, has
mingled for two centuries with its parent earth on the green banks of Lake
Simcoe, on the borders of the Ohio, in the environs of Kingston, Montreal,
Three Rivers, Quebec - a fruitful seed of christianity scattered
bountifully through the length and breadth of our land; others, whose
lifeless clay still rests in yon sunny hillock in the rear, to the west of
the "Manor House" - the little cemetery described by Abbe Ferland.
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