A Turn To The West Brought Us Opposite To The Scarcely Perceptible Ruins
Of The Palace [305] Of The French Intendants, Destroyed By The English
Shells In 1775, To Dislodge Arnold And Montgomery's New England Soldiery.
The park which intervened formerly between it and the St. Charles was many
years back converted into a wood
Yard to store the fuel for the garrison,
a portion now is used as a cattle market, opposite, stands the station and
freight sheds of the Q. M. O. & O. Railway, the road skirts the park
towards the populous St. Roch suburbs, rebuilt and transformed since the
great fire of the 28th May, 1845, which destroyed 1,600 houses, occupying
the site of former spacious pasture grounds for the city cows, styled by
the early French La Vacherie. In a trice we reach Dorchester bridge, the
second one, built there in 1822, the first, opened with great pomp by His
Excellency Lord Dorchester in 1789, having been constructed a few acres to
the west, and called after him. The bridge, as a means of crossing from
one shore to the other, is an undoubted improvement on the scow used up to
1789.
One of the first objects on quitting the bridge and diverging westward to
the Charlesbourg road, on the river bank, is the stately, solid, antique
mansion of the late C. Smith, Esq, who at one time owned nearly all the
broad acres intervening between the house and Gros Pin. It took for
a time the name of Smithville and was inherited by several members of his
family, who built cosy houses round it.
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