These Green Fields, Fringed With
White Birch And Spruce Plantations, Are Watered By The St. Charles, The
Kahir-Koubat [306] Of Ancient Days.
In rear of one of the first villas
Ringfield, owned by Geo.
Holmes Parke, Esq., runs the diminutive stream,
the Lairet, at the confluence of which Jacques Cartier wintered in 1535-
6, leaving, there one of his ships, the Petite-Hermine, of 60 tons,
whose decayed oak timbers were exhumed in 1843, by Jos. Hamel, City
Surveyor of Quebec. A very remarkable vestige of French domination exists
behind the villa of Mr. Parke - a circular field (hence the name Ring-
field) covering about twelve acres, surrounded by a ditch, with an earth
work about twenty feet high, to the east, to shield its inmates from the
shot of Wolfe's fleet lying at the entrance of the St. Charles, before
Quebec. A minute description has been given by General Levi's aide-de-
camp, the Chevalier Johnstone, [307] of what was going on in this
earthwork, where at noon, on the 13th Sept., 1759, were mustered the
disorganized French squadrons in full retreat from the Plains of Abraham
toward their camp at Beauport. Here, on that fatal day, was debated the
surrender of the colony - the close of French rule: here also, close by, in
1535-6, was the cradle of French power, the first settlement and winter
quarters of the French pioneers - Jacques Cartier's hardy little band.
From this spot, at eight o'clock that night (13th Sept.), began the French
retreat towards the Charlesbourg church; at 4 a.m. next day the army was
at Cap Rouge, disordered, panic-stricken!
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