For These Reasons The Plains Of Abraham Are Crowned With All Sorts Of
Beautiful Things - Including A Jail And A Factory.
Montcalm's left wing
is marked by the jail, and Wolfe's right by the factory.
There is,
happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the
battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and
association would be one of the most beautiful in our world.
Yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the
thin black wreck of the Quebec Railway Bridge, lying like a dumped
car-load of tin cans in the river, the Eastern Gate to Canada is noble
with a dignity beyond words. We saw it very early, when the under sides
of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding,
dusky-purple city. Just at the point of dawn, what looked like the
Sultan Harun-al-Raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with
coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into
the darkness of a slip. She came out again in three minutes, but the
full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and
cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold
passengers. I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old
So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders
when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was his Inner
Circle - the Zion where he was all at ease.
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