Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1883 — A Dead City. [ARTICLE]

A Dead City.

But, really, do you know it is extremely difficult to realize it is 1883, and that we are still in America, says a Quebec letter. The old town (which ascends in conformation as it decreases in age) was founded in 1608 by the indomitable Cartier, and successive generations have contributed to its store of historic memories until now it stands confessed the most ancient and most interesting city north of Mexico. It is built on three terraces, the first of which is called the lower town, and forms, with Beauport, the oldest portion of the settlement; the second is known as upper town, and contains the Basilica, Laval University, the new Parliament house, the convent of the Ursulines, the seminary chapel, the Gray nunnery, the old Jesuit barracks, the Governor’s garden, and all the nicer class of dwellings and stores; the third is crowned by the citadel, the Plains of Abraham, the jail and the Wolfe monu* ment, and from its .summit there is a view I have never seen surpassed. To the right, the St. Lawrence rolls its mighty flood, the harbor is filled with shipping, the new quay creeps slowly out into its “deep-sea” destination, and Point Levy is idealaled by distance into a cloudland city. To the left slopes away the relenting ruggedness of Gape Diamond, until it meets in the Plains of Sillcoy, and is lost in the purple bosom of the Laurentine hills. The Plains of Abraham have turned their harvest of death to a wealth of turf, where the cattle browse unmoisted about the grave of Wolfe, the martello towers crumble away in the sunshine, the birds’-nests choke the loopholes, and vines flaunt from the eaves. Below, the city looks like a page out of the “Arabian Nights,” for the roofs and spire i are sheathed in tin and.sparkle as bravely as if of silver. This, by the way, is a distinctive feature of Quebec; the tin is of so pure a quality that it does not need to be painted to preserve it from the weather, and some of the “shingles” on the Basillica, which were fifty years old were almost as bright as their new neighbors on the English cathedral.