Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/335

 short distances from one another. Were it not for seeing the uncleared woods, which are in most parts only about a mile from the river, and for recollecting that the number of white people in Lower Canada was, a few years ago, estimated at only 200,000, I should have been induced to believe that this is a populous country.

On the 26th we proceeded downwards with a fair wind. The tide reaches to the distance of about sixty miles above Quebec. We descended the Falls of Richlieu, by the joint action of wind, tide, steam, and the stream, at the rate of fifteen {303} miles an hour. These falls are furious rapids at low stages of the tide, but in times of high water they are covered up and smooth. The banks are of a dark coloured schistous substance, very steep, and about a hundred feet high, and the soil inferior to that farther up the river.

On approaching Quebec, I was shown the steep recess of the rock through which General Wolf conducted his army on the night previous to his memorable victory.—This narrow defile retains the name of Wolfe's Cove.

The first sight of Quebec that is obtained in descending the river, is imposing; the shipping viewed in the direction of the line that it forms along the wharfs, has something like the appearance of a thick forest of deadened pine-trees, and the dark-coloured rock, which rises almost from the water's edge, towers high in air. An angle of the fort that stands on the edge of the precipice, and a stone tower and a signal-post that occupy a still higher summit in the rear, are the most prominent objects. On advancing farther, it is discovered that the low ground below widens to the westward, and is occupied by a part of the lower town, and a considerable extent of the circumvallation that occupies the top of the cleft, and incloses the