Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/272

 a very yellow, opaque medium. This was my first view of Quebec; happily, on my last the elements did full justice to its beauty. Other objects developed themselves as we steamed down to the wharf. There were huge rafts, some three or four acres in extent, which, having survived the perils which had beset them on their journey from the forests of the Ottawa, were now moored along the base of the lofty cliffs which, under the name of the Heights of Abraham, have a world-wide celebrity. There were huge, square-sided, bluff-bowed, low-masted ships, lying at anchor in interminable lines, and little, dirty, vicious-looking steam-tugs twirling in and out among them; and there were grim-looking muzzles of guns protruding through embrasures, and peripatetic fur caps and bayonets behind parapets of very solid masonry.

Above all, shadowing all, and steeping all, was the thickest fog ever seen beyond the sound of Bow-bells. It lay thick and heavy on Point Diamond, dimming the lustre of the bayoncts of the sentinels as they paced the lofty bastions, and looked down into the abyss of fog below. It lay yet heavier on the rapid St. Lawrence, and dripped from the spars and rigging of ships. It hung over and enveloped the town, where, combined with smoke, it formed a yellow canopy; and damp and chill it penetrated the flag of England, weighing it down in heavy folds, as though ominous of impending calamity.

Slowly winding our tortuous way among multitudinous ships, all vamped in drizzling mist, we were warped to the wharf, which was covered with a mixture of mud and coal-dust, permeated by the universal fog. Here vehicles of a most extraordinary nature awaited us, and, to my