No More Learning

What a place it must be to bring
up children! Being safe through the gate, we naturally took the street
which was steepest, and after a few turns found ourselves on the
Durham Terrace, a wooden platform on the site of the old castle of St.
Louis, still one hundred and fifteen feet below the summit of the
citadel, overlooking the Lower Town, the wharf where we had landed,
the harbor, the Isle of Orleans, and the river and surrounding country
to a great distance. It was literally a _splendid_ view. We could see,
six or seven miles distant, in the northeast, an indentation in the
lofty shore of the northern channel, apparently on one side of the
harbor, which marked the mouth of the Montmorenci, whose celebrated
fall was only a few rods in the rear.

At a shoe-shop, whither we were directed for this purpose, we got some
of our American money changed into English. I found that American hard
money would have answered as well, excepting cents, which fell very
fast before their pennies, it taking two of the former to make one of
the latter, and often the penny, which had cost us two cents, did us
the service of one cent only. Moreover, our robust cents were
compelled to meet on even terms a crew of vile half-penny tokens, and
Bungtown coppers, which had more brass in their composition, and so
perchance made their way in the world. Wishing to get into the
citadel, we were directed to the Jesuits' Barracks,--a good part of
the public buildings here are barracks,--to get a pass of the Town
Major. We did not heed the sentries at the gate, nor did they us, and
what under the sun they were placed there for, unless to hinder a free
circulation of the air, was not apparent. There we saw soldiers eating
their breakfasts in their mess-room, from bare wooden tables in camp
fashion. We were continually meeting with soldiers in the streets,
carrying funny little tin pails of all shapes, even semicircular, as
if made to pack conveniently. I supposed that they contained their
dinners,--so many slices of bread and butter to each, perchance.
Sometimes they were carrying some kind of military chest on a sort of
bier or hand-barrow, with a springy, undulating, military step, all
passengers giving way to them, even the charette-drivers stopping for
them to pass,--as if the battle were being lost from an inadequate
supply of powder. There was a regiment of Highlanders, and, as I
understood, of Royal Irish, in the city; and by this time there was a
regiment of Yankees also.
I had already observed, looking up even from
the water, the head and shoulders of some General Poniatowsky, with an
enormous cocked hat and gun, peering over the roof of a house, away up
where the chimney caps commonly are with us, as it were a caricature
of war and military awfulness; but I had not gone far up St. Louis
Street before my riddle was solved, by the apparition of a real live
Highlander under a cocked hat, and with his knees out, standing and
marching sentinel on the ramparts, between St. Louis and St. John's
Gate. (It must be a holy war that is waged there. ) We stood close by
without fear and looked at him. His legs were somewhat tanned, and the
hair had begun to grow on them, as some of our wise men predict that
it will in such cases, but I did not think they were remarkable in any
respect. Notwithstanding all his warlike gear, when I inquired of him
the way to the Plains of Abraham, he could not answer me without
betraying some bashfulness through his broad Scotch. Soon after, we
passed another of these creatures standing sentry at the St. Louis
Gate, who let us go by without shooting us, or even demanding the
countersign. We then began to go through the gate, which was so thick
and tunnel-like as to remind me of those lines in Claudian's "Old Man
of Verona," about the getting out of the gate being the greater part
of a journey;--as you might imagine yourself crawling through an
architectural vignette _at the end_ of a black-letter volume. We were
then reminded that we had been in a fortress, from which we emerged by
numerous zigzags in a ditch-like road, going a considerable distance
to advance a few rods, where they could have shot us two or three
times over, if their minds had been disposed as their guns were. The
greatest, or rather the most prominent, part of this city was
constructed with the design to offer the deadest resistance to leaden
and iron missiles that might be cast against it. But it is a
remarkable meteorological and psychological fact, that it is rarely
known to rain lead with much violence, except on places so
constructed. Keeping on about a mile we came to the Plains of
Abraham,--for having got through with the Saints, we came next to the
Patriarchs. Here the Highland regiment was being reviewed, while the
band stood on one side and played--methinks it was _La Claire
Fontaine_, the national air of the Canadian French.