Thence, by a
gradual ascent, the rock sloped upward to its highest summit, Cape
Diamond, looking down on the St. Lawrence from a height of three hundred
and fifty feet. Here the citadel now stands; then the fierce sun fell on
the bald, baking rock, with its crisped mosses and parched lichens. Two
centuries and a half have quickened the solitude with swarming life,
covered the deep bosom of the river with barge and steamer and gliding
sail, and reared cities and villages on the site of forests; but nothing
can destroy the surpassing grandeur of the scene.
On the strand between the water and the cliffs Champlain's axemen fell
to their work. They were pioneers of an advancing host,--advancing, it
is true, with feeble and uncertain progress,--priests, soldiers,
peasants, feudal scutcheons, royal insignia: not the Middle Age, but
engendered of it by the stronger life of modern centralization, sharply
stamped with a parental likeness, heir to parental weakness and parental
force.
In a few weeks a pile of wooden buildings rose on the brink of the St.
Lawrence, on or near the site of the marketplace of the Lower Town of
Quebec. The pencil of Champlain, always regardless of proportion and
perspective, has preserved its likeness. A strong wooden wall,
surmounted by a gallery loop-holed for musketry, enclosed three
buildings, containing quarters for himself and his men, together with a
courtyard, from one side of which rose a tall dove-cot, like a belfry.
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