[Since writing the foregoing I have received from Mr. John Laird, of Quebec (who was building the ship Storm King, seen in the sketch of Cartier's Winter Harbor), a piece of the oak timber of Cartier's vessel, lately taken from this bay. In his letter accompanying the wood, Mr. Laird says, "There is not the least doubt of its being what it is supposed to be, as the man found, at the same time, a small chain plate of very ancient pattern that could not have belonged to any modern vessel." I have deposited a part of this timber among the collections of the New York Historical Society, where the curious may see it.]

THE GOLDEN DOG.

When passing up Craig Street, on my return to breakfast, I observed quite extensive ruins upon an open space in the rear of some stores, and was informed that they were the remains of the palace of the Intendant-an officer who was next in power and influence to the Governor-General. It was not, indeed, a palace, but its comparative size entitled it to the name. It was built of the black lime slate with which the locality abounds. The roof was covered with tin, and its wood-work was solid oak, within and without. On the north side, and extending to the St. Charles, was a fine garden. On one end was the store-house of the Crown, and on the other the colony prison. In this palace all the deliberations concerning the province were held; and when those who had the chief management of the police and civil power met there the Intendant presided. When affairs of great consequence demanded a general council the Governor-General usually attended. After the conquest of Quebec by the English, in 1759, this building was neglected. It fell into decay, and its ruin was completed in 1775, when Arnold was blockading the city. He established a body of troops in it. These were soon dislodged by shells thrown from the garrison which set it on fire. It was nearly all consumed; and in the great

stone, upon

tion:

walls, commenced during a former Intendant's administration, were built of gold. His estimate for the annual expenses of the colony, in 1759, was over three millions of li

vres.

Among other traditions connected with Bigot, is one concerning the Chien d'Or, or Golden Dog, that may be seen over a window of the Postoffice, near Prescott Gate. The gilded dog, in high relief, is upon a slab of black limewhich is the following inscrip

"Je suis un Chien qui ronge mon os, En le rongeant, je prends mon repos, Un jour viendra qui n'est pas venu, Ou je mordrai, qui m'avra mordu." It is said that the house was built by Monsieur Philbert, a wealthy Bordeaux merchant, who lived in Quebec when Bigot was Intendant, and that the figure of the dog, and the inscription, were intended as a lampoon aimed at Bigot, whom Philbert hated. The exasperated Intendant was revenged. He hired an officer of the garrison to stab the impertinent merchant. The murderer was pursued by a brother of the

THE HERMITAGE

victim to Pondicherry, in the East Indies, and there slain.

A better authenticated story than this is that of the Hermitage, or Chateau Bigot, the ruins of which may be seen in the forest about two miles from the hamlet of Bourg Royale, at the foot of the mountains seen northward of Quebec. It was built by Bigot as a residence for his mistress. Being deep in the wilderness, he believed her to be secure from all intrusion. But the jealous and watchful wife of the Intendant discovered the secret, and soon found means to have her rival poisoned. The house was then abandoned; and during the siege of Quebec by Wolfe, in 1759, the ladies of the capital found safe refuge there. Bigot went to France at that time, where he lost his fortune and his liberty, and the chateau of his mistress fell into decay. Thick shrubbery has grown up around and within its broken walls, and nothing but the lines of some walks and a few very old current bushes show that the hand of cultivation was ever there.

After breakfast we started in a barouche for the Fall of the Montmorenci. The lowering aspect of the morning had changed to bright sunshine, and the ride upon that fine road was delightful. After crossing the St. Charles over Dorchester Bridge, the road is Macadamized all the way. On both sides are pleasant embowered residences for about two miles, where, crossing a stream, the old Canadian village of Beauport is entered at a gentle slope. The onestoried houses are nearly all alike in size, form, and feature. They stand obliquely to the street, to let the drifting snow pass by; and to each is attached a narrow strip of land, extending in the rear, and each containing thirty acres. The village is upon an elevation known as the Heights of Beauport, whereon Montcalm established his fortified camp in 1759. The house which he occupied at that time as his headquarters is yet standing and inhabited, upon the land of Colonel Gugy, a short distance eastward of his Beauport Mills. It is a stone building covered with stucco, and commands a

Near the west bank of the Montmorenci is a restaurant where refreshments may be had at prices ruinous to a shallow purse, and sparkling ice-water for only half a dime a glass. The keeper hires from the owner of the property the legal right to charge each visitor twenty-five cents for the privilege of following a pleasant pathway through sloping meadows and along shaded fences, to a zigzag road that leads to the bottom of the almost perpendicular bank of the St. Lawrence, near where General Monckton with grenadiers and other troops of Wolfe's army landed, and had the first conflict with the forces of Montcalm. We paid all charges, and, guided by a lad a dozen years of age, made the descent, and by a winding way among lumber

Montmorenci Fall from below. Recent rains had filled the river to the brim, and the cascade was both beautiful and grand. The waters descend in a bright fleecy sheet, twenty-five yards in width (unbroken except by an enormous rock half-way down), into a gulf about two hundred feet below. From brink to base the sheet is covered with sparkling foam; and from the caldron rises mist continually. This, in winter, forms a huge cone of porous ice, sometimes a hundred feet in height, and when the river below is hard frozen a lively spectacle is exhibited, for scores of people may be seen upon the mist-hill slowly climbing to its summit or shooting down it upon sleds with arrowy swiftness. The banks on each side of the fall rise many feet above the crown of the

cataract, and are nearly perpendicular, presenting bare rocks at the base and covered with vegetation and shrubbery on the summit.

Two or three years ago a suspension-bridge was constructed over the fall by which passengers might look into the gulf below. It hung over that fearful spot but a short time. The first persons (a man and his wife and child, in a cart, on their way to visit a daughter in one of the nunneries in Quebec) who attempted to pass over it after it was opened to the public lost their lives. The supporting cables were drawn from their shore-fastenings by the weight upon them, and the whole structure, except the towers, with its living burden, fell into the boiling caldron and disappeared forever. The

towers yet stand, mementoes of a sad calamity.

We climbed the steep banks along the zigzag road in the meridian heat of the sun, and rested in the shade of a pleasant grove near the residence of the Seigneur of Beauport. It is an elegant old mansion, close by the bank of the Montmorenci, at the fall. It was built by General Haldimand, the last Governor of the Province of Quebec, before the union of the Canadas, and was named Montmorenci House. There the Baroness Reidesel (wife of the Brunswick general who came to Canada with Burgoyne in 1776) and her family were entertained for several weeks by General Haldimand in the summer of 1782; and there the Duke of Kent,

father of Queen Victoria, resided while he was a sojourner in the province. It is a most delightful spot, commanding a fine view of Quebec and the country on the south side of the St. Lawrence, the harbor, and the beautiful fertile Isle of Orleans, which divides the river into two broad channels.

After making a sketch of Montmorenci House we returned to the restaurant, and proceeded through fields and down a wooded slope, led by the same boy-guide, to the Natural Steps, a section of the banks of the Montmorenci, three-fourths of a mile above the fall. The rocks are so called because they exhibit a series of rectangular gradations resembling stairs. They are composed of shaly limestone, and supposed by some to have been formed by the abrasion of the waters, and by others to be original in their shapes. For an eighth of a mile the river rushes in irregular cascades among these rocks, in a very narrow and tortuous channel, its surface white with foam, and here and there sending up fleeces of spray. On the bald rocky bank we sat, watching the rushing waters, and made an early dinner of sandwiches.

We were leisurely ascending the wooded slope from the river, picking wild flowers by the way, when the rumbling of distant thunder warned us of an approaching storm. We hastened to the barouche and started on our return. Darker and nearer grew the clouds in the northwest, but I ventured to make the sketch of Montcalm's house in the presence of the coming shower. A favoring current bore it northward, and we escaped; but other clouds now came rolling up from the horizon, some audible with thunder, and others beautiful and magnificent in form and hue, until all the firmament westward of the zenith presented a glorious aerial panorama of grand moving shapes and wonderful combinations of colors, for the bright sun was blazing behind the gorgeous screen. Our day's journey was not finished, and we kept on, not without apprehensions of a drenching, for away beyond Lorette on one hand, and over the Chaudière on the other, we saw the rainvails upon the hills. But "fortune favors the brave," and under its wings we were sheltered. We recrossed Dorchester Bridge, and ascend

WOLFE'S MONUMENT IN 1848.

WOLFE'S MONUMENT IN 1858.

ing to the Chemin de la Grand Allee, the destined Fifth Avenue of Quebec, we alighted at the toll-gate and walked out to Bonner's Field, on the Plains of Abraham, to view the new monument erected upon the spot where Wolfe fell at the moment of his victory, on the 13th of September, 1759.

This monument stands upon the site of the old one which the public-spirited Lord Aylmar caused to be erected a quarter of a century ago, but which had become shamefully defaced by the hands of relic-seekers, who were carrying it away in their pockets and reticules. It was of granite, about ten feet in height, surrounded by an iron railing. I give a sketch of it as it appeared when I visited the spot in 1848. The new monument is a beautiful Doric column made of granite blocks, crested with a Roman sword and helmet, and bearing upon the eastern side of its pedestal the following inscription, which records its history: "This pillar was erected by the British Army in Canada, A.D. 1849. His Excellency Lieutenant-General Sir Benjamin D'Urban, G.C.B., K.C.H., K.C.T.S., etc., Commander of the Forces, to replace that erected by Governor-General Lord