THE SIEGE OF QUEBEC. 559 



these heights that the main body of the British army 

 under General Wolfe first took up their position for 

 the siege of the place in 1759, with their front resting 

 upon the Montmorenci River. The entrenchments of 

 the French troops at that time extended the whole way 

 from the falls to the city, a distance by road usually 

 estimated at about 8 miles. * The original design of 

 Wolfe was to fight his way to Quebec by this route, 

 aided by the fire of the fleet. The attempt however 

 had to be abandoned, and the subsequent attack via 

 the Heights of Abraham, which was crowned with such 

 signal success, f was an afterthought, adopted as a last 

 and desperate expedient, when all hopes of capturing 

 this hitherto impregnable fortress were well nigh ex- 

 tinct. 



The great difficulty in the path of Wolfe, upon which 

 Montcalm built his chief hopes of successful defence, 

 was that the approach of winter, and the closure of 

 the St. Lawrence by ice, would compel the British to 

 suspend the attack until the following spring. All 

 accounts tend to show that the severity of the winters 

 in these early days of Canadian history, before the 

 country had been opened up by clearing away the 

 forest, was far greater than anything experienced at 

 the present time, human occupation and the cultivation 

 of the soil having largely modified their former extreme 

 rigour. 



Ice upon the St. Lawrence, at present, seldom or 

 never freezes across below Quebec, and only occasionally 

 opposite the city, but the river is full of heavy ice, 



* See map of Quebec and its environs in Francis Parkman's Montcalm 

 dr* Wolfe, 5th Edition, 1885, Vol. ii., facing p. 200, and letterpress 

 description of same in ibid., pp. 208-9. 



f September I3th, 1769. 



