132 COLLISION OF THE RIVAL COLONIES. [1759. 



recently appeared and which he had just received 

 from England. Perhaps, as he uttered those 

 strangely appropriate words, — 



" The paths of glory lead but to the grave," 



the shadows of his own approaching fate stole with 

 mournful prophecy across his mind. " Gentlemen," 

 he said, as he closed his recital, " I would rather 

 have written those lines than take Quebec to- 

 morrow." ^ 



As they approached the landing-place, the boats 

 edged closer in towards the northern shore, and 

 the woody precipices rose high on their left, like a 

 wall of undistinguished blackness. 



" Qui Vive ? " shouted a French sentinel, from 

 out the impervious gloom. 



" La France !" answered a captain of Eraser's 

 Highlanders, from the foremost boat. 



" A quel regiment f " demanded the soldier. 



" Z)e la Reine ! " promptly replied the Highland 

 captain, who chanced to know that the regiment 

 so designated formed part of Bougainville's com- 

 mand. As boats were frequently passing down 

 the river with supplies for the garrison, and as a 



1 " This anecdote was related bj the late celebrated John Eobison, 

 Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, who, in 

 his youth, was a midshipman in the British navy, and was in the same 

 boat with Wolfe. His son, my kinsman, Sir John Robison, commu- 

 nicated it to me, and it has since been recorded in the Transactions of the 

 Eoyal Society of Edinburgh. 



♦ The paths of glory lead but to the grave ' 



is one of the lines which Wolfe must have recited as he strikingly exem- 

 pUfied its appUcation." — Grahame, Hist. U. S. IV. 50. See also Play- 

 /air'sWorks,lY. 12Q. 



