THE HALCYON IN CANADA. 217 



geologists tell us ; and here we encounter a fragment 

 of the Old World civilization. Quebec presents the 

 anomaly of a mediaeval European city in the midst 

 of the American landscape. This air, this sky, these 

 clouds, these trees, the look of these fields, are what 

 we have always known ; but these houses, and streets, 

 and vehicles, and language, and physiognomy are 

 strange. As I walked upon the grand terrace I sa^y 

 the robin, and king-bird, and song-sparrow, and there 

 in the tree, by Wolfe Monument, our summer warbler 

 was at home. I presently saw, also, that our repub- 

 lican crow was a British subject, and that he behaved 

 here more like his European brother than he does in 

 the States, being less wild and suspicious. On the 

 Plains of Abraham excellent timothy grass was grow- 

 ing, and cattle were grazing. We found a path 

 through the meadow, and, with the exception of a 

 very abundant weed with a blue flower, saw nothing 

 new or strange, nothing but the steep tin roofs of 

 the city and its frowning wall and citadel. Sweep- 

 ing around the far southern horizon we could catch 



o 



glimpses of mountains that were evidently in Maine 

 or New Hampshire ; while twelve or fifteen miles to 

 the north the Laurentian ranges, dark and formi- 

 dable, arrested the eye. Quebec, or the walled part 

 of it, is situated on a point of land shaped not unlike 

 the human foot, looking northeast, the higher and 

 bolder side being next the river, with the main part 

 of the town on the northern slope toward the St 

 Charles. Its toes are well down in the mud where 



