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memory of the practical jokes played by the royal 

 middy, with his rollicking messmates, in our streets 

 after night-fall. At five o'clock on that morning of 

 June, 1837, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other 

 noble state messengers were knocking at the gate of 

 Kensington Palace and awakening from her sweet 

 slumbers a gentle girl of eighteen summers, to announce 

 to her that henceforth she was Queen of England. So 

 she has continued for the last half century ; God bless 

 her! 



Let us hie back home and recall Quebec, at the dawn 

 of her auspicious reign, its aspect, style of buildingv 

 mode of travel and status, political, intellectual and 

 social. The suburbs of the city and the portion also 

 within the walls were cut up with vacant lots, some 

 affording pasture to cows. Innumerable one-story, 

 cheap, wooden tenements lined the streets. The great 

 fires of May and June, 1845, and of 14th October, 1866, 

 made a clean sweep of some 3,500 : the era of modern 

 cut-stone dwellings had, however, sprung up about 1840. 



Let us glance at our mediaeval Levis Ferry, of 1837 : 

 a half dozen of flat boats, improved scows, propelled by 

 paddle-wheels, through a shaft, round which revolved, 

 in the summer months, four jaded, sweltering horses. 

 This tread-mill exercise lasted to 1845. With the ebb 

 tide and a brisk westerly breeze, the horse-boat, such 

 was its name, in crossing from Levis, instead of landing 

 its passengers at the Finlay Market Place, Lower Town, 

 often drifted down to the Island of Orleans, where it 

 awaited for the flood to waft it back to the city, much 

 to the disgust of belated travellers. Jean-Baptiste 

 would occasionally give utterance to an energetic sacrt ! 



The winter travel from Quebec to Montreal was per- 

 formed by the Blue and Eed rival lines of stages, with 

 relays of horses every fifteen miles. It took two days 

 with good winter roads to reach Montreal ; — of course 

 a much longer time during heavy snow storms. 



