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be seen in the rooms of the Literary and Historical 

 Society, at Quebec. 



Ships from sea were announced all the way from 

 Eimouski, to the signal service on the Citadel of Que- 

 bec, by means of balls hoisted to lofty poles, erected on 

 the highest points along the sea shore. 



Banking facilities were merely nominal at that period ; 

 some monetary institutions had hastened to forward 

 their specie to be stored in the casemates of the Citadel, 

 at Quebec, safe against " Canadian rebels and Yankee 

 sympathizers," as the phrase then ran. Several Banks 

 suspended specie payments, in 1837 ; on the 20th day 

 of June, La Banque du Peuple, some of whose directors 

 had been gaoled for having, it was said, afforded aid to 

 the rebels, placarded a notice, that it was prepared to 

 resume specie payments, when the other banks did the 

 same. The crooked lanes of Quebec were lit with dim 

 oil lamps and Captain Pinguet's drowsy, old city- watch, 

 called out the time or weather. " Twelve o'clock, " 

 " Starry night, " as the case might be, after nightfall 

 and occasionally, like more modern watchmen, were 

 conspicious by their absence when a row occured. 

 Quebec decimated by the cholera plague of 1832 and 

 1834, scarcely numbered 34,000 souls. The insurrec- 

 tion of 1837-38 with its alarms, bore good fruits, the 

 blood of the fiery, earnest patriots had not been shed in 

 vain. 



A stern Waterloo veteran, Sir John Colborne, had 

 ruthlessly stemmed the tide of popular ferment; an 

 imperial statesman of recognized ability, the earl of 

 Durham investigated its causes and prescribed the 

 remed} 7 , with the prescience of a seer. The union of 

 the two provinces, Upper and Lower Canada, in 1841, 

 though at best a makeshift, was the harbinger of vast 

 changes and manifest progress ; primary and elementary 

 education received a powerful impulse. Some of our 

 leading French writers have traced with great felicity 

 to that period the marvellous awakening of thought and 



