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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: QUEBEC. 75 CHAPTER III. QUEBEC. The farther one travels west in the continent of North America, the more American do the cities become, and less like the old-country type. St. John, Newfoundland, in the extreme east, might well pass for an Irish town. The streets are dirty and irregular, the side walks neglected. The policeman and the not less inevitable beggar may be observed prowling about in pursuit of their respective avocations; even the stray pig may be occasionally met with, and a touch of the brogue may be heard. Quebec is a French city. What a pity it was, by the way, that the old Indian name of Stadacona was not preserved ! From the flagstaff of the citadel, a spot to which every newly arrived immigrant or tourist naturally turns his steps, a magnificent panorama presents itself to his eyes. The old city nestles close under the guns of the citadel as if for protection. A dozen steamers lie at the wharf close under the ramparts, and the sightseer can look down upon the decks of forty or fifty large sailing ships lying at anchor in the stream. Opposite is Point Levi, with its acres and acres of floating lumber and its high lands, which in the old wars were out of the range of the guns of the citadel, but which in these days of improved ordnance would command them. But up the river and down the river, what glorious views! What anexpanse of blue water and glorious sky; what masses of rock and forest, with the rugged and sharply defined Laurentide mountains in the background, rising apparently sheer out of the water! There are not many cities in the world so favoured. But everyone to his taste. Yankees look upon Quebec ( Queebec as they call it) as a miserable place, a finished city, a place that does not go ahead. It is in fact an Old-World city, and as such ...
