ld be seen, from a
convenient distance. Moreover, like many celebrated paintings, Quebec
will not stand inspection at the length of the nose. But even taken in
detail, walking through its narrow and steep streets, there is much to
delight the eye. It has quaint old houses, and shops with pea green
shutters, over which flaunt crazy, large-lettered signs that it could
have entered into the heart of none but a Frenchman to devise. Save for
the absence of the blouse and the sabot you might, picking your way
through the mud in a street in the lower part of the city, imagine
yourself in some quarters of Dieppe or Calais, or any other of the
busier towns in the north of France. The peaked roofs, the unexpected
balconies, the ill-regulated gables, and the general individuality of
the houses are pleasing to the eye wearied with the prim monotony of
English street architecture.

Quebec, to be seen at its best, should be gazed at from the harbour, or
from the other side of the river. This morning it is glorious, with its
streets in the snow, its many spires in the sunlight, and the blue haze
of the hills in the distance. We make our first stoppage at Point Levi,
the station for Quebec, and here are twenty minutes for breakfast. The
whereabouts of breakfast is indicated by a youth, who from the steps of
an "hotel" at the station gate stolidly rings a bell. The passengers
enter, and are shown into a room, in the centre of which is a large
stove. The atmosphere is simply horrible. The double windows are up for
the still dallying winter, and, as the drops of dirty moisture which
stand on the panes testify, they are hermetically closed. The kitchen
leads out of the room by what is apparently the only open door in the
house, every other being jealously closed lest peradventure a whiff of
fresh air should get in. It is impossible to eat, and one is glad to
pay for the untasted food and get out into the open air before the
power of respiration is permanently injured.

It was said this is the only place where there would be any chance of
breakfast, nothing to eat till Trois Pistoles is reached, late in the
afternoon. Happily this information turned out ill-founded. At L'Islet,
a little station reached at eleven o'clock a stoppage was made at an
unpretentious but clean and fresh restaurant, where the people speak
French and know how to make soup.

A few years ago a journey by rail between Montreal and Halifax, without
break save what is