aid the Captain. 'But within, you could fancy yourself
suddenly transported into an old Normandy town, among narrow crooked
streets and high-gabled houses: nor will the degree of cleanliness
undeceive you. For, unlike most other American cities, Quebec has a
Past as well as a Present: there is the French Past, narrow, dark,
crowded, hiding under a fortification; and there is the English Present,
embodied in the handsome upper town, and the suburb of St. John's,
broad, well-built, airy. The line of distinction is very marked between
the pushing Anglo-Saxon's premises and the tumble-down concerns of the
stand-still _habitan_.'

Perhaps, also, something is due to the difference between Protestant
enterprise and Roman Catholic supineness.

'There's a boat boarding us already,' said Robert.

It proved to be the Custom-house officers; and when their domiciliary
visit was over, Robert and Arthur went ashore. Navigating through a
desert expanse of lumber rafts and a labyrinth of hundreds of hulls,
they stepped at last on the ugly wooden wharves which line the water's
edge, and were crowded with the usual traffic of a port; yet singularly
noiseless, from the boarded pavement beneath the wheels.

Though the brothers had never been in any part of France, the peculiarly
French aspect of the lower town struck them immediately. The old-fashioned
dwellings, with steep lofty roofs, accumulated in narrow alleys, seemed
to date back to an age long anterior to Montcalm's final struggle with
Wolfe on the heights; even back, perchance, to the brave enthusiast
Champlain's first settlement under the superb headland, replacing the
Indian village of Stadacona. To perpetuate his fame, a street alongside
the river is called after him; and though his 'New France' has long
since joined the dead names of extinct colonies, the practical effects
of his early toil and struggle remain in this American Gibraltar which
he originated.

Andy Callaghan had begged leave to accompany his young masters ashore,
and marched at a respectful distance behind them, along that very
Champlain Street, looking about him with unfeigned astonishment. 'I
suppose the quarries is all used up in these parts, for the houses is
wood, an' the churches is wood, and the sthreets has wooden stones
ondher our feet,' he soliloquized, half audibly. 'It's a mighty quare
counthry intirely: between the people making a land on top of the wather
for 'emselves by thim big rafts, an' bui