ed with its
batteries, all bristling with guns, seemed to my eyes the very
realization of impregnability. I looked from the ship that lay
tranquilly on the water below, and whose decks were thronged with blue
jackets, to the Highlander who paced his short path as sentry, some
hundred feet high upon the wall of the fortress; and I thought to
myself, with such defenders as these, that standard yonder need never
carry any other banner.

The whole view is panoramic. The bending of the river shuts out the
channel by which you have made your approach, giving the semblance of a
lake, on whose surface vessels of every nation lie at anchor, some with
the sails bung out to dry, gracefully drooping from the taper spars;
others refitting again for sea, and loading the huge pine-trunks,
moored as vast rafts to the stern. There were people everywhere; all
was motion, life, and activity. Jolly-boats with twenty oars, man-of-war
gigs bounding rapidly past them with eight; canoes skimming by without
a ripple, and seemingly without impulse, till you caught sight of the
lounging figure who lay at full length in the stern, and whose red
features were scarce distinguishable from the copper-colored bark of his
boat. Some moved upon the rafts, and even on single trunks of trees,
as, separated from the mass, they floated down on the swift current,
boat-hook in hand, to catch at the first object chance might offer them.
The quays, and the streets leading down to them were all thronged; and
as you cast your eye upwards, here and there above the tall roofs might
be seen the winding flight of stairs that lead to the upper town, alike
dark with the moving tide of men. On every embrasure and gallery, on
every terrace and platform, it was the same. Never did I behold such a
human tide!

Now, there was something amazingly inspiriting in all this, particularly
when coming from the solitude and monotony of a long voyage. The very
voices that ye-hoed, the hoarse challenge of the sentinels on the rock,
the busy hum of the town, made delicious music to my ear; and I could
have stood and leaned over the bulwark for hours to gaze at the scene.
I own no higher interest invested the picture, for I was ignorant of
Wolfe; I had never heard of Montcalm; the plains of "Abra'm" were to
me but grassy slopes, and "nothing more." It was the life and stir;
the tide of that human ocean on which I longed myself to be a
swimmer,--these were what charmed me. Nor was the