crowds, struck suddenly dumb, watched the gleam of the hostile flag with
chap-fallen faces. A priest, who was staring at the ships through a
telescope, actually dropped dead with the excitement and passion created
by the sight of the British fleet. On June 26 the main body of the fleet
bringing Wolfe himself with 7000 troops, was in sight of the lofty cliffs
on which Quebec stands; Cook, afterwards the famous navigator, master of
the _Mercury_, sounding ahead of the fleet. Wolfe at once seized the
Isle of Orleans, which shelters the basin of Quebec to the east, and
divides the St. Lawrence into two branches, and, with a few officers,
quickly stood on the western point of the isle. At a glance the
desperate nature of the task committed to him was apparent.

[Illustration: Siege of Quebec, 1759. From Parkman's "Montcalm & Wolfe."]

Quebec stands on the rocky nose of a promontory, shaped roughly like a
bull's-head, looking eastward. The St. Lawrence flows eastward under the
chin of the head; the St. Charles runs, so to speak, down its nose from
the north to meet the St. Lawrence. The city itself stands on lofty
cliffs, and as Wolfe looked upon it on that June evening far away, it was
girt and crowned with batteries. The banks of the St. Lawrence, that
define what we have called the throat of the bull, are precipitous and
lofty, and seem by mere natural strength to defy attack, though it was
just here, by an ant-like track up 250 feet of almost perpendicular
cliff, Wolfe actually climbed to the plains of Abraham. To the east of
Quebec is a curve of lofty shore, seven miles long, between the St.
Charles and the Montmorenci. When Wolfe's eye followed those seven miles
of curving shore, he saw the tents of a French army double his own in
strength, and commanded by the most brilliant French soldier of his
generation, Montcalm. Quebec, in a word, was a great natural fortress,
attacked by 9000 troops and defended by 16,000; and if a daring military
genius urged the English attack, a soldier as daring and well-nigh as
able as Wolfe directed the French defence.

Montcalm gave a proof of his fine quality as a soldier within twenty-four
hours of the appearance of the British fleet. The very afternoon the
British ships dropped anchor a terrific tempest swept over the harbour,
drove the transports from their moorings, dashed the great ships of war
against each other, and wrought immense mischief. The tempest dropped as