Across the formal grass of the park itself the learned trace
the lines of England and of France.

At the town end there is a slight hill above a dip. The British were
in the dip, France was on the hill. That hill lost the battle. It
placed the French between the British and the guns of the Citadel in
days when there was neither aerial observation nor indirect fire.

A wind, as on the day of the battle, was blowing while the Prince was
on the field. The British fired one volley, and the smoke from their
black powder was blown into the faces of the French. Bewildered by the
dense cloud, uncertain of what was in the heart of it, the French broke
and fled. In twenty minutes Canada was won.

There is a plain monument to mark the exact spot where Wolfe fell; the
Prince placed a wreath upon it, as he had placed wreaths on the
monuments of Champlain and Montcalm earlier, and as he did later at the
monument Aux Braves on the field of Foye, which commemorates the dead
of both races who fell in the battle when Murray, a year after Wolfe's
victory, endeavoured to loosen the grip the French besiegers were
tightening round Quebec, and was defeated, though he held the city.

On the Plains of Abraham--it has no romantic significance, Abraham was
merely a farmer who owned the land at the time of the battle--French
and English were again gathered in force, but in a different manner.

It was a bright and friendly gathering of Canadians, who no longer
permitted a difference of tongue to interfere with their amity. It was
also a gathering of men and women and children (Quebec is the province
of the quiverful), notably vigorous, well-dressed and prosperous.

The thing to remark here, as well as in all the gatherings of the
people of this city, was the absence of dinginess and dowdiness that
goes with poverty. In the great mass of stone houses, pretty brick and
wood villas, and apartment "houses," the upper flats of which are
reached by curving iron Jacob stairways, that make habitable Quebec
there are patches of cramped wooden houses, each built under the
architectural stimulus of the packing-case, though rococo little
porches and scalloped roofs add a wedding-cake charm to the poverty of
size and design. But though there are these small but not mean houses,
there appear to be no poor people.

All those on the Plains had an independent and self-supporting air (as,
indeed, every person has in Canada), and they gave the Prince