MONTCALM:--Your attack of the 31st of July, at the only place of our camp which was inaccessible, appeared to me unaccountable. From Quebec to Beauport, which was about four miles, it is a marshy ground, very little higher than the surface of the St. Lawrence at full tide. The heights begin at the ravine at Beauport, and rise gradually all along the border of the river, until at Johnstone's redoubt and battery--where you made your descent and attack--they become a steep high hill, which ends in a deep precipice at the Sault de Montmorency. Opposite to Johnstone's redoubt it is so steep that your soldiers could scarce be able to climb it, even without the encumbrance of their arms. Besides this natural fortification, we had a continued intrenchment all along the edge of the hill, from Beauport to the Sault, so traced and conducted by M. Johnstone that it was everywhere flanked, and the sloping of it served as a glacis; thus the fire from the front and flanks would have destroyed the three-fourths of your army before they could reach the top of the hill. But supposing that some of your troops had reached the top of the hill, up to our trenches, after surmounting these difficulties, my grenadiers were drawn up in battle behind them, ready to charge upon them, with their bayonets upon their muskets, the instant any of your soldiers should appear at the trenches. The swampy, sinking ground, from the redoubt to the foot of the hill, was not one of the smallest difficulties you had in your way to come at us. It is true the Scotch Highlanders, who were your forlorn hope, had got over it and had reached the foot of the hill, though certainly very few returned; but these turfy swamps, when a certain number of men have passed them, become at last impassible, and your soldiers must have sunk down in it above the head, multitudes of them perishing there in the most useless and disagreeable manner. Thus, sir, I hope you see clearly the folly and rashness of that attack, and that your army must have been totally destroyed, without hope, had not heaven wrought a miracle in your favor, after a long cessation of them, which alone could save you. You were no sooner hotly engaged in the attack, without a possibility of withdrawing yourself out of the scrape, when from a clear sunshine there fell in that most critical juncture, of a sudden, the most violent even, down pour of rain from a cloud, which, as the cloud that saved Eneas from the fury of Diomed, placed you immediately out of our sight, so that in an instant we could not see half way down the hill. You profited, as a wise man, of this event to make good your retreat. When the shower was over and we could see you, we found, to our sorrow, that you had escaped us, and that you were then out of the reach of our fire, marching, in a well-formed column, back to your camp at the Sault, well satisfied to have got out of that adventure with the loss only of between five and six hundred men.