It was a long time before I could be persuaded that you were in earnest. I had always expected your descent and attack would have been betwixt the St. Charles river and the ravine of Beauport. All that tract of ground, about four miles extent, was everywhere favourable to you, if you had made your real descent in the middle of it, opposite to M. Vaudreuil's lodging, with feint attacks at Johnstone's redoubt, and at the Canardière near the river St. Charles, forcing our intrenchments there, which could not resist an instant a well-formed column. The head of it, composed of the Scotch Highlanders, might have easily penetrated into the plain, separating our army into two parts by the centre, having lodged yourself in the south side of the ravine of Beauport, and have taken the hornwork upon the St. Charles river, sword in hand, without much difficulty or loss of men. In short, all this might have been effected in an hour's time, without meeting with any considerable resistance from our army, thus divided and opened by the centre; and a complete victory, which would have crushed us to pieces without hope, would have crowned you with justly merited laurels. WOLFE:--I own to you, sir, I was greatly deceived with regard to the height and steepness of the hill, which did not appear considerable, even with a telescope, from the river St. Lawrence; it was only when I got to the redoubt that I saw it such as it really is. I began at seven in the morning to fire at your camp from my battery at the Sault (of forty cannons) mostly four-and-twenty pounders. The _Centurion_, a man-of-war of sixty guns, did the same, as also the _Two Cats_, which had on board all the tools necessary for the workmen. They gave you continually their broadsides, firing upon your camp, as I did from my battery, like platoons of infantry. I dare say you never saw artillery better served and kept up until six in the evening when I began my landing at low water. I imagined that this terrible cannonade all that day, without a moment's intermission, would have intimidated your Canadians and make them quit the trenches; my battery at the Sault being thirty or forty feet higher than your camp, we saw them down at the shore. Certainly you must have lost a great number of men.