A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.Thoreau, Henry David
History
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.
Thoreau, Henry David
Brown, John, 1800-1859; Québec (Province) -- Description and travel; Slavery -- United States
Valor gave them one death, history one fame, posterity one monument. The
Government Garden has for nose-gays, amid kitchen vegetables, beside the
common garden flowers, the usual complement of cannon directed toward
some future and possible enemy. I then returned up St. Louis Street to
the esplanade and ramparts there, and went round the Upper Town once
more, though I was very tired, this time on the _inside_ of the wall;
for I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a
great deal of money, and therefore I must make the most of it. In fact,
these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we
have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true. Moreover, I cannot say
but I yielded in some measure to the soldier instinct, and, having but a
short time to spare, thought it best to examine the wall thoroughly,
that I might be the better prepared if I should ever be called that way
again in the service of my country. I committed all the gates to memory
in their order, which did not cost me so much trouble as it would have
done at the hundred-gated city, there being only five; nor were they so
hard to remember as those seven of Bœotian Thebes; and, moreover, I
thought that, if seven champions were enough against the latter, one
would be enough against Quebec, though he bore for all armor and device
only an umbrella and a bundle. I took the nunneries as I went, for I had
learned to distinguish them by the blinds; and I observed also the
foundling hospitals and the convents, and whatever was attached to, or
in the vicinity of the walls. All the rest I omitted, as naturally as
one would the inside of an inedible shell-fish. These were the only
pearls, and the wall the only mother-of-pearl for me. Quebec is chiefly
famous for the thickness of its parietal bones. The technical terms of
its conchology may stagger a beginner a little at first, such as
_banlieue_, _esplanade_, _glacis_, _ravelin_, _cavalier_, &c., &c., but
with the aid of a comprehensive dictionary you soon learn the nature of
your ground. I was surprised at the extent of the artillery barracks,
built so long ago,—_Casernes Nouvelles_, they used to be called,—nearly
six hundred feet in length by forty in depth, where the sentries, like
peripatetic philosophers, were so absorbed in thought, as not to notice
me when I passed in and out at the gates. Within, are “small arms of
every description, sufficient for the equipment of twenty thousand men,”
so arranged as to give a startling _coup d’œil_ to strangers. I did not
enter, not wishing to get a black eye; for they are said to be “in a
state of complete repair and readiness for immediate use.” Here, for a
short time, I lost sight of the wall, but I recovered it again on
emerging from the barrack yard. There I met with a Scotchman who
appeared to have business with the wall, like myself; and, being thus
mutually drawn together by a similarity of tastes, we had a little
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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