Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil BlasLever, Charles
General
Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas
Lever, Charles
Ireland -- Fiction
"Never mind," rejoined the captain; "one signed 'P. O. Dowdlum, Bishop
of Toronia,' will do even better in the Lower Province."
"Exactly, sir; and, as I used to serve mass once, I can 'come out
strong' about my early training with 'his Grace'!"
"Very well," said Pike; "tell the tailor to take your measure for the
livery, and you'll wait on us to-day at table." With this order I
was dismissed, to con over my fictitious and speculate on my true
"character."
CHAPTER XIII. QUEBEC
As viewed from Diamond Harbour, a more striking city than Quebec is
seldom seen.
The great rock rising above the lower town, and crowned with its
batteries, all bristling with guns, seemed to my eyes the very
realization of impregnability. I looked from the ship that lay
tranquilly on the water below, and whose decks were thronged with blue
jackets, to the Highlander who paced his short path as sentry, some
hundred feet high upon the wall of the fortress; and I thought to
myself, with such defenders as these, that standard yonder need never
carry any other banner.
The whole view is panoramic. The bending of the river shuts out the
channel by which you have made your approach, giving the semblance of a
lake, on whose surface vessels of every nation lie at anchor, some with
the sails hung out to dry, gracefully drooping from the taper spars;
others refitting again for sea, and loading the huge pine-trunks,
moored as vast rafts to the stern. There were people everywhere; all
was motion, life, and activity. Jolly-boats with twenty oars, man-of-war
gigs bounding rapidly past them with eight; canoes skimming by without
a ripple, and seemingly without impulse, till you caught sight of the
lounging figure who lay at full length in the stern, and whose red
features were scarce distinguishable from the copper-colored bark of his
boat. Some moved upon the rafts, and even on single trunks of trees,
as, separated from the mass, they floated down on the swift current,
boat-hook in hand, to catch at the first object chance might offer them.
The quays, and the streets leading down to them were all thronged; and
as you cast your eye upwards, here and there above the tall roofs might
be seen the winding flight of stairs that lead to the upper town, alike
dark with the moving tide of men. On every embrasure and gallery, on
every terrace and platform, it was the same. Never did I behold such a
human tide!
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