A messenger arrived in haste at three o'clock in the afternoon, and gave him a letter from Prévost, town major of Quebec. It was to the effect that an Abenaki Indian had just come over land from Acadia, with news that some of his tribe had captured an English woman near Portsmouth, who told them that a great fleet had sailed from Boston to attack Quebec. Frontenac, not easily alarmed, doubted the report. Nevertheless, he embarked at once with the intendant in a small vessel, which proved to be leaky, and was near foundering with all on board. He then took a canoe, and towards evening set out again for Quebec, ordering some two hundred men to follow him. On the next day, he met another canoe, bearing a fresh message from Prévost, who announced that the English fleet had been seen in the river, and that it was already above Tadoussac. Frontenac now sent back Captain de Ramsay with orders to Callières, governor of Montreal, to descend immediately to Quebec with all the force at his disposal, and to muster the inhabitants on the way. Then he pushed on with the utmost speed. The autumnal storms had begun, and the rain pelted him without ceasing; but on the morning of the fourteenth he neared the town. The rocks of Cape Diamond towered before him; the St. Lawrence lay beneath them, lonely and still; and the Basin of Quebec outspread its broad bosom, a solitude without a sail. Frontenac had arrived in time. He landed at the Lower Town, and the troops and the armed inhabitants came crowding to meet him. He was delighted at their ardor. [25] Shouts, cheers, and the waving of hats greeted the old man as he climbed the steep ascent of Mountain Street. Fear and doubt seemed banished by his presence. Even those who hated him rejoiced at his coming, and hailed him as a deliverer. He went at once to inspect the fortifications. Since the alarm a week before, Prévost had accomplished wonders, and not only completed the works begun in the spring, but added others to secure a place which was a natural fortress in itself. On two sides, the Upper Town scarcely needed defence. The cliffs along the St. Lawrence and those along the tributary river St. Charles had three accessible points, guarded at the present day by the Prescott Gate, the Hope Gate, and the Palace Gate. Prévost had secured them by barricades of heavy beams and casks filled with earth. A continuous line of palisades ran along the strand of the St. Charles, from the great cliff called the Saut au Matelot to the palace of the intendant. At this latter point began the line of works constructed by Frontenac to protect the rear of the town. They consisted of palisades, strengthened by a ditch and an embankment, and flanked at frequent intervals by square towers of stone. Passing behind the garden of the Ursulines, they extended to a windmill on a hillock called Mt. Carmel, and thence to the brink of the cliffs in front. Here there was a battery of eight guns near the present Public