"The last day came, and Bois Le Grand Beheld with misty eyes The flag of France run down the staff, And that of England rise."[66] [66] Kirby: "Spina Christi." Under it Wolfe stormed _Louisbourg_, the key fortress of Cape Breton, and, following up his victory, climbed the Heights, and died victorious on the Plains of Abraham (27), when, in 1759, _Quebec_ was gained and all Canada came under the realm of British law. [Illustration: 27. THE ASSAULT AT WOLFE'S COVE, QUEBEC, 1759. (From an old print published in London, 1760.)] The youthful Nelson saw it fly aloft when he served as captain's coxswain on a British man-of-war searching for the North Pole, and twenty-five years later when in glorious action he won his title as Baron Nelson of the Nile. The _Cape Colony_ was first acquired, and the _West Coast of Africa, New South Wales and Vancouver Island_ were all added under its display, showing how the mariners of Britain were carrying it far across the distant seas, more distant then than now, for those sea-dogs of the "sceptred isles," boldly raising their new Union Jack upon the mast, braved the unknown oceans, and sailed their ships wherever billows rolled or winds could waft them. So it came that, as its "glory roll" so vividly tells, it was under this second Union Jack the colonial possessions which dot the world around were either occupied by doughty Britons or were wrested from the flags of other nations to form the foundation of that Greater Britain which, from these beginnings, has since grown up in all the regions beyond the seas. CHAPTER XIII. _THE TWO-CROSSED JACK IN CANADA._ Although the Union Jack has been built up on the local Jacks of the three island kingdoms, its greatest glories have been won in expeditions sent far across the seas to other lands. The people of the parent isles have never needed to raise it as their signal in driving invaders from their own shores, and in this way it does not bear that added vitality to them which it bears to the resident Canadian, that of being associated with brave defence of home and native land. To the Englishman, Irishman or Scotsman, in his own island home, it is an emblem of foreign conquest; to the immigrant and to the Canadian-born it is much more, as being the patriot signal of his national defence. After the events of 1759 and of 1760, when Levis at St. Foy nearly won back Quebec, and the cession of the rule of France in Canada had been agreed upon, Canada had settled down into the paths of peace; soldier and _habitant_ vied in binding up one another's wounds, and evidencing all the pleasantries of reconciliation.[67]