Old Quebec, the city of ChamplainWeaver, Emily P. (Emily Poynton)
History
Old Quebec, the city of Champlain
Weaver, Emily P. (Emily Poynton)
Vieux-Québec (Québec, Québec) -- History
Go down, for instance, to Beaupré or St. Joachim, those parishes which
Wolfe once so mercilessly harried. It is a fair and fruitful land,
well-watered by the “full-fed river,” and over it now seems to brood the
gentle angel of peace. Amongst the low curved roofs of the villages rise
the towers of great churches, like that at Beauport and the miraculous
St. Anne, whither every year come pilgrims in thousands seeking health
or peace of mind. Behind these villages, if you step but a little aside
from the splendid waterway of the St. Lawrence, you may lose yourself on
sparsely-tracked, forest-covered hills, cleft with gullies, down which
foam torrents, choked at times with thousands of grinding logs. But,
after all, it is only a hermit who would long bury himself amongst these
hills.
[Illustration: French Canadians.]
The winding roads below lead past barns with thatched roofs, log
cow-houses with overhanging upper-storeys, cottages with projecting
“galleries” and windows shaded with wall-paper, rugged stone houses with
huge chimneys, “bake-ovens” under rude shelters of planks,
drinking-troughs, wayside crosses, and flowery gardens, containing
little shrines, within which glimmer tiny white images of the Virgin and
her Son.
[Illustration: Wheel for spinning Wool.]
[Illustration: Shuttle and Linen Yarn.]
Along these roads comes the oddest assortment of vehicles ever seen, I
should think, in one district of the Dominion. The habitant carries home
his hay in a two-wheeled cart, fitted with a rack and drawn by a rough
pony or a yoke of deliberate oxen; and he rides to church or market in a
springless conveyance, which is a kind of grotesque compromise between a
“top-buggy” and a “buckboard.” When coming from work, however, he
contents himself with a humbler vehicle, rattling down the stony slopes
at a surprising pace in a little cart drawn by a lean, rough-coated,
stout-limbed dog.
A little farther along the same road you may see a stray automobile,
while on the other side of the fence run the electric cars of the Quebec
Railway Light & Power Company, or occasionally, on the same line, a
train of “steam-cars.”
[Illustration: Weaver’s Bench.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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