Pending the erection of a suitable building at Quebec, the nuns of the Hospital established themselves at the mission palisade of Sillery, and the Ursulines began their work in the small wooden structure on the river's brink below the rock. An outbreak of smallpox among the Indians soon over-crowded their wretched tenement, and infected savages came thither only to die. Worn out with labour, the indefatigable nuns continued bravely to contend with the disease and suffering around them, and the monuments of their high endurance and beautiful devotion are to be found to-day in the ivy-clad cloisters in Garden Street, where the gentle Ursulines still minister to the maidens of French Canada; and in the pretentious hospital on Palace Hill where nuns still care tenderly for the sick and dying, and read the inspiring history of their order back to 1639. About the middle of the seventeenth century a stranger in Quebec would have been surprised to find that the city lacked nothing so much as people. Reversing the natural law of supply and demand, it built churches before it had worshippers, schools before it had scholars, and hospitals before it had patients. The purpose was to attract settlement by preparing beforehand for the wants of colonists. These early establishments have, however, justified themselves by a continuous and permanent history, and Quebec is now, as it was nearly three centuries ago, a city of churches and convents. The bells rang then, as now, from morning till night, Gregorian chants streamed out through convent windows, and the black-robed priest was the soul of all. Montmagny rebuilt in stone the fort on the precipice, and spared nothing to give the place a formidable appearance. For safety the church and presbytery of the Jesuits stood close to the parapet. The Ursulines, with less caution, began to build their tiny convent in the neighbouring woods. The first Hôtel-Dieu was rising on the cliff overlooking the valley of the St. Charles, and not far away was the new farm of Louis Hébert, the chemist--all together making a picture of progress. Champlain's first Habitation had fallen to ruin, but a few wooden tenements still remained to mark the earliest settlement in Lower Town, and the Church of the Récollets told the tale of past perils and an unfailing faith. A league or so up the river was the Algonquin mission of Sillery, with its clustered cabins and rude oratory, surrounded by a palisade. [Illustration: URSULINE NUNS OF QUEBEC (SALLE D'ÉTUDE, NOVICIAT>)]