"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 upon 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-coloured bark of his boat. Some moved upon the rafts, and even upon 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 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.