The old Custom House (now the Department of Marine), was built on this site in 1833. In 1815 the Custom House was on McCallum's wharf. The _Cul-de-Sac_ recalls "the first chapel which served as a Parish Church at Quebec," that which Champlain caused to be built in the Lower Town in 1615, where the name of Champlain is identified with the street which was bounded by this chapel. The Revd. Fathers Récollets there performed their clerical functions up to the period of the taking of Quebec by the brothers Kertk, that is from 1615 to 1629, (Laverdière.) Nothing less than the urgent necessity of providing the public with a convenient market-place, and the small coasting steamers with suitable wharves, could move the municipal authorities to construct the wharves now existing, and there, in 1856, to erect out of the materials of the old Parliament House, the spacious Champlain Hall, so conspicuous at present. The king's wharf and the king's stores, two hundred and fifty feet in length, with a guard house, built on the same site in 1821, possess also their marine and military traditions. The "Queen's Own" volunteers, Capt. Rayside, were quartered there during the stirring times of 1837-38, when "Bob Symes" dreamed each night of a new conspiracy against the British crown, and M. Aubin perpetuated, in his famous journal "_Le Fantasque_" the memory of this loyal magistrate. How many saucy frigates, how many proud English Admirals, have made fast their boats at the steps of this wharf! Jacques Cartier, Champlain, Nelson, Bourgainville, Cook, Vauclain, Montgomery, Boxer, Sir Rodney Mundy, poor Captain Burgoyne, of the ill-fated iron-clad _Captain_, Sir Leopold McClintock, [103] have, one after the other, trodden over this picturesque landing place, commanded as it is by the guns of Cape Diamond. Since about a century, the street which bears the venerated name of the founder of Quebec, Champlain street, unmindful of its ancient Gallic traditions, is almost exclusively the headquarters of our Hibernian population. An ominous-looking black-board, affixed to one of the projecting rocks of the Cape, indicates the spot below where one of their countrymen, Brigadier-General Richard Montgomery, with his two _aides- de-camp_, Cheeseman and McPherson, received their death wounds during a violent snow storm about five o'clock in the morning, the 31st December, 1775. On this disastrous morning the post was guarded by Canadian militiamen, Messieurs Chabot and Picard. Captain Barnesfare, an English mariner, had pointed the cannon; Coffin and Sergeant Hugh McQuarters applied the match. At the eastern extremity, under the stairs, now styled "Breakneck Steps," according to Messrs. Casgrain and Laverdière, was discovered Champlain's tomb, though a rival antiquary, M. S. Drapeau, says that he is not certain of this. [104]