The meeting over, Donnacona steered for home; and Jacques Cartier ordered his boats to be manned and ascended the river to seek for a safe anchorage for his ships. He soon found what he sought, entered then the river Saint Charles, by him called the St. Croix, landed, crossed the meadows, climbed the rocks, and threaded the forest. On his return, when he and his party were rowing for the ships, they had to stand another harangue from the bank, from an old chief, surrounded by men, boys and some merry squaws, to whom they gave as presents glass beads, &c., when they regained their vessels. What took place at the interview between the French commander and the Huron potentate? What were the thoughts, hopes, fears of the grim chieftain on that fateful September day which brought in across the Atlantic the first wave of foreign invasion--the outer barbarian to his forest abode? One would fain depict king Donnacona roaming, solitary and sad; mayhap, on the ethereal heights of Cape Diamond, watching, with feelings not unmingled with alarm, the onward course of the French ships--to him phantoms of ill-omen careering over the dreary waters--until their white shrouds gradually disappeared under the shadow of the waving pines and far-spreading oaks which then clad the green banks of the lurking, tortuous St Charles. Chief Donnacona, beware! O beware! CHAPTER III. _THE "ANCIENT CAPITAL."_ _QUEBEC--ITS HIGHWAYS AND BY-WAYS, EDIFICES, MONUMENTS, CITIZENS, LEGENDS, CHRONICLES, AND ANTIQUITIES._ "I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes With the memorials and the things of fame That do renown this city."--(_Shakespeare_.) What a field here for investigation? Has not each thoroughfare its distinctive feature--its saintly, heathenish, courtly, national, heroic, perhaps burlesque, name? Its peculiar origin? traceable sometimes to a dim--a forgotten past; sometimes to the utilitarian present time. What curious vistas are unfolded in the birth of its edifices--public and private--alive with the memories of their clerical, bellicose, agricultural or mercantile founders? How much mysterious glamour does not relentless time shed over them in its unceasing march? How many vicissitudes do they undergo before giving way to modern progress, the exigencies of commerce, the wants or whims of new masters? The edifices, did we say? Their origin, their progress, their decay, nay, their demolition by the modern iconoclast--have they no teachings? How many phases in the art of the builder and engineer, from the high-peaked Norman cottage to the ponderous, drowsy Mansard roof--from Champlain's picket fort to the modern citadel of Quebec--from our primitive legislative meeting-house to our stately Parliament Buildings on the Grande Allée? The streets and by-ways of famous old world cities have found chroniclers, in some instances of rare ability: Timbs, Howitt, Augustus Sala, Longfellow, &c. Why should not those of our own land obtain a passing notice?