"For a considerable time past, several plans of amelioration of the City of Quebec," says the Abbé Ferland, "were proposed to the Ministry by M. de Meules. The absolute necessity of obtaining a desirable locality for the residence of the Intendant, and for holding the sessions of the Council; the Château St. Louis being hardly sufficient to afford suitable quarters for the Governor and the persons who formed his household. M. de Meules proposed purchasing a large stone building which M. Talon had caused to be erected for the purpose of a brewery, and which, for several years, had remained unoccupied. Placed in a very commodious position on the bank of the river St. Charles, and not many steps from the Upper Town, this edifice, with suitable repairs and additions, might furnish not alone a desirable residence for the Intendant, but also halls and offices for the Supreme Council and the Courts of Justice, as likewise vaults for the archives and a prison for the criminals. Adjacent to the old brewery, M. Talon owned an extent of land of about seventeen superficial acres, of which no use was made in M. de Meules' plan; a certain portion of this land could be reserved for the gardens and dependencies of the Intendant's Palace, whilst the remainder might be portioned off into building lots (_emplacements_), and thus convert it into a second lower town, and which might some day be extended to the foot of the Cape. He believed that if this plan were adopted, the new buildings of Quebec would extend in that direction, and not on the heights almost exclusively occupied by the Religious Communities. [129] We perceive, according to Mr. Panet's Journal, that Saint Roch existed in 1759; that the women and children, residents of that quarter, were not wholly indifferent to the fate of their distressed country. "The same day (31st July, 1759)," says Panet, "we heard a great uproar in the St. Roch quarter--the women and children were shouting, 'Long Live the King!'" [130] "I ascended the height (on the _Coteau Ste. Geneviève_) and there beheld the first frigate all in a blaze, very shortly afterwards a black smoke issuing from the second, which blew up and afterwards took fire." On the 4th August several bomb-shells of 80 lbs. fell on St. Roch. We read, that on the 31st August, two soldiers were hanged at three o'clock in the afternoon, for having stolen a cask of brandy from the house of one Charland, in the St. Roch quarter. In those times the General (or _the Recorder_) did not do things by halves. Who was, this Charland of 1759? Could he be the same who, sixteen years afterwards, fought so stoutly with Lieut. Dambourgès at the Sault-au-Matelot engagement? Since the inauguration of the English domination, St. Roch became peopled in a most rapid manner, we now see there a net-work of streets, embracing in extent several leagues.