"From hence to Cap Rouge the scenery, on account of its beauty and variety, attracts the attention of the passenger. At Sillery, a league from Quebec, on the north shore, are the ruins of an establishment which was begun in 1637, intended as a religious institution for the conversion and instruction of natives of the country; it was at one time inhabited by twelve French families. The buildings are placed upon level ground, sheltered by steep banks, and close by the borders of the river; they now only consist of two old stone houses, fallen to decay, and of the remains of a small chapel (the chapel has of late been repaired and fitted up for a malt house, and some of the other buildings have been converted into a brewery). [192] In this vicinity the Algonquins once had a village; several of their tumuli, or burying places, are still discoverable in the woods, and hieroglyphics cut on the trees remain, in some situations, yet unaffected." [193] On the 6th June, 1865, we determined to afford ourselves a long-promised treat, and go and survey, with Abbé Ferland's _Notes on Sillery_ open before us, and also the help of that eminently respected authority in every parish, the "oldest inhabitant," the traces of the Sillery settlement of 1637. Nor had we long to wait before obtaining ocular demonstration of the minute exactitude with which our old friend, the Abbé, had investigated and measured every stone, every crumbling remain of brick and mortar. The first and most noticeable relic pointed out was the veritable house of the missionaries, facing the St. Lawrence, on the north side of the road, on Sillery Cove; it was the property of the late Henry Le Mesurier, Esquire, of Beauvoir. Were it in the range of possible events that the good fathers could revisit the scene of their past apostolical labours and view their former earthly tenement, hard would be the task to identify it. The heavy three-feet-thick wall is there yet, as perfect, as massive, as defiant as ever; the pointed gable and steep roof, in spite of alterations, still stands--the true index of an old French structure in Canada. Our forefathers seemed as if they never could make the roof of a dwelling steep enough, doubtless to prevent the accumulation of snow. But here ends all analogy with the past; so jaunty, so cosy, so modern does the front and interior of Sillery "Manor House" look--thus styled for many years past. Paint, paper and furniture have made it quite a snug abode. Nor was it without a certain peculiar feeling of reverence we, for the first time, crossed that threshold, and entered beneath those fortress- like walls, where for years had resounded the orisons of the Jesuit Fathers, the men from whose ranks were largely recruited our heroic band of early martyrs--some of whose dust, unburied, but not unhonoured, has mingled for two centuries with its parent earth on the green banks of Lake Simcoe, on the borders of the Ohio, in the environs of Kingston, Montreal,