Abraham Martin, according to the documents quoted by Col. Beatson, owned in two separate lots--one of twenty and the other of twelve _arpents_--thirty-two _arpents_ of land, covering, as appears by the subjoined Plan or Diagram copied from his work, a great portion of the site on which St. John and St. Louis Suburbs have since been erected. Abraham's property occupied, it would seem, a portion of the area--the northern section--which, for a long period, also went under the name of Abraham's Plains. It adjoined other land of the Ursuline Ladies then owned on _Côteau St. Louis_, closer to the city, when 1667, [202] it was purchased by them; at that time, the whole tract, according to Col. Beatson, went under the general name of Plains of Abraham. Such appear to be the results of recent researches on this once very obscure question. _THE BATTLE FIELD._ Two highways, lined with country seats, forest trees or cornfields run parallel, at a distance varying from one to half a mile, leading into Quebec: the _Grande Allée_, or St. Louis and the Ste. Foye road. They intersect from east to west the expanse, nine miles in length, from _Cap Rouge_ to the city. These well known chief arteries of travel were solidly macadamized in 1841. At the western point, looms out the oak and pine clad cliffs of a lofty cape--_Cap Rouge_ or _Redclyffe_. Here wintered, in 1541-2, the discoverer of Canada, Cartier and his followers, here, in 1543-4, his celebrated follower, Roberval, seems also to have sojourned during the dreary months of winter. A small stream, at the foot of the cape, meanders in a north westerly direction through St. Augustin and neighbouring parishes, forming a deep valley all around the cape. The conformation of the land has led geologists to infer that, at some remote period, the plateau, extending to Quebec, must have been surrounded on all sides by water, the _Cap Rouge_ stream and St. Charles being the outlets on the west, north and east. This area increases in altitude until it reaches the lofty summit of Cape Diamond, its eastern boundary. Nature itself seems to have placed these rugged heights as an insurmountable barrier to invasion from the St. Lawrence. With the walls, bastion and heavy city guns; with artillery in position on the _Cap Rouge_ promontory; cavalry patrolling the Sillery heights; a numerous army on the only accessible portion of the coast-- Beauport, Quebec, if succoured in time, was tolerably safe; so thought some of the French engineers, though not Montcalm.