It is the best time, because the picnic and tourist season is over, and one’s contemplation of the beautiful view which every point affords is not disturbed; and as for the cluster of roof-trees lying below, it is more picturesque in its autumnal nakedness. Three-score years ago this village was the second town of importance in the province of Upper Canada. Named for Queen Charlotte, Queenston began life auspiciously in 1787 with a dock, a distillery, and a tavern; and so rapidly did it grow that the opening century found the dock transformed into a wharf flanked with store-houses, the population doubled, and those infallible signs of prosperity in a new country--a grist- and a saw-mill--running on full time. Situated at the head of the St. Lawrence route, and at the foot of the Chippewa portage, Queenston had every advantage at the start. It was the natural _dépôt_ and point of departure for the western trade, now growing rapidly with the opening of new territory. Across its narrow wharf, and up the Chippewa road, flowed for over a quarter of a century, a continuous tide of traffic, which eddying here, débouched on the near shore of the upper lakes, or spent itself in the wilderness of the far west. Hither swarmed the motley crowd that follows the hunter’s trail and the pioneer’s axe--fur-traders, settlers, speculators, Indians, emigrants, and adventurers. Government land in Canada was very cheap as compared with the price of land in the “States,” and this fact alone accounts for the great influx into Canada of Americans, immediately after the close of the War. This land boom, so wisely fostered, was too soon paralyzed by the War of 1812, and nowhere did the hardships of that war fall more heavily than upon the new port of the lower Niagara. When the hastily-planned and ill-executed assault upon Queenston Heights was made, it was only defended by a small battery upon which a solitary field-piece was mounted. Those extensive earthworks west of the monument were an afterthought. They were not built until 1814. General Brock was killed below this redan; and the heaviest fighting must have been along the foot of the ledge. A small cenotaph marks the spot where Brock fell. This little monument is more interesting from the fact that King Edward himself, as Prince of Wales, placed the block in position in 1860. But for situation, no monument in the country can compare with that which marks the place of General Brock’s sepulchre. Standing on the very crown of the Heights, this shaft dominates a wonderful picture. The monument itself is of the usual British type, and the figure surmounting it might be Nelson, so very like is it to that hero’s attitude in stone.