QUEBEC AXD ITS HI3T0RIC PAST

"We insert the remarks which accompanied thehistorical notes prepared by the Président of the Literary and Historical Society j\Ir. James McPherson LeMoine, at the Harb jur excursion and hmcheon given to the Delegates of the American Association for the Advancement ofi?cience,on their visit to Quebec,26th Auu-ust, 1882 :

" Ladies and Gentlemen, —The annals of this vastdependency of Great Britam,which \ve are proud to call our country, vaster even in extentthan the territory ofyour prospérons republic,are divided into two distinct parts The first century and a half-i6o8to 1759 — represents the French domination. Though totally ahen in its aims and aspirations from the bucceeding portion, it has nevertheless for Québec an especial charm, most endearing memories. It was the fruitful era of early discov^ery, missionary zeal and heroism, wealthy fur trading companies — shall we call them monopolies — incessant wars with the ferocious aborigines and sanguinary raids into the adjoining British provinces. When the colony expanded, an enlarged colonial outfit called into existence more powerful machinery, more direct intervention of the French monarch : a Royal Government in 1663, to save and secure die ■cumbersome System based on ihe Seigniorial Tenure in land ; a mild form of feudaUsm implanted at Québec by the Grand Monargite. It would take me fjr beyond the limi'ts I hâve prescribed myself, were I to unravel the tangled web of early colonial rule or misrule, which until the conquest by Britain in 1759, flourished, under the lily banner ofthe Bourbons, on yonder sublime cliff. Let us revert then to that haunted dreamland of the past ; let us glance at a period anterior to the fondation of Jamestown in 1607, even much anterior to the fondation of Ste. Augustine, in Florida. On the north bank of the river St. Charles, about a mile from its entrance, Jacques-Cartier winteredin 1535 ; the "Grande Hermine," 120 tons ; the " Petite Hermine,' 60 tons ; the " Emerillon, " 40 tons ;and hère anchored in August 1860, Captain Vine Hall's leviathan, the Great Eeastern," of 22,500 tons ! What terror the shipping news that morning of September, 1535, must hâve caused to swarthy Donnacona, the Chieftain ofthe Indian (Iroquois or Huron) town of Stadacona ! the first wave of fo-