QUEBEC AND ITS HISTORIC PAST

“Ve insert the remarks which accompanied the historical notes prepared by the l resident of the Lite rary and Historical Society Mr. James MePherson LeMoine, at the Harb sur excursion and luncheon given to the Delegates of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, on their visit to ( Juebec,26th August,

Ladies and Gentlemen, —'The annals of this vast dependency of Great Britan,which we are proud to call our country, vaster even in extent than the territory of your prosperous republic.are divided into two distinct parts The first century and a half - 1608 to 1759—represents the french domination. Though totally alien in its aims and aspirations from the succeeding portion, it has nevertheless for Quebec an especial charm, most endearing memories. It was the fruitful era of early discovery, 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 ofthe French monarch : a Royal Government in 1663, to save and secure the cumbersome system based on the Seigniorial Tenure in land ; a mild form of feudalism implanted at Quebec by the Grand Monarque. It would take me far beyond the limits I have 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 Bourbon, on yonder sublime cliff. Let us revert then to that hauñted 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. Charies, about a mile from its entrance, Jacques-Cartier wintered in 1535 ; the ‘Grande Hermine,” 120 tons ; the ‘ Petite Hermine,’ 6o tons ; the‘ Emerillon, ” 40 tons ; and here anchored in August 1860, Captain Vine Halls leviathan, the Great Eeastern,” of 22,500 tons ! What terror the shipping news that morning of September, 1535, must

have caused to swarthy Donnacona, the Chieftain of the Indian {froquois or Huron) town of Stadacona ! the first wäve of fo-

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