Across the broad valley of the St. Charles, covered with green
fields and ripening harvests, and dotted with quaint old homesteads,
redolent with memories of Normandy and Brittany, rose a long
mountain ridge covered with primeval woods, on the slope of which
rose the glittering spire of Charlebourg, once a dangerous outpost
of civilization. The pastoral Lairet was seen mingling its waters
with the St. Charles in a little bay that preserves the name of
Jacques Cartier, who with his hardy companions spent their first
winter in Canada on this spot, the guests of the hospitable
Donacana, lord of Quebec and of all the lands seen from its lofty
cape.
Directly beneath the feet of the Governor, on a broad strip of land
that lay between the beach and the precipice, stood the many-gabled
Palace of the Intendant, the most magnificent structure in New
France. Its long front of eight hundred feet overlooked the royal
terraces and gardens, and beyond these the quays and magazines,
where lay the ships of Bordeaux, St. Malo, and Havre, unloading the
merchandise and luxuries of France in exchange for the more rude,
but not less valuable, products of the Colony.
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