' After we
had cleared this remarkable place, where the channel forms a complete
zigzag, the master called to his mate to give the helm to somebody else,
saying, 'Damn me if there are not a thousand places in the Thames fifty
times more hazardous than this; I am ashamed that Englishmen should make
such a rout about it.' The Frenchman asked me if the captain had not
been there before. I assured him in the negative; upon which he viewed
him with great attention, lifting at the same time his hands and eyes to
heaven with astonishment and fervency."[712]
[Footnote 712: Others, as well as the pilot, were astonished. "The enemy
passed sixty ships of war where we hardly dared risk a vessel of a
hundred tons." "Notwithstanding all our precautions, the English,
without any accident, by night, as well as by day, passed through it
[_the Traverse_] their ships of seventy and eighty guns, and even many
of them together." _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 22 Oct. 1759_.]
Vaudreuil was blamed for not planting cannon at a certain plateau on the
side of the mountain of Cape Tourmente, where the gunners would have
been inaccessible, and whence they could have battered every passing
ship with a plunging fire. As it was, the whole fleet sailed safely
through. On the twenty-sixth they were all anchored off the south shore
of the Island of Orleans, a few miles from Quebec; and, writes Knox,
"here we are entertained with a most agreeable prospect of a delightful
country on every side; windmills, watermills, churches, chapels, and
compact farmhouses, all built with stone, and covered, some with wood,
and others with straw.
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