"
The army marched westward and encamped. Wolfe, with his chief engineer,
Major Mackellar, and an escort of light infantry, advanced to the
extreme point of the island.
Here he could see, in part, the desperate nature of the task he had
undertaken. Before him, three or four miles away, Quebec sat perched
upon her rock, a congregation of stone houses, churches, palaces,
convents, and hospitals; the green trees of the Seminary garden and the
spires of the Cathedral, the Ursulines, the Recollets, and the Jesuits.
Beyond rose the loftier height of Cape Diamond, edged with palisades and
capped with redoubt and parapet. Batteries frowned everywhere; the
Chateau battery, the Clergy battery, the Hospital battery, on the rock
above, and the Royal, Dauphin's, and Queen's batteries on the strand,
where the dwellings and warehouses of the lower town clustered beneath
the cliff.
Full in sight lay the far-extended camp of Montcalm, stretching from the
St. Charles, beneath the city walls, to the chasm and cataract of the
Montmorenci. From the cataract to the river of Beauport, its front was
covered by earthworks along the brink of abrupt and lofty heights; and
from the river of Beauport to the St. Charles, by broad flats of mud
swept by the fire of redoubts, intrenchments, a floating battery, and
the city itself. Above the city, Cape Diamond hid the view; but could
Wolfe have looked beyond it, he would have beheld a prospect still more
disheartening.
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