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A Yankee in Canada

by Henry D. Thoreau

Louis Gate to the glacis on the north of the citadel proper,—I believe that I was the only visitor then in the city who got in there,—I enjoyed a prospect nearly as good as from within the citadel itself, which I had explored some days before. As I walked on the glacis I heard the sound of a bagpipe from the soldierse dwellings in the rock, and was further soothed and affected by the sight of a soldieres cat walking up a cleeted plank into a high loop-hole, designed for mus-catry, as serene as Wisdom herself, and with a gracefully waving motion of her tail, as if her ways were ways of pleasantness and all her paths were peace. Sealing a slat fence, where a small force might have checked me, I got out of the esplanade into the Governores Garden, and read the well-known inscription on Wolfe and Montcalmes monument, which for saying much in little, and that to the purpose, undoubtedly deserved the prize medal which it received:

MORTEM . VIRTUS . COMMUNEM .

FAMAM . HISTORIA .

MONUMENTUM . POSTERITAS .

DEDIT (Valor gave them one death, history one fame, posterity one monument.) The Government Garden has for nose-gays, amid kitchen vegetables, beside the common garden flowers, the usual complement of cannon directed toward some future and possible enemy. I then returned up St. Louis Street to the esplanade and ramparts there, and went round the Upper Town once more, though I was very tired, this time on the inside of the wall; for I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money, and therefore I must make the most of it. In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true. Moreover, I cannot say but I yielded in some measure to the soldier instinct, and, having but a short time to spare, thought it best to examine the wall thoroughly, that I might be the better prepared if I should ever be called that way again in the service of my country. I committed all the gates to memory in their order, which did not cost me so much trouble as it would have done at the hundred-gated city, there being only five; nor were they so hard to remember as those seven of Boeotian Thebes; and, moreover, I thought that, if seven champions were enough against the latter, one would be enough against Quebec, though he bore for all armor and device only an umbrella and a bundle. I took the nunneries as I went, for I had learned to distinguish them by the blinds; and I observed also the foundling hospitals and the convents, and whatever was attached to, or in the vicinity of the walls. All the rest I omitted, as naturally as one would the inside of an inedible shell-fish. These were the only pearls, and the wall the only mother-of-pearl for me. Quebec is chiefly famous for the thickness of its parietal bones. The technical terms of its conchology may stagger a beginner a little at first, such as banlieue, esplanade, glacis, ravelin, cavalier, but with the aid of a comprehensive dictionary you soon learn the nature of your ground. I was surprised at the extent of the artillery barracks, built so long ago,—Casernes Nouvelles, they used to be called,—nearly six hundred feet in length by forty in depth, where the sentries, like peripatetic philosophers, were so absorbed in thought, as not to notice me when I passed in and out at the gates.

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  • Biography
  • Books:
    • Walden; or, Life in the Woods (172 pages)
    • The Maine Woods (153 pages)
    • Cape Cod (112 pages)
    • A Yankee in Canada (45 pages)
    • A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (197 pages)
  • Major Essays:
    • Civil Disobedience (16 pages)
    • Slavery in Massachusetts (10 pages)
    • Life Without Principle (13 pages)
    • A Walk to Wachusett (10 pages)
    • A Winter Walk (10 pages)
    • Walking (21 pages)
    • Natural History of Massachusetts (14 pages)
    • The Succession of Forest Trees (10 pages)
    • Autumnal Tints (20 pages)
    • Wild Apples (16 pages)
  • Other Essays  »
  • Correspondence  »
  • Poems  »
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