Come with me for a ride about Quebec, the oldest city in Canada, the ancient capital of France in America, and a stronghold of the Catholic Church. We go from the water-front through the Lower Town, up the heights, and out to where the modern city eats into the countryside. The Lower Town is largely French. The main part of the Upper Town used to be enclosed by walls and stone gates, parts of which are still standing. The dull gray buildings are of stone, with only shelf-like sidewalks between them and the street. Most of the streets are narrow. The heights are ascended by stairs, by a winding street, and in one place by an elevator. The old French caleche, a two-wheeled vehicle between a jinrikisha and a dog-cart, has been largely displaced by motor-cars, which can climb the steep grades in a jiffy. Even the ancient buildings are giving way to modern necessities, and every year some are torn down.

As a city, Quebec is unique on this continent. It fairly drips with “atmosphere,” and is concentrated romance and history. You know the story, of course, of how Champlain founded it in 1608, on a narrow shelf of land under the rocky bluff that rises nearly three hundred and fifty feet above the St. Lawrence. Here brave French noblemen and priests started what they hoped would be a new empire for France. Between explorations, fights with the Indians, and frequent British attacks, they lived an exciting life. Finally, General Wolfe in 1759 succeeded in capturing for the British this Gibraltar of the New World. Landing his men by night, at dawn he was in position on the Plains of Abraham behind the fort. In the fight that followed Wolfe was killed, Montcalm, the French commander, was mortally wounded, and the city passed into the hands of the English. If General Montgomery and Benedict Arnold had succeeded in their attack on Quebec on New Year’s Eve, sixteen years later, the history of all Canada would have been different, and the United States flag might be flying over the city to-day.

The British built in the rock on top of the bluff a great fort and citadel covering about forty acres. It still bristles with cannon, but most of them are harmless compared with modern big guns. The works serve chiefly as a show place for visitors, and a summer residence for dukes and lords sent out to be governors-general of Canada. The fortification is like a mediæval castle, with subterranean chambers and passages, and cannon balls heaped around the battlements. Below the old gun embrasures is a broad terrace, a quarter of a mile long. This furnishes the people of Quebec a beautiful promenade that overlooks the harbour and commands a fine view of Levis and the numerous villages on the other shore.

The Parliament building stands a little beyond the entrance to the citadel. As we go on the architecture reflects the transition from French to British domination. The houses begin to move back from the sidewalk, and to take on front porches. I saw workmen putting in double windows, in preparation for winter, and noticed that the sides of many of the brick houses are clapboarded to keep the frost out of the mortar. Still farther out apartments appear, while a little beyond are all the marks of a suburban real estate boom. Most of the “for sale” signs are in both French and English.

Now come with me and look at another Quebec, of which you probably have never heard. The city is built, as you know, where the St. Charles River flows into the St. Lawrence. The valley of the St. Charles has become a great hive of industry, and contains the homes of thousands of French workers. Looking down upon it from the ancient Martello Tower on the heights of the Upper Town, we see a wilderness of factory walls, church spires, and the roofs of homes. Beyond them great fields slope upward, finally losing themselves in the wooded foothills of the Laurentian Mountains. Cotton goods, boots and shoes, tobacco, and clothing are manufactured here. It was from this valley that workers for the textile and shoe industries of New England were recruited by thousands. A few miles upstream is the village of Indian Lorette, where descendants of a Huron tribe, Christianized by the French centuries ago, make leather moccasins for lumberjacks and slippers for American souvenir buyers. A big fur company also has a fox farm near Indian Lorette.

Quebec was once the chief port of Canada, but when the river was dredged up to Montreal it fell far behind. All but the largest transatlantic liners can now sail for Europe from Montreal, though they make Quebec a port of call. Quebec is five hundred miles nearer Liverpool than is New York, and passengers using this route have two days less in the open sea. The navigation season is about eight months. The port has rail connections with all Canada and the United States. Above the city is the world’s longest cantilever bridge, on which trains cross the river. After two failures the great central span, six hundred and forty feet long, was raised from floating barges and put into place one hundred and fifty feet above the water.

In the English atmosphere of the Maritime Provinces I felt quite at home, but here I seem to be in a foreign land, and time has been pushed back a century or so. We think of Canada as British, and assume that English is the national language. But in Quebec, its largest province, containing about one fifth of the total area, nearly nine tenths of the people are French and speak the French language. They number almost one fourth of the population of the Dominion.

Quebec is larger than Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California combined; it is nearly as big as all our states east of the Mississippi River put together. Covering an area of seven hundred thousand square miles, it reaches from the northern borders of New York and New England to the Arctic Ocean; from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Labrador westward to Hudson Bay and the Ottawa River. Most Americans see that part of Quebec along the St. Lawrence between the capital and Montreal, but only one fourteenth of the total area of the province lies south of the river. The St. Lawrence is more than nineteen hundred miles long, and Quebec extends along its north bank for almost the entire distance.

Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence in 1535 and claimed possession of the new land in the name of “Christ and France.” Later, French soldiers and priests pushed their way up the river, explored the Great Lakes, and went down the Mississippi. It was French fur traders, fishermen, and farmers who opened up and populated eastern Canada. With no immigration from France since British rule began, the population of the province of Quebec has had a natural increase from about sixty thousand to more than two millions. The average family numbers from six to eight persons, while families of twelve and fourteen children are common. Quebec maintains the highest birth rate of any province in Canada. It has also the highest death rate, but there is a large net gain every year.

Quebec is one of the chief reservoirs of Canada’s natural wealth. It leads all other provinces in its production of pulpwood, and contributes more than one half the Dominion’s output of pulp and paper. It is second only to British Columbia and Ontario in lumber production, while its northern reaches contain the last storehouse of natural furs left on our continent.

Canada is one of the world’s great sources of water-power. Nearly half of that already developed is in the province of Quebec, and her falling waters are now yielding more than a million horse-power. Tens of thousands of additional units are being put to work every year, while some five million horse-power are in reserve. It would take eight million tons of coal a year to supply as much power as Quebec now gets from water.

At Three Rivers, about halfway between Montreal and Quebec, the St. Maurice River empties into the St. Lawrence. Twenty miles upstream are the Shawinigan Falls, the chief source of power of the Shawinigan Company, which, with its subsidiaries, is now producing in this district more than five hundred thousand horse-power. This is nearly half the total power development in the province. Around the power plant there have grown up electro-chemical industries that support a town of twelve thousand people, while at Three Rivers more paper is made than anywhere else in the world. Shawinigan power runs the lighting plants and factories of Montreal and Quebec, and also serves most of the towns south of the St. Lawrence. The current is carried over the river in a thick cable, nearly a mile long, suspended on high towers.

In the Thetford district of southern Quebec, power from Shawinigan operates the machinery of the asbestos mines. Fifty years ago, when these deposits were discovered, there was almost no market for asbestos at ten dollars a ton. Nowadays, with its use in theatre curtains, automobile brake linings, and coatings for furnaces and steam pipes, the best grades bring two thousand dollars a ton, and two hundred thousand tons are produced in a year. Quebec now furnishes eighty-eight per cent. of the world’s annual supply of this mineral.

The Quebec government controls all power sites, and leases them to private interests for ninety-nine year terms. The province has spent large sums in conserving its water-power resources. At the headquarters of the St. Maurice River, it built the Gouin reservoir, which floods an area of more than three hundred square miles, and stores more water than the great Aswan Dam on the Nile.

Quebec is the third province in value of agricultural production. What I have seen of its farms convinces me that the French Canadian on the land is a conspicuous success. For a half day I rode along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River through a country like one great farm. Nearly every foot of it is occupied by French farmers. Most of the time we were on high ground, overlooking the river, which, where we first saw it, was forty miles wide. It grew constantly narrower, until, where we crossed it on a ferry to Quebec, its width was less than a mile. All the way we had splendid views of the Laurentian Mountains, looming up on the north shore of the river. Geologists say the Laurentians are the oldest rock formation on our continent. They are not high, the peaks averaging about sixteen hundred feet elevation, but they are one of the great fish and game preserves of the world and are sprinkled with hunting and fishing clubs.

In accordance with French law the Quebec farms have been divided and sub-divided among so many succeeding generations that the land is cut into narrow ribbons. Contrary to the custom in France, however, every field is fenced in with rails. I am sure that the fences I saw, if joined together, would easily reach from Quebec to Washington and back. They did not zig-zag across the fields like ours, thereby wasting both rails and land, but extended in a straight line, up hill and down, sometimes for as much as a mile or more.

The standard French farm along the St. Lawrence used to be “three acres wide and thirty acres long,” with a wood lot at the farther end, and the house in the middle. As the river was the chief highway of the country, it was essential that every farmer have water frontage. With each division one or more new houses would be built, and always in the middle of the strip. The result is that every farmer has a near neighbour on each side of him, and the farmhouses form an almost continuous settlement along the highway, much like the homes on a suburban street. Each wood lot usually includes several hundred maple trees, and the annual production of maple sugar and syrup in Quebec is worth several hundred thousand dollars. The maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada.

The houses are large and well built. They have narrow porches, high above the ground, reached by steps from below. This construction enables the occupants to gain access to their living rooms in winter without so much snow shovelling as would otherwise be necessary. For the same reason, most of the barns are entered by inclines leading up to the second floor and some are connected with the houses by bridges. The older houses are of stone, coated with whitewashed cement. With their dormer windows and big, square chimneys they look comfortable.

I saw the signs of thrift everywhere. Firewood was piled up for the winter, and in many cases a few cords of pulpwood besides, sometimes in such a manner as to form fences for the vegetable gardens. This winter the pulpwood in these fences will be sold. The chief crops raised are hay, oats, beans, and peas. The latter, in the form of soup, is served almost daily in the Quebec farmer’s home.

In the villages all the signs are in French, and in one where I stopped for a time, I had difficulty in making myself understood. The British Canadian resents the fact that the French do not try to learn English. On the other hand the French rather resent the English neglect of French, which they consider the proper language of the country. Proceedings in the provincial parliament are in both tongues. French business men and the professional and office-holding classes can speak English, but the mass of the people know but the one language and are not encouraged to learn any other.

When the British conceded to Quebec the right to retain the French language, the French law, and the Catholic Church, they made it possible for the French to remain almost a separate people. The French Canadians ask only that they be permitted to control their own affairs in their own way, and to preserve their institutions of family, church, and school. They cultivate the land and perform most of the labour; they own all the small shops, while most of the big business is in the hands of British Canadians. Any slight, real or fancied, to the French language or institutions, is quickly resented. The other day a French society and the Mayor of Quebec made a formal protest to a hotel manager because he displayed a sign printed only in English. American moving picture distributors must supply their films with titles in French. Menu cards, traffic directions, and, in fact, almost all notices of a public character, are always given in both languages. Only two of the five daily newspapers are printed in English; the others are French.

Quebec is now capitalizing her assets in the way of scenery and historic association, and is calculating how much money a motor tourist from the States is worth each day of his visit. The city of Quebec hopes to become the St. Moritz of America and the centre for winter sports. The Canadian Pacific Railroad has here the first of its chain of hotels that extends across Canada. It is built in the design of a French castle, and is so big that it dwarfs the Citadel. The hotel provides every facility for winter sports, including skating and curling rinks, toboggan slides, and ski jumps. It has expert ski jumpers from Norway to initiate visitors into this sport, and dog teams from Alaska to pull them on sleds. Quebec has snow on the ground throughout the winter season, and the thermometer sometimes drops to twenty-five degrees below zero, but the people say the air is so dry that they do not feel this severe cold. Which reminds me of Kipling’s verse: