Montcalm And Wolfe

Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIX. 1758. LOOISBOURG. CONDITION OP THE FORTRESS. ? ARRIVAL OF THB ENGLISH. LAKTIir OK WOLKE.? TlIE ENGLISH CAMP. TflB SlEGE BEGUN. ? I'hogukhh Ok The Besiegers. ? Sallies Ok The French. Madame Drdcodr.?Courtesies Op War. ? French Ships DeStroyed. ? Conflagration. ? Fury Op The Bombardment. ? Exploit Op English Sailors. ? The End Near. ? The Wuitr Flag. ? Surrender.? Reception Of The News is England And Amkkica.? Wolpk. Not Satisfied.? His Letters To Ajibebst. ? He Dkstkoys Gaspe.? Returns To England. The stormy coast of Cape Breton is indented by a small land-locked bay, between which and the ocean lies a tongue of land dotted with a few grazing sheep, and intersected by rows of stone that mark more or less distinctly the lines of what once were streets. Green mounds and embankments of earth enclose the whole space, and beneath the highest of them yawn arches and caverns of ancient masonry. This grassy solitude was once the " Dunkirk of America;" the vaulted caverns where the sheep find shelter from the rain were casemates where terrified women sought refuge from storms of shot and shell, and the shapeless green mounds were citadel, bastion, rampart, and glacis. Here stood Louisbourg; and not all the efforts of its conquerors, nor all the 1758.] PRESENT STATE OF LOUISBOURG. 53 havoc of succeeding times, have availed to efface it. Men in hundreds toiled for months with lever, spade, and gunpowder in the work of destruction, and for more than a century it has served as a stone quarry; but the remains of its vast defences still tell their tale of human valor and human woe. Stand on the mounds that were once the King's Bastion. The glistening sea spreads eastward three thousand miles, and its waves meet their first rebuff against this iron coast....