We anchored off Cape Diamond, which divides the St Lawrence from the little river St Charles.  The continuation of this cape, as it recedes, forms the Heights of Abraham, on which the immortal Wolfe defeated Montcalm, in the year 1759, when both the generals ended their glorious career on the field of battle.  The city stands on the extremity of the cape, and has a very romantic appearance.  The houses and churches are generally covered with tin, to prevent conflagration, to which this place was remarkably subject when the houses were covered with thatch or shingle.  When the rays of the sun lay on the buildings, they had the appearance of being cased in silver.

One of our objects in going to Quebec was to procure men, of which the squadron was very deficient.  Our seamen and marines were secretly and suddenly formed into press-gangs.  The command of one of them was conferred on me.  The officers and marines went on shore in disguise, having agreed on private signals and places of rendezvous; while the seamen on whom we could depend, acted as decoy ducks, pretending to belong to merchant vessels, of which their officer was the master, and inducing them to engage, for ten gallons of rum and three hundred dollars, to take the run home.  Many were procured in this manner, and were not undeceived until they found themselves alongside of the frigate, when their oaths and execrations may be better conceived than described or repeated.

It may be proper to explain here that the vessels employed in the timber trade arrive in the month of June, as soon as the ice is clear of the river, and, if they do not sail by or before the end of October, are usually set fast in the ice, and forced to winter in the St Lawrence, losing their voyage, and lying seven or eight months idle.  Aware of this, the sailors, as soon as they arrive, desert, and are secreted and fed by the crimps, who make their market of them in the fall of the year by selling them to the captains; procuring for the men an exorbitant sum for the voyage home, and for themselves a handsome douceur for their trouble, both from the captain and the sailor.

We were desired not to take men out of the merchant vessels, but to search for them in the houses of the crimps.  This was to us a source of great amusement and singular adventure; for the ingenuity in concealing them was only equalled by the art and cunning exercised in the discovery of their abodes.  Cellars and lofts were stale and out of use; we found more game in the interior of haystacks, church steeples, closets under fireplaces where the fire was burning.  Some we found headed up in sugar-hogsheads, and some concealed within bundles of hoop-staves.  Sometimes we found seamen, dressed as gentlemen, drinking wine and talking with the greatest familiarity with people much above them in rank, who had used these means to conceal them.  Our information led us to detect these excusable impositions.