In some situations whole streets had been nearly depopulated; those that were able fled panic-stricken to the country villages, while others remained to die in the bosom of their families.

To no class, I am told, has the disease proved so fatal as to the poorer sort of emigrants.  Many of these, debilitated by the privations and fatigue of a long voyage, on reaching Quebec or Montreal indulged in every sort of excess, especially the dangerous one of intoxication; and, as if purposely paving the way to certain destruction, they fell immediate victims to the complaint.

In one house eleven persons died, in another seventeen; a little child of seven years old was the only creature left to tell the woful tale.  This poor desolate orphan was taken by the nuns to their benevolent institution, where every attention was paid that humanity could suggest.

The number both of Catholic and Protestant benevolent societies is very great, and these are maintained with a liberality of principle that does honour to both parties, who seem indeed actuated by a fervent spirit of Christian charity.

I how of no place, not even excepting London itself, where the exercise of benevolent feelings is more called for than in these two cities, Quebec and Montreal.  Here meet together the unfortunate, the improvident, the helpless orphan, the sick, the aged, the poor virtuous man, driven by the stern hand of necessity from his country and his home, perhaps to be overtaken by sickness or want in a land of strangers.

It is melancholy to reflect that a great number of the poorest class of emigrants that perished in the reign of the cholera have left no trace by which their sorrowing anxious friends in the old country may learn their fate.  The disease is so sudden and so violent that it leaves no time for arranging worldly matters; the sentinel comes, not as it did to Hezekiah, “Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live.”

The weather is sultry hot, accompanied by frequent thunder-showers, which have not the effect one would expect, that of cooling the heated atmosphere.  I experience a degree of languor and oppression that is very distressing, and worse than actual pain.

Instead of leaving this place by the first conveyance for the upper province, as we fully purposed doing, we find ourselves obliged to remain two days longer, owing to the dilatoriness of the custom-house officers in overlooking our packages.  The fact is that everything and everybody are out of sorts.

The heat has been too oppressive to allow of my walking much abroad.  I have seen but little of the town beyond the streets adjacent to the hotel:  with the exception of the Catholic Cathedral, I have seen few of the public buildings.  With the former I was much pleased:  it is a fine building, though still in an unfinished state, the towers not having been carried to the height originally intended.  The eastern window, behind the altar, is seventy feet