His occupation of the heights of Montmorenci exposed him to great risks.  The left wing of his army at Point Levi was six miles from its right wing at the cataract, and Major Hardy’s detachment on the Point of Orleans was between them, separated from each by a wide arm of the St. Lawrence.  Any one of the three camps might be overpowered before the others could support it; and Hardy with his small force was above all in danger of being cut to pieces.  But the French kept persistently on the defensive; and after the failure of Dumas to dislodge the English from Point Levi, Vaudreuil would not hear of another such attempt.  Wolfe was soon well intrenched; but it was easier to defend himself than to strike at his enemy.  Montcalm, when urged to attack him, is said to have answered:  “Let him amuse himself where he is.  If we drive him off he may go to some place where he can do us harm.”  His late movement, however, had a discouraging effect on the Canadians, who now for the first time began to desert.  His batteries, too, played across the chasm of Montmorenci upon the left wing of the French army with an effect extremely annoying.

The position of the hostile forces was a remarkable one.  They were separated by the vast gorge that opens upon the St. Lawrence; an amphitheatre of lofty precipices, their brows crested with forests, and their steep brown sides scantily feathered with stunted birch and fir.  Into this abyss leaps the Montmorenci with one headlong plunge of nearly two hundred and fifty feet, a living column of snowy white, with its spray, its foam, its mists, and its rainbows; then spreads itself in broad thin sheets over a floor of rock and gravel, and creeps tamely to the St. Lawrence.  It was but a gunshot across the gulf, and the sentinels on each side watched each other over the roar and turmoil of the cataract.  Captain Knox, coming one day from Point Levi to receive orders from Wolfe, improved a spare hour to visit this marvel of nature.  “I had very nigh paid dear for my inquisitiveness; for while I stood on the eminence I was hastily called to by one of our sentinels, when, throwing my eyes about, I saw a Frenchman creeping under the eastern extremity of their breastwork to fire at me.  This obliged me to retire as fast as I could out of his reach, and, making up to the sentry to thank him for his attention, he told me the fellow had snapped his piece twice, and the second time it flashed in the pan at the instant I turned away from the Fall.”  Another officer, less fortunate, had a leg broken by a shot from the opposite cliffs.

Day after day went by, and the invaders made no progress.  Flags of truce passed often between the hostile camps.  “You will demolish the town, no doubt,” said the bearer of one of them, “but you shall never get inside of it.”  To which Wolfe replied:  “I will have Quebec if I stay here till the end of November.”  Sometimes the heat was intense, and sometimes there were floods