At length from the top came a sound of musket-shots, followed by loud huzzas, and he knew that his men were masters of the position.  The word was given; the troops leaped from the boats and scaled the heights, some here, some there, clutching at trees and bushes, their muskets slung at their backs.  Tradition still points out the place, near the mouth of the ravine, where the foremost reached the top.  Wolfe said to an officer near him:  “You can try it, but I don’t think you’ll get up.”  He himself, however, found strength to drag himself up with the rest.  The narrow slanting path on the face of the heights had been made impassable by trenches and abattis; but all obstructions were soon cleared away, and then the ascent was easy.  In the gray of the morning the long file of red-coated soldiers moved quickly upward, and formed in order on the plateau above.

Before many of them had reached the top, cannon were heard close on the left.  It was the battery at Samos firing on the boats in the rear and the vessels descending from Cap-Rouge.  A party was sent to silence it; this was soon effected, and the more distant battery at Sillery was next attacked and taken.  As fast as the boats were emptied they returned for the troops left on board the vessels and for those waiting on the southern shore under Colonel Burton.

The day broke in clouds and threatening rain.  Wolfe’s battalions were drawn up along the crest of the heights.  No enemy was in sight, though a body of Canadians had sallied from the town and moved along the strand towards the landing-place, whence they were quickly driven back.  He had achieved the most critical part of his enterprise; yet the success that he coveted placed him in imminent danger.  On one side was the garrison of Quebec and the army of Beauport, and Bougainville was on the other.  Wolfe’s alternative was victory or ruin; for if he should be overwhelmed by a combined attack, retreat would be hopeless.  His feelings no man can know; but it would be safe to say that hesitation or doubt had no part in them.

He went to reconnoitre the ground, and soon came to the Plains of Abraham, so called from Abraham Martin, a pilot known as Maitre Abraham, who had owned a piece of land here in the early times of the colony.  The Plains were a tract of grass, tolerably level in most parts, patched here and there with cornfields, studded with clumps of bushes, and forming a part of the high plateau at the eastern end of which Quebec stood.  On the south it was bounded by the declivities along the St. Lawrence; on the north, by those along the St. Charles, or rather along the meadows through which that lazy stream crawled like a writhing snake.  At the place that Wolfe chose for his battle-field the plateau was less than a mile wide.