of Ste.-Foy, with a row of Canadian houses stretching far to right and left.  This ridge was the declivity of the plateau of Quebec; the same which as it approaches the town, some five or six miles towards the left, takes the names of Cote d’Abraham and Cote Ste.-Genevieve.  The church and the houses were occupied by British troops, who, as the French debouchedfrom the woods, opened on them with cannon, and compelledthem to fall back.  Though the ridge at this point is not steep, the position was a strong one; but had Levis known how fewwere as yet there to oppose him, he might have carried it byan assault in front.  As it was, he resolved to wait till night, and then flank the enemy by a march to the right along the border of the wood.

It was the morning of Sunday, the twenty-seventh.  Till late in the night before, Murray and the garrison of Quebec were unaware of the immediate danger; and they learned it at last through a singular stroke of fortune.  Some time after midnight the watch on board the frigate “Racehorse,” which hadwintered in the dock at the Lower Town, heard a feeble cryof distress from the midst of the darkness that covered the St. Lawrence.  Captain Macartney was at once informed of it; and, through an impulse of humanity, he ordered a boat to put outamid the drifting ice that was sweeping up the river with thetide.  Guided by the faint cries, the sailors found a man lying on a large cake of ice, drenched, and half dead with cold; and, taking him with difficulty into their boat, they carried him to the ship.  It was long before he was able to speak intelligibly; but at last, being revived by cordials and other remedies, he found strength to tell his benefactors that he was a sergeant of artillery in the army that had come to retake Quebec; that in trying to land a little above Cap-Rouge, his boat had been overset, his companions drowned, and he himself saved by climbing upon the cake of ice where they had discovered him; that he had been borne by the ebb tide down to the Island of Orleans, and then brought up to Quebec by the flow; and, finally, that Levis was marching on the town with twelve thousand men at his back.

He was placed in a hammock and carried up Mountain Street to the quarters of the General, who was roused from sleep at three o’clock in the morning to hear his story.  The troops were ordered under arms; and soon after daybreak Murray marched out with ten pieces of cannon and more than half the garrison.  His principal object was to withdraw the advanced posts at Ste.-Foy, Cap-Rouge, Sillery, and Anse du Foulon.  The storm had turned to a cold, drizzling rain, and the men, as they dragged their cannon through snow and mud, were soon drenched to the skin.  On reaching Ste.-Foy, they opened a brisk fire from the heights upon the woods which now covered the whole army of Levis; and being rejoined by the various outposts, returned to Quebec in the afternoon, after blowing up the church, which contained a store