boon.  When, in the darkness of the momentous morning of September 13th, 1759, Wolfe’s boats were drifting down with the tide close to the north shore near Quebec, intending to land and scale the heights at what is now Wolfe’s Cove, a French sentry called out sharply from the bank, “Qui vive?” A Highland officer, who had served in Holland, was able to reply “France!” without betraying his nationality.

“A quel regiment?” demanded the sentry.

“De la reine,” answered the Highlander, giving the name of a well-known French regiment commanded by Bougainville; and then he added in a low voice, “Ne faites pas de bruit; ce sont les vivres”—­for a convoy with provisions was expected by the French.  The Highlanders were at the forefront in the stiff climb up the heights which proved to be Wolfe’s master stroke.  Malcolm Fraser has left his own account of that morning’s work.  The troops, he says, had been in the boats since nine o’clock on the previous night.  At about twelve they had set out with a falling tide and they landed just as day was breaking.  The light infantry struggled up the hill first, the French meanwhile firing on the boats, killing and wounding some of the occupants; but “the main body of our army soon got to the upper ground, after climbing a hill or rather a precipice, of about three hundred yards, very steep and covered with wood and brush.”  By ten the army was drawn up in order of battle,—­“in a masterly manner,” John Nairne said later,—­on the Plains of Abraham, the bag-pipes of the Highlanders screaming a wild defiance to the foe.  Then followed that brief death grapple, fatal to the leader on each side.  Fraser and his Highlanders, we are told, rushed at the enemy with their broadswords in such irresistible fury that they were driven with a prodigious slaughter into the town.  The Highlanders suffered as much after the battle as in it, for General Murray led them to reconnoitre in the direction of the General Hospital and a good many were shot by the French from bushes and from houses in the suburbs of St. Louis and St. John.  To the French the Highlanders seemed especially ferocious, possibly owing to the wild music of their pipes, their waving tartans, their terrible broadswords, and perhaps, also, their partially naked bodies.  They were indeed christened “the savages of Europe.”

Not many days after Wolfe’s victory the Highlanders marched into Quebec with the victorious army.  The French garrison was sent away to Europe, the British fleet itself soon followed, and the conquerors, with General Murray in command, settled down to face for the first time the rigours of a winter at Quebec.  The Highlanders suffered terribly.  One suspects that, in spite of their protests, the Highland costume was ill-suited to meet the severity of the climate; and, in any case, the army was ill-fed, ill-housed, and overworked.  Malcolm Fraser kept a journal,[5] but Nairne, the other future seigneur at Malbaie, the