about noon
I have spent my time however very agreably . I know not what the winter may be , but I am enchanted with the beauty of this country in summer ; bold , picturesque , romantic , nature reigns here in all her wanton luxuriance , adorned by a thousand wild graces which mock the cultivated beauties of Europe . The scenery about the town is infinitely lovely ; the prospect extensive , and diversified by a variety of hills , woods , rivers , cascades , intermingled with smiling farms and cottages , and bounded by distant mountains which seem to scale the very Heavens . The days are much hotter here than in England , but the heat is more supportable from the breezes which always spring up about noon ; and the evenings are charming beyond expression . We have much thunder and lightening , but very few instances of their being fatal : the thunder is more magnificent and aweful than in Europe , and the lightening brighter and more beautiful ; I have even seen it of a clear pale purple , resembling the gay tints of the morning . The verdure is equal to that of England , and in the evening acquires an unspeakable beauty from the lucid splendor of the fire-flies sparkling like a thousand little stars on the trees and on the grass . There are two very noble falls of water near Quebec , la Chaudiere and Montmorenci : the former is a prodigious sheet of water , rushing over the wildest rocks , and forming a scene grotesque , irregular , astonishing : the latter , less wild , less irregular , but more pleasing and more majestic , falls from an immense height , down the side of a romantic mountain , into the river St. Lawrence , opposite the most smiling part of the island of Orleans , to the cultivated charms of which it forms the most striking and agreeable contrast .