Quebec City Canada Harbor View, Antique Steel Engraving St. Lawrence River 1854

Quebec City from the St. Lawrence, an original steel engraving from Meyers Universum, published by the Bibliographisches Institut in Germany in the mid-19th century. The plate is printed in black and lettered below the image "Quebeck in Canada."

The view looks across choppy water toward the city on its promontory. Cap Diamant rises at the left, crowned with the fortifications of the Citadel and a flag, and the upper town runs along the skyline to the right with church spires and clustered rooftops, with the lower town along the waterline below. In the foreground a fishing boat with a patched sail, a rowing boat and a larger two-masted vessel under full sail all labor through the waves, and heavy cumulus clouds fill the sky.

Quebec was then the political center of the Province of Canada and one of the main ports of British North America, shipping timber and grain to Europe. The plate belongs to the series of views of the world's cities and landscapes issued by the Bibliographisches Institut for German readers.