Tadoussac, La Haute-Côte-Nord, Québec, Canada
1873

TADOUSAC, a post village and watering place of Quebec, capital of the co. of Saguenay, situated at the east entrance of the Saguenay river, about 5 miles above its confluence with the St Lawrence, on a semicircular terrace at the top of a beautiful bay with a sandy beach, hemmed in by mountains of solid rock, 25 miles from Riviere du Loup, 130 miles from Quebec. It has a good hotel, and a number of handsome villas, including one built by His Excellency Earl Dufferin, and is much frequented by tourists aid health seekers during the summer months. Tadousac, apart from its pleasant situation as a watering place, is interesting from the circumstance of its having been at an early period the capital of the French settlements, and for a long time was one of the chief fur trading posts. Here are the ruins of a Jesuit religious establishment, which are considered a great curiosity although nothing remains but the foundations upon which the ancient edifice rested. It is confidently asserted that upon this spot once stood the first stone and mortar building ever erected on the continent of America — the home of Father Marquette, who subsequently explored the waters of the Mississippi. From the very centre of the ruins has grown up a cluster of pine trees, which must have existed at least two hundred years. The fate, and the very names of those who first pitched their tents in this wilderness, and there erected an altar to the God of their fathers, are alike unknown. Charlevoix in 1720, thus speaks of it; "Most of our geographers have placed a town here, where there never was but one French house and some huts of savages, who resorted hither annually to trade with the French when the navigation was free: the missionaries made use of the opportunity, and when the trade was over, the merchants returned to their homes, the savages to their forests and the Gospel laborers followed the last . Tadousac contains several grist and saw mills and has a large lumber trade. Salmon and other fish are plentiful in the waters here. Pop. 765.

Lovell's gazetteer of British North America; J. Lovell; Montreal, 1873

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