Last autumn we saw serpents embracing, entwined about each other, forming a caduceus [double spiral], and flying through the air on wings of fire. We saw over Quebec a great flaming globe, which turned the night into day, through the sparks which it cast everywhere caused the pleasure given by looking at it to be mixed with fear. The same meteor appeared above Montreal, but it seemed to emerge from the bosom of the Moon, with a noise like that of cannons or thunder, and after arching for three leagues into the air, was lost from sight behind the large mountain which gives this island its name.
But what seemed most extraordinary to us was the appearance of three suns. It was a beautiful day last winter, and at eight o'clock in the morning, a slight vapour rose from our great river, and when struck by the rays of the sun became transparent, though nonetheless with enough consistency two images which this Star [the Sun] painted below. These three suns were in a nearly straight line, a short distance one from the others. All three were crowned by a rainbow, where the colors were not fixed, seeming at one moment varied, and the next a luminous white, as if above them there were an exceedingly strong light.This spectacle lasted nearly two hours the first time it occurred, on 7th January 1663; and the second time, which was on the 14th of the same month, it did not last so long, but only until the colours of the rainbow began to fade little by little, just as the two suns were eclipsed as well, leaving the one in the middle as victor....
It was on the 5th of February 1663, around five-thirty in the evening, that a great noise was heard all over Canada. The noise, which seemed as though there was fire within the houses, made everyone run out fleeing from such an unexpected blaze; but instead of seeing smoke and flames, they were astonished to see the walls rocking back and forth and the stones moving about as though they were loose; the roofs seemed to buckle in one direction, then another; the Bells rang by themselves; the beams, the joists, and the floorboards cracked; the land leapt about, making the palisades dance in a way that could hardly be believed if we had not seen it ourselves in several places.
Everyone ran outside, the aniimals fled, the children were crying in the streets, the men and women were gripped with terror and did not know where to take refuge, thinking they would be crushed under the ruins of the houses or swallowed up in an abyss that would open under their feet. Some knelt on the snow, crying for mercy; others spent the rest of the night in prayers, because the earthquake continued with a certain rumble, very much like that of ships on the sea, so much so that the people felt their blood run cold just as it had at sea. Disorder was even greater in the forests; it seemed like there had been a combat among the trees, who struck one another; it was not just their branches, but one would think that their trunks had emerged from their places to leap upon one another, with a noise and chaos which made our Savages say that the entire forest was drunk. There seemed to be war among the mountains as well, where some uprooted themselves to fall upon the others, leaving great abysses in the places from which they had leapt. The trees they bore were turned upside down, some with the branches below in the place of the roots, leaving a forest of upturned trunks.
Among this general debris, ice five and six feet thick was shattered into small pieces. When the ice opened in several places, from it came clouds of smoke, or jets of mud and sand which rose high into the air. Our fountains went dry, or had water tasting of sulphur. The rivers were either lost or tained, with the water of some becoming yellow, some red; and our great St. Lawrence River seemed whitish as far as Tadoussac, a strange thing which will surprise and astonish those who know the quality of the waters of this great river.
Three circumstances make this earthquake remarkable. The first is the time it lasted, continuing until the month of August, that is to say six months. It is true that not all the quakes were equally severe. In certain places, like in the mountains in back of us, the din and the tremors were incessant for a long time; in others, like towards Tudoussac, there were two or three severe tremors a day, and we noticed that in the higher places, the movement was less than it was on the flatlands. The second is the extent of this earthquake, which we thought was universal in all of New France, for we heard that it was felt first at Isle Percee and Gaspe, at the mouth of our river, and beyond Montreal, as well as in New England, Acadia, and other distant places. Thus, as far as we know, we feel that the earthquake occurred over a territory two hundred leagues long, and a hundred leagues wide, that is twenty thousand leagues of land whose surface all trembled at once, on the same day and at the same moment.
The third circumstance is related to the particular protection of God of our dwellings, for we saw near ourselves great openings and a large area of country that was lost, without losing a single child, not even a hair of someone's head.... We should be even more grateful to Heaven for this kind of protection, because a person of probity and irreproachable life had had premonitions of what has happened, had a vision on the night the earthquake began, of four fearful spectres who occupied the four directions surrounding Quebec and shook them furiously as though they wished to turn them inside out.... The Savages had premonitions just as the French had of this horrible earthquake....
