The great Bishop Laval de Montmorency made Sainte Anne's day a feast of obligation. During the French régime, vessels ascending the St. Lawrence always saluted when passing the shrine, in grateful thanksgiving that their prayers to Sainte Anne had been answered by deliverance from the perils of the sea. Pilgrims flocked thither, and many cures were wrought by pious veneration of the relics. As religion spread among the Indians, sometimes the adjacent shore would be covered by the wigwams of the converts who had come in their canoes from remote regions, and the more fervent of them would crawl on their knees from the river bank to the altar. To-day the pilgrims bring their offerings and make their vows, pleading for relief, many crossing the ocean from France, and it is said of these votaries at the shrine that they now come, "not in paint and feathers, but in cloth and millinery, and not in canoes, but in steamboats." It is noteworthy that in all the vicissitudes of war repeatedly waged around the famous place, the village being sacked and burned, the church was always preserved. When the British under Wolfe, prior to capturing Quebec in 1759, attacked Beaupré, they three times, tradition says, set fire to the church, but by the special intervention of Sainte Anne it escaped unscathed. Upon Sainte Anne's festival day, in 1891, many thousand pilgrims poured into the village, and Cardinal Archbishop Taschereau came down from Quebec, bringing another precious relic of Sainte Anne—a complete finger-joint—which he had obtained for the shrine from Carcassonne, in Languedoc, France. The Holy Father had raised the new church to the dignity of a Basilica, and two years previously he also sent from Rome a massive golden crown, set with precious stones, and valued at $56,000. This crown was worn by the rich statue of Sainte Anne, holding the infant Virgin in her arms, which stands before the chancel. There was an elaborate ceremonial, a large number of priests participating, and a solemn procession translated the precious relic to the church, where, after the services, it was venerated, the reliquary containing it being presented to the lips of each communicant kneeling in the sanctuary. Several miraculous cures were announced, but it is recorded that most of the cripples taken into the church had to be carried out again unrelieved. Around this sacred shrine crystallizes in the highest degree the pious veneration of the faithful French-Canadian habitans.
THE LOWER ST. LAWRENCE.
The river St. Lawrence below Quebec is a mighty arm of the sea, stretching in from the Atlantic, through a vast valley enclosed by the primeval forest. The northern shore shows the domination of ruggedness, for here begins the mountain wall of the Laurentides, stretching far away northeastward down the river towards Labrador. The southern shore is less forbidding, having wide fertile slopes rising to a background of wooded hills. Along the river bank is a sparsely scattered strip of humanity, which is likened to a rosary, having the primitive farmhouses for beads, and at every few miles a tall, cross-crowned church spire. Set in between the river banks, just below Quebec, is the broad and fertile Isle of Orleans, but beyond this the St. Lawrence is six miles wide, and steadily broadens, attaining twenty-four miles width at Tadousac, the mouth of the Saguenay, and thirty-five width at Metis, one hundred and fifty miles below Quebec. The Isle of Orleans is twenty miles long and very fertile, largely supplying the markets of Quebec. To the northward Mount Sainte Anne, the guardian of the famous shrine, rises twenty-seven hundred feet. Jacques Cartier so liked the grapes grown on the island that he called it the Isle of Bacchus, but the king, Francis I., would not have it so, and named it after his son, the Duke of Orleans. Here were massacred the Hurons by the Iroquois, who captured from them the great cross of Argentenay, carrying it off to their stronghold, on Onondaga Lake, New York, in 1661. On the northern shore of the island is the old stone church of St. Laurent and farther along that of St. Pierre, the meadows hereabout providing good shooting. The faithful at St. Laurent were said to have been long the envied possessors of a piece of the arm-bone of the Apostle Paul, a most precious relic, which was clandestinely seized and taken over to St. Pierre Church. This made a great commotion, and some of the young men of St. Laurent made an expedition at night, entered the church, recaptured the relic, and brought it back with some other articles, restoring it to the original shrine. A controversy between the villagers followed, growing so fierce that an outbreak was threatened, and the Archbishop at Quebec had to intervene to keep the peace. He ordered each church to restore the other its relics, which was done with solemn ceremony, processions marching along the road between the villages, and making the exchange midway, a large black cross since marking the spot.
The great promontory of the Laurentides, Cape Tourmente, stretches to the river, with the dark mass of ancient mountains spreading beyond in magnificent array, the cliffs rising high above the water, firs clinging to their sides and crowning their worn and rounded summits. On top of Tourmente the Seminarians have erected a huge cross, seen from afar, with a little chapel alongside. The old Canadian traveller, Charlevoix, said Cape Tourmente was probably so-called "because he that gave it this name suffered here by a gust of wind."
"At length they spy huge Tourmente, sullen-browed,
Bathe his bald forehead in a passing cloud;
The Titan of the lofty capes that gleam
In long succession down the mighty stream."
Here are Grosse Isle, the quarantine station for the river, and the Isle aux Coudres—Hazel Tree Island,—behind which a break in the Laurentides makes a pleasant nook, the Bay of St. Paul, having little villages named after the saints all about. Below, the mountain range rises into the great Mount Eboulements, twenty-five hundred feet high, its sides scarred by landslides brought down by various earthquakes, which were once so frequent that the Indians called the region Cuscatlan, meaning "the land that swings like a hammock." The name of this mountain means the "falling, shaking, crumbling mountain," but it is nevertheless now noted as the haughtiest headland of the Laurentides. This whole region has been a great sufferer from volcanic disturbances, the chief being in 1663, when the historian says "the St. Lawrence ran white as milk as far down as Tadousac; ranges of hills were thrown down into the river or were swallowed up in the plains; earthquakes shattered the houses and shook the trees until the Indians said that the forests were drunk; vast fissures opened in the ground and the courses of streams were changed. Meteors, fiery-winged serpents and ghostly spectres were seen in the air; roarings and mysterious voices sounded on every side, and the confessionals of all the churches were crowded with penitents awaiting the end of the world." Below this frowning mountain, the little Murray River flows in, making a deep bay and sandy beaches, and far back, under the shadows of the bordering hills, are the parish church and the French village of St. Agnes up the river. This place is Murray Bay, a favorite watering-place, known as Malbaie among the French, the hotels and wide one-story cottages of this Canadian Newport being scattered in the ravine and on the hill-slopes. When Champlain first entered this bay in 1608 he named it Malle Baie, explaining that this was because of "the tide that runs there marvellously." It is said that an attempt was once made to settle Murray Bay with Scotch emigrants, but the families who were sent out soon succumbed to the overwhelming influence of the surroundings, and their descendants, while having unmistakable Scottish names, have adopted the French language and customs. Over on the southern bank, thirty miles away, for the river is now very wide, is another favorite resort, Riviere du Loup, with the adjacent village of Kamouraska, the great church of St. Louis and a large convent being prominent in the latter.
Riviere du Loup is the best developed of the watering-places of the Lower St. Lawrence. The shore is gentle, and in sharp contrast with the rugged northern bank. The village spreads on a broad plateau, formed by the inflowing stream, there being hotels and boarding-houses scattered about, a tall-spired church back of the town, and a long wharf stretching out in front. To the eastward the sloping shore extends far away to Cacouna, eight miles below, another favorite resort also sentinelled by its church. The Riviere du Loup (Wolf River) naming this place flows out of the distant southern mountains to the St. Lawrence, and is said to have been so called from the droves of seals,—called by the French "loups-marines"—formerly frequenting the shoals off its mouth. Just back of the village the stream plunges down a waterfall eighty feet high. Cacouna is the most fashionable resort of the southern shore, and a place of comparatively recent growth, its semicircular bay with a good beach and the cool summer airs being the attractions. In front and connected by a low isthmus is a large peninsula of rounded granite rock, shaped much like a turtle-back and rising four hundred feet. From this came the Indian name, Cacouna, or the turtle.