It is worthy of note, too, that the Quebec farm which has set up a shrine or cross somewhere along the road, invariably appears prosperous. And those localities most particular in the observance of this old custom brought from France by the first settlers are never down-at-heels. It is evident it is the industrious, thrifty landowners who have inherited their demesnes from industrious, thrifty and religious forefathers who look most carefully to the old cross, the milestone of the years as well as of the road.
Straight back without a break these old weather-beaten shrines of the seacoast and the narrow farms trace their lineage to that first Cross, where all roads meet.
CHAPTER XIV.
SAINT ANNE L’EGLISE.
AINT Anne de Beaupré, Saint Anne l’eglise!” Thus, the car conductor on the “Electric” between Quebec and Saint Anne de Beaupré on the arrival of the car at the station-gate to the great Shrine.
He pronounces the name of this station with an air not expended on any of the other stopping-places along the line. The people in the car receive it in a different manner, as if with the baited breath of assurance that now “something is going to happen”, something they have long waited for, a miracle perhaps.
And so, daily, come and go the thousands of Pilgrims who have come and gone since those early years running back to 1658 when occurred here at this spot in the meadows “The First Miracle”. It was out there on the river, the Saint Lawrence, north of Ile d’ Orleans, on a small bateau, ancestress of the wood-boats that now go upward with the daily tide with their cargoes of firewood to Quebec, that Saint Anne first discovered herself to the crew of hard-pressed mariners, as habitant of this particular bit of shore. It was Saint Anne who snatched them from a watery grave in the treacherous river. And what a sea that bit of the river can make up! Only navigators in these parts can have any idea of the way that river, out there beyond the pier, can make up a sea! Old-timers and scientists say “There’s something about the gaps in the mountains back yonder,” pointing beyond the Côté, “that does it. They’ve got an awful spite in ’em when they brew a storm in their old cauldron.”
So, watching one of these storms and seeing the old-timers alongshore, from Visitation to Cap Tourment, shaking their heads, one is impressed by the fact, that nothing Sainte Anne could have done would have so firmly established her authority and power in the popular mind as the fact that she was not afraid of the river; that, never mind how hard a cross-sea were lifted up to the tide and the wind crossing swords for supremacy out here in this narrow passage beset with mud-banks and rocks, residue of the ice-age, she could, and did, guide that little boat to a safe landing here, and the sailors to the terra firma they had never expected to feel underfoot again.
Sailors are grateful. They belong to the Big-hearted. They promised Saint Anne an A.B.’s share of the voyage. And they kept their promise. They built her first church in these parts—a seamen’s church be it remembered.