founder; it is still lively in our hearts, since in 1898 a hundred and
twenty thousand pilgrims went to pray before the relic of Saint Anne,
the precious gift of Mgr. de Laval.

In our days, hardly has the sun melted the thick mantle of snow which
covers during six months the Canadian soil, hardly has the majestic St.
Lawrence carried its last blocks of ice down to the ocean, when caravans
of pious pilgrims from all quarters of the country wend their way
towards the sanctuary raised upon the shores of Beaupré. Whole families
fill the cars; the boats of the Richelieu Company stop to receive
passengers at all the charming villages strewn along the banks of the
river, and the cathedral which raises in the air its slender spires on
either side of the immense statue of Saint Anne does not suffice to
contain the ever renewed throng of the faithful.

Even in the time of Mgr. de Laval, pilgrimages to Saint Anne's were
frequent, and it was not only French people but also savages who
addressed to the Mother of the Virgin Mary fervent, and often very
artless, prayers. The harvest became, in fact, more abundant in the
missions, and

"Les prêtres ne pouvaient suffire aux sacrifices."[4]

From the banks of the Saguenay at Tadousac, or from the shore of Hudson
Bay, where Father Albanel was evangelizing the Indians, to the recesses
of the Iroquois country, a Black Robe taught from interval to interval
in a humble chapel the truths of the Christian religion. "We may say,"
wrote Father Dablon in 1671, "that the torch of the faith now illumines
the four quarters of this New World. More than seven hundred baptisms
have this year consecrated all our forests; more than twenty different