Volume IV Part 8 (1/2)
There is a fine outlook from the Dufferin Terrace, high up on the cliff above the river, the favorite gathering-place of the townsfolk on pleasant afternoons. The St. Lawrence flows placidly, with a narrow strip of town far down below at its edge, and a few vessels moored to the bank. At one's feet are the Champlain market and the famous little church, and a ma.s.s of the peaked tin-covered roofs of the diminutive French houses crowded in along the contracted street at the base of the cliff. High above rises the towering citadel with its rounded King's Bastion, the black guns thrusting their muzzles over the parapet and the Union Jack floating from a flagstaff at the top.
Across the river is Point Levis, with piers and railroad terminals spread along the bank, and various villages with their imposing convents and churches crown the high bluff sh.o.r.e for a long distance up and down. Farther back upon the wooded slopes of the hills are the great modern built forts which command the river and are the military protection of Quebec, their lines of earthworks just discernible among the trees. The river sweeps grandly around the projecting point of Cape Diamond and the surmounting citadel, pa.s.sing away to the northeast with broadening current, where it receives the St. Charles, and beyond is divided by the low projecting point of the green Isle of Orleans. The main channel flows to the right behind Point Levis, and the other far away to the left with the Falls of Montmorency in the distance, and the dark range of Laurentian Mountains for a background with the n.o.ble summit of Mount Sainte Anne, and the huge promontory of Cape Tourmente at the river's edge. Nearer, the Quebec Lower Town spreads to a flat point at St. Charles River, ending in the broad surface of Princess Louise Basin, containing the s.h.i.+pping. Beyond this, a long road extends along the northern river bank, through Beauport and down to Montmorency, bordered by little white French cottages strung along it like beads upon a thread. Such is the landscape of wondrous interest seen from the cliff of Quebec. Across the St. Lawrence, elevated one hundred and fifty feet above the river, between Quebec and Point Levis is about being constructed a great railway bridge with the largest cantilever span in the world.
A ride along the attractive road through Beauport gives an insight into the home life of the French Canadian _habitan_. The village stretches several miles, a single street bordered on either hand by rows of unique cottages, nearly all alike; one-story steep-roofed houses of wood or plaster, almost all painted white, and one reproducing the other. The first Frenchman who arrived built this sort of a house, and all his neighbors and descendants have done likewise.
They, like him, do it, because their ancestors builded so. The house may be larger, or may be of stone, but there is no change in form or feature. The centre doorway has a room on either hand with windows, and a steep roof rises above the single story. The house, regardless of the front road, must face north or south. The long, narrow strips of farms, some only a few yards wide, and of enormous length, run mathematically north and south. It matters not that this highway, parallel with the river, runs northeast. That cannot change the inexorable rule, and hence all the houses are set at an angle with the road, and all the dividing-fence lines are diagonals. The sun-loving Gaul taboos shade-trees, and therefore the sun blazes down upon the unsheltered house in summer, while the careful housewife, to keep out the excessive light, closes all the windows with thick shades made of old-fas.h.i.+oned wall-papers. The little triangular s.p.a.ce between the cottage and the road is usually a brilliant flower-garden. Crosses are set up frequently for the encouragement of the faithful, and there are imposing churches and ecclesiastical buildings at intervals. Along this road ride the French in their queer-looking two-wheeled caleches, appearing much like a deep-bowled spoon set on wheels, and in elongated buckboard wagons of ancient build, surmounted by the most homely and venerable gig-tops. These French cottages are more picturesque than their vehicles.
The French Canadian _habitan_, the _cultivateur_, and peasant of Quebec province, is about the same to-day as he was two or three centuries ago. The Lower Canada village reproduces the French hamlet of the time of Louis XIV., and the inhabitants show the same zealous and absorbing religious devotion as when the French first peopled the St. Lawrence sh.o.r.es. Within the cottage, hung above the _habitan's_ modest bed, is the black wooden cross that is to be the first thing greeting the waking eyes in the morning, as it has been the last object seen at night. Below it is the sprig of palm in a vase, with the little bonitier of holy water, and alongside is placed the calendar of religious events in the parish. The palm sprig is annually renewed on Palm Sunday, the old sprig being then carefully burnt.
Great is its power in warding off lightning strokes and exorcising the evil spirits. The central object around which every village cl.u.s.ters is always the church, with its high walls, sloping roof, and tall and s.h.i.+ning tin-clad spire. The cure is the village autocrat; the legal and medical adviser, the family counsellor, and usually the political leader of his flock. He blesses all the houses when they are built, and as soon as the walls are up a bunch of palm is attached to the gable or the chimney, a gun being fired to mark the event. When the _Angelus_ tolls all stop work, wherever they are, and say the short prayer in devout att.i.tude. Before beginning or completing any task the reverent _habitans_ always piously cross themselves. They do this also in pa.s.sing churches, or the many crosses and statues set up along the roads and in the villages. They are temperate, industrious and thrifty, live simply, eat the plainest food, are abundantly content with their lot, and usually raise large families. In fact, there is a bounty given, by act of the Quebec Provincial Legislature, of one hundred acres of land to parents having more than twelve living children. It is not infrequent to find twenty-five or thirty or more children in a single family. In personal appearance the _habitan_ is generally of small or medium size, with sparkling brown eyes, dark complexion, a placid face and well-knit frame. He has strong endurance and capacity for work, but usually not much education, the prayer-book furnis.h.i.+ng most of the family reading. The Church encourages early marriages, and domestic fecundity is honored as a special gift from Heaven. The pious veneration, like the creed of this simple-minded people, is the same to-day as it was in the seventeenth century.
Their faith is fervent and their belief complete. They typify the beautiful idea the late Cardinal Newman exemplified in his exquisite poem:
”Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on; The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead thou me on; Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.
”I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou Shouldst lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
”So long thy power hast blest me, sure it still Will lead me on O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since and lost awhile!”
LA BONNE SAINTE ANNE.
This road leads to the Montmorency River, a vigorous stream flowing out of Snow Lake, ninety miles northward, down to the St. Lawrence.
For a mile or so above the latter river it has worn a series of steps in the limestone rocks, making attractive rapids, and the waters finally pitch over a nearly perpendicular precipice, almost at the verge of the St. Lawrence, falling two hundred and fifty feet in a magnificent cataract, the dark amber torrent brilliantly foaming, and making vast amounts of spray. In winter there is formed a cone of ice in front of these falls, sometimes two hundred feet high. The cataract goes down into a deep gorge, worn back through the rocks, some distance from the St. Lawrence bank, and protruding cliffs in the face of the fall make portions of the water, when part way down, dart out in huge ma.s.ses of foam and spray. A large sawmill below gets its power from this cataract, and it also provides the electric lighting service for Quebec. Farther down the north sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence, through more quaint villages--L'Ange Gardien and Chateau Richer--the road leads along breezy hills and pleasant vales in the Cote de Beaupre, to the most renowned shrine of all Canada, about twenty miles below Quebec, the Church of ”La Bonne Sainte Anne de Beaupre.” This famous old church is the special shrine of the _habitan_, the objective point of many pilgrim parties from Canada and New England, where there now is a large population of French Canadians, as many as a hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims coming in a single year, and it is the most venerated spot in all Lower Canada. The Cote de Beaupre, the northern St. Lawrence sh.o.r.e below Montmorency, is an appanage of the Seminary of Quebec. The little Sainte Anne's river comes down from the slopes of Sainte Anne's Mountain among the Laurentides, and after das.h.i.+ng over the steep and attractive cataract of Sainte Anne, flows out to the St. Lawrence. Upon the level and picturesque intervale of this stream is a primitive French village, whose people get support partly by making bricks for Quebec, but mainly through the entertainment of the army of pilgrims coming to the miraculous shrine of ”La Bonne Sainte Anne.” The village spreads mostly along a narrow street filled with inns and lodging-houses which are crowded during the pilgrimage season from June till October, culminating on Sainte Anne's festival day, July 26th. To the eastward of the village is the beautiful church, not long ago built from the pious doles of the faithful, a ma.s.sive and elaborate granite building. Just above it, upon the bank, is the original little church of Sainte Anne, which is so highly venerated, and wherein the sacred relics of the saint are carefully kept in a crystal globe, and are exhibited at morning ma.s.s, when their contemplation by the pilgrims, combined with faith, works miraculous cures. The old church of 1658, threatening to fall, was taken down in 1878, and rebuilt with the same materials on the original plan. It is quaintly furnished in the French-Canadian style of the seventeenth century, and one of its features is the ma.s.s of abandoned crutches and canes piled along the cornices and in the sacristy, left by the cripples who have departed relieved or healed.
This is probably the holiest ground in Canada, consecrated by nearly three centuries of the most fervent devotion of the ever-faithful _habitans_. Just below Sainte Anne is the companion village of St.
Joachim. Sainte Anne was the mother and St. Joachim the father of the Virgin Mary. The tradition is that after Sainte Anne's body had reposed quietly for many years at Jerusalem, it was sent to the Bishop of Ma.r.s.eilles, and later to Apt, where it was placed in a subterranean chapel to guard it from heathen profanation. The church at Apt was swept away by the invader, but some seven centuries afterwards the Emperor Charlemagne visited the town, and marvellous incidents took place, light being seen emanating from the vault accompanied by a delicious fragrance, whereupon investigation was made and the long lost remains of Sainte Anne recovered. Ever since, her sacred relics have been highly venerated in France, and it was natural that the early French Canadians should bring their pious devotion into the new Province. Various churches were built in her honor, the chief being this one at Beaupre, by the devout Governor d'Allebout. With his own hands the Governor began the pious work of erecting the church, and as an encouragement, the Cathedral Chapter in France sent to the new shrine a relic of Sainte Anne--a portion of a finger-bone--together with a reliquary of silver, a lamp, and some paintings, all being preserved in this church. The legend of the building is, that upon its site a beautiful little child of the village was thrice favored with Heavenly visions. Upon the third appearance, the Virgin commanded the child that she should tell her people to build a church there in honor of her saintly mother. Thus was the location chosen, and while the foundation was being laid, a _habitan_ of the Cote de Beaupre, one Guimont, sorely afflicted with rheumatism, came there with great difficulty, and filled with pain, to try and lay three stones in the wall, presumably in honor of the Virgin, her father and mother. With much labor and suffering he performed the task, but instantly it was completed he became miraculously cured. This began a long series of miracles, their fame spreading, so that devotion to Sainte Anne became a distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of French-Canadian Catholicity.
The great Bishop Laval de Montmorency made Sainte Anne's day a feast of obligation. During the French regime, vessels ascending the St.
Lawrence always saluted when pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Beaupre, 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 Carca.s.sonne, 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 ma.s.sive 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 partic.i.p.ating, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e is less forbidding, having wide fertile slopes rising to a background of wooded hills. Along the river bank is a spa.r.s.ely 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 ma.s.sacred 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 sh.o.r.e 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sing cloud; The t.i.tan 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 succ.u.mbed 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 fas.h.i.+onable resort of the southern sh.o.r.e, 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.
THE GRAND AND GLOOMY SAGUENAY.
Far over to the northward, across the broad river, is ancient Tadousac, enclosed by the guarding mountains at the entrance to the Saguenay. The harbor and landing are within a small rounded bay, having the Salmon Hatching House of the Dominion alongside the wharf, a cascade pouring down the hillside behind, and a little white inn prettily perched above on a shelf of rock. The village spreads over irregular terraces, encircling three of these little rounded bays, beyond which the narrow Saguenay chasm goes off westward through the mountains into a savage wilderness. This place has been a trading-post with the Indians for over three centuries, and the ancient buildings of the Hudson Bay Company testify to the traffic in furs, once so good, which has become almost obsolete. It was visited by Cartier in 1535, and afterwards was established as one of the earliest missions of the Jesuits, who came here in 1599 and raised the cross among the Nasquapees of the Saguenay--the ”upright men,” as they called themselves,--and the Montaignais, both then powerful tribes, which have since entirely disappeared from this region, having withdrawn to its upper waters, around and beyond Lake St. John. The old chapel, replacing the original Jesuit church--said to have been the first erected in North America--stands down by the waterside, a diminutive, peak-roofed, one-story building, kept as a memorial of the past, for the people now wors.h.i.+p in a fine new stone church farther up the rounded hill-slope. These knoll-like rounded hills or mamelons named the place, for they are numerous, and Tadousac, literally a ”nipple,”
is the Indian word for them. The most valued possession of the church is a figure of the child Jesus, originally sent to the mission by King Louis XIV. This is the oldest settlement of the Lower St. Lawrence.