completed he became miraculously cured. This began a long series of miracles, their fame spreading, so that devotion to Sainte Anne became a distinguishing feature of French-Canadian Catholicity. 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.