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.