The sermons of the Fathers who conduct the services in the Basilica are preached in both French and English. Sixteen priests hold continual devotions from four in the morning until nine at night. The number of annual visitors is estimated as being nearly two hundred thousand, representative of almost every nationality and language. An American publicist asked one of the Fathers whether every one who came was cured. "By no means," replied the priest; "although the miracles are many." When asked how he accounted for the failures the Father replied that he was not able to account for them; that a failure might be due to lack of faith, or to some other reason not disclosed to them. Faith is always to be reckoned with as a condition through which alone the Divine energy can flow.
In the vicinity of Saint Anne there is some beautiful scenery--Montmorency Falls, and other points of interest; Quebec, too, is almost as much frequented in winter as in summer, the bracing air being to many the very elixir of life.
Quebec Province has always kept a distinctive atmosphere of its own, due largely to the preponderance of the French-Canadian element and to climatic and topographical conditions. Advantages and { 56} privileges are constantly increasing. Macdonald College, at Saint Anne de Bellevue, founded by Sir William Macdonald, admits women on equal terms with men, and beside the School of Agriculture, it has a training institution in Domestic Science and a school for training teachers. The Department of Domestic Science is free to all Canadian girls, and students from outside of Canada pay a small tuition fee and a modest fee of some three dollars and a half a week for board-residence. On this great college Sir William Macdonald's initial expenditure was five millions of dollars. Five hundred and sixty acres were secured for the farm, of which nearly four hundred are devoted to the live stock and grain department, while the remainder is divided between vegetable, poultry, and bee culture, with a liberal share allotted to horticulture.
It is to Quebec that the middle west of the United States must look for the early history of its own great explorers, missionaries, and pathfinders; for it was from here that Champlain, La Salle, Marquette, Joliet, and others fared forth on their pioneer journeys through the Mississippi basin. Champlain died in Quebec on the Christmas Day of 1635; but his burial-place is still undetermined. The Jesuit College in which Père Marquette was domiciled ante-dated Harvard by one year, having been founded in 1635. Here Marquette made his plans for tours along the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi, with the object of converting the Indians. This { 57} Jesuit College bears the signal honour of being the first institution for higher education on the North American continent.