y; Father
Marquette, acting with Joliet, was following the course of the
Mississippi as far as Arkansas; finally, later on, Father Arnaud
accompanied La Verendrye as far as the Rocky Mountains.

The establishment of the Catholic religion in Canada had now witnessed
its darkest days; its history becomes intimately interwoven with that of
the country. Up to the English conquest, the clergy and the different
religious congregations, as faithful to France as to the Holy See,
encouraged the Canadians in their struggles against the invaders.
Accordingly, at the time of the invasion of the colony by Phipps, the
Americans of Boston declared that they would spare neither monks nor
missionaries if they succeeded in seizing Quebec; they bore a particular
grudge against the priests of the seminary, to whom they ascribed the
ravages committed shortly before in New England by the Abenaquis. They
were punished for their boasting; forty seminarists assembled at St.
Joachim, the country house of the seminary, joined the volunteers who
fought at Beauport, and contributed so much to the victory that
Frontenac, to recompense their bravery, presented them with a cannon
captured by themselves.

The Church of Rome had been able to continue in peace its mission in
Canada from the departure of Mgr. de Laval, in 1684, to the conquest of
the country by the English. The worthy Bishop of Petraea, created Bishop
of Quebec in 1674, was succeeded by Mgr. de St. Vallier, then by Mgr. de
Mornay, who did not come to Canada, by Mgr. de Dosquet, Mgr. Pourroy de
l'Aube-Riviere, and Mgr. de Pontbriant, who died the very year in which
General de Levis made of his flags on St. Helen's Island a sacred pyre.

In 1760 the Protestant religion was about to penetrate into Canada in
the train of the victorious armies of Great Britain, having been
proscribed in the colony from the time of Champlain. With conquerors of
a different religion, the role of the Catholic clergy became much more
arduous and delicate; this will be readily admitted when we recall that
Mgr. Briand was informally apprised at the time of his appointment that
the government of England would appear to be ignorant of his
consecration and induction by the Bishop of Rome. But the clergy managed
to keep itself on a level with its task. A systematic opposition on its
part to the new masters of the country could only have drawn upon the
whole population a bitter oppression, and we would not behold to-da