twenty-one missions—many of them dedicated to her—extending, as he said, like a procession for six hundred miles.
From the northeast came the French, whose love of Mary was as deep as that of the Spaniards. When Louis XIII dedicated France to the Blessed Virgin in 1638, his act was not merely an appeal for help, but was an offer of service to the Mother of God. The Sulpicians founded the city of Montreal—Ville-Marie de Montreal. The first chapel erected in Quebec was dedicated to God under the invocation of Mary Immaculate. Champlain mapped Plymouth Harbor and called it St. Louis a generation before the English pilgrims came. Pere Marquette, of whom it was said that every deed and every day of his life was important or unimportant to him in terms of his devotion to the Immaculate Conception, was the first to realize the importance of the Mississippi as a waterway. To him it was the River of the Immaculate Conception.
Of the thirteen original colonies, only one was truly a civil and religious sanctuary, and that was Maryland. Officially, perhaps, the name was a compliment to Henrietta Maria, queen of England; but in the minds of those who found refuge there, it referred ultimately to the Queen of Heaven. The unique colony was literally Mary's Land. The first settlement was St. Mary's.
Our Land and Our Lady! Our Country's Queen! By their devotion to her the pioneer priests covered the land with the protecting mantle of Mary. And because they had recourse to her, their labors were blessed with success. Saintly men, great men all, whose thirst for souls could not be slaked, whose love for the Mother of God was unbounded, they have been an inspiration to succeeding generations. Because of their zeal there came in time the beginnings of ecclesiastical organization, the establishment of the hierarchy, and the institution of the primatial See of Baltimore, where the first cathedral was appropriately named in honor of the Immaculate Conception.
Through succeeding years came schools, hospitals, orphanages, sanitariums, and homes for the aged, all dedicated to Our Lady. Under her guidance they have prospered; under her patronage they have survived the plagues of fire, famine, and epidemic. Their heroic achievements are beyond human explanation. They stem from the divine, from
