rocks. Streams that descend from the surrounding
hills and mountains sparkle through
the wide plain of the valley to join, close
under Mary-Cell, the river Salza.

The traveller finds his way into this happy
valley from the outer world through woods
and between rocks, at last by a small footpath
to which several highways have
converged, a narrow path trodden by many
millions of feet. He is never out of sight of
pilgrims, or out of hearing of their songs.
They come from Vienna, and from all parts
of Austria; from the Tyrol, from Bohemia,
Hungary, Styria, Illyria, Croatia; they come
singly or in sets, in processions, occasional
and informal or annual and solemn. The
flow of people from surrounding countries
causes an average arrival of two hundred and
sixty pilgrims to the shrine of Mary-Cell
every day throughout the year; a like
number of devotees is at the same time
outward bound. They do not set in with an
even tide, although the guardians of the
shrine endeavour as much as possible to
prevent themselves from being overwhelmed
by too complete a flood. Generally during
the fine weather, but especially at Whitsuntide
and in the month of August, the influx
is greatest. On remarkable and rare
occasions the throng is enormous. Such an
occasion will arise in the year eighteen
hundred and fifty-six, which will be the
seventh jubilee year. In the course of
the last jubilee year there were assembled
together at Mary-Cell in a single day three
hundred and seventy-three thousand pilgrims,
and the attraction of the shrine has in the
succeeding century not in the least abated.
The numbers of pilgrims fell during the
disturbed year eighteen hundred and forty-
eight, but they have already resumed their
former strength. In their strength lies, of
course, the strength and prosperity of the
whole population fixed upon the spot. The
priests preserve a register of all communicants.
Annual announcements of the
numbers registered have for the Mary-Cellians
the interest of budgets. Publication of them
is made first in the church; the knowledge
of them is then circulated and perpetuated
in a great many forms, and they may even be
seen scored up behind the doors of
innkeepers.

Once upon a time, eight hundred years
ago, there was a Benedictine Abbey, newly
dedicated to Saint Lambrecht, on the borders
of Carinthia in Styria, and the Duke of
Carinthia had presented to the monks certain
extensive tracts of land, including woods and
meadows round about the borders of the
Salza. This district was inhabited by
scattered hinds and hewers of wood who led but
a very heathen life. The Benedictines sent a
missionary to them, and that missionary was
the founder of the shrine. He is the first of
the three heroes of the history of Mary-Cell;
and in hermit's robes, with gray hair and
beard, he has been taken home as a picture
by many millions of pilgrims.

He was a good old man, who went among
the woodcutters and herdsmen with a little
image of the Virgin carved in limetree wood.
Upon the hill, to which the pilgrims now
repair, he found a hollow tree, and, as the
spot was suitable, he set up his emblem
in the tree, and built himself a wooden cell
hard by. The man was so good, and the
site of his hermitage was so good, that they
attracted not only the peasants of the
district, but travellers also. The fame of
the beautiful place increased, and in the
twelfth century special journeys thither
were not unfrequently made from distant
places.

At last a certain Margrave, Henry the First,
who was sick, dreamed that he must owe his
health to Mary of Cell, and on his recovery
display his gratitude by a pilgrimage made in his
own person to her shrine. He recovered, and at
the beginning of the thirteenth century made
the pilgrimage. He first took thought for
the better preservation of the hermit's image,
and built for its reception a stone chapel.
He is the second hero of the history of
Mary-Cell.

Then the fame of the shrine grew quietly
until, after a great many years, Louis the
First, King of Hungary, vowed a pilgrimage
to it before engaging in a battle with the
Turks or Bosnians. He, in the middle of the
fourteenth century, fulfilled his vow, and, not
to be less liberal than the Margrave, built
a handsome church over the stone chapel,
just as the chapel had been built over the
hermit's tree. He is the third of the three
heroes.

From that date Mary-Cell began to
predominate over other shrines of the same kind.
The priests laboured in its behalf. The abbot
of Lambrecht obtained from the temporal
princes special privileges for dwellers on the
spot. The archbishop of Salzburg, to whose
see the place belonged, endowed Cell-
pilgrimages with spiritual gain. Dukes and
kings began fervently to dream of Cell, and
to vow pilgrimages thither. Popes then took
the place (of course) under their protection.
Even in the time of Clement the Sixth,
a bull of indulgence for a hundred days
was granted to those who performed penance
at Mary-Cell. During the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries almost every
prince of the reigning house of Austria
went thither. Few incidents in Austrian
history failed to be registered by offerings
paid to the shrine. Ferdinand the Second
went thither on the day when the "Rebels
of Prague" were executed. Emperor Leopold
the First made the pilgrimage as often
as nine times. An Austrian archduke had
his heart built into the walls of the
inner chapel of grace. After Austrian
victories gold statues and crosses were
despatched to Mary-Cell. Maria Theresa, after