Perce, Summer 1675... It was a rough crowd, the hardiest and hardest the home ports could supply. They were Basques and Bayonnais, Biscayans and Normans, and perhaps a few Yankees from the Massachusetts colonies. 
 
While the priests served at the altar to a handful of the faithful, the beaches were still thronged with a boisterous, drunken, riotous crowd, caring naught for the doings of the little Church of St Peter. So extraordinary was the activity of the coasts in these days that never since has there been so much done in the business of fishing, and even when the settlement became fixed the riotous practices of the inhabitants were notorious.
 
Yet, during the days of the Denys seigneury, what a luminous procession passed under the shadow of the Great Rock, entering by this gate upon their careers of discovery - Marquette and Jolliet, LaSalle and Perrot, Champlain, Talon, Bishop Laval and Frontenac and all the great builders of New France.