BOURG DE BATZ.

55

stores, and displayed some very small gooseberries and some They were not very good, but still

small yellow plums.

they were a welcome refreshment,

We asked our friend how much we had to pay. At first she declined to make a charge. It was of no consequence, she said; then, "What monsieur and madame please." And finally she asked about three times as much as we should have paid at Nantes or Angers, and went off satisfied that she had conferred a favour on unfortunate travellers.

At last, after a long waiting, a cumbrous hooded vehicle came in sight, with our driver and two rough companions.

He informed us that this was the only carriage to be got in La Guérande, and that we might think ourselves very fortunate to get it. It was very uncomfortable, quite unlike our trim, easy-going basket-carriage-indeed it bumped terribly; fortunately the road was level. As we went along we saw maize or corn being threshed by a machine drawn by horses, as in Spain.

There were plenty of women at work in the salt-pans, skimming the salt off the water with their long wooden scrapers, putting the salt into basins and from them on to the heaps. We soon drove into the Bourg de Batz, a most ordinary-looking village surrounded by salt-pans, with huge salt-heaps taking the place of hay-stacks at the angle of the enclosures round the cottages. The women looked tall and well-made, and their head-dress was rather peculiar than picturesque-a roll of hair in front, round which was twisted narrow white tape, and the cap placed above, with straight sides swathing the face.

We saw very few men, and these wore snowy white smocks, trousers, and gaiters buttoned with very small buttons from

the ankle to the knee. We only met one man with white bragous bras, and with a large black hat, like the hats of Quimper and the rest of Lower Brittany. The brilliant white of this costume gives an air of cleanness and refinement that contrasts strangely with the poor-looking granite houses. We drove on to Le Croisic, through the salt-marshes. These perpetual long squares into which the country is divided give a dull monotonous effect; but before us, and indeed

all round us, we could see the sea, and very soon we reached Le Croisic.

At first sight it looks a dull little fishing-village. The port is completely enclosed by small islands, and a long artificial promontory or causeway, called the Chaussée de Pembron, built to preserve the salt-marshes from the inroads of the sea, for there seems to be little doubt that the whole of the peninsula, including Le Croisic, Batz, and Le Pouliguen, was at one time an island, and that by degrees the channel between it and the mainland has transformed itself into salt-marshes. There are plenty of fishing-boats and

stalwart-looking fishermen; but, following the straggling line of granite houses which surrounds the bay, we remarked that many of them were very curious, and almost all were very ancient in appearance. Farther on is some higher ground, grassed sand-hills with furze and broom at intervals, and shaded by trees, and from this, at some distance, we saw the pier stretching out into the sea. Near the pier is the Etablissement des Bains and the hotel.

A very picturesque old beggar, with an immense rusty black hat and long hair streaming over his shoulders, was sitting asleep under a furze-bush; under another a woman was mending an old pair of red trousers.

The Pointe du Croisic is about half a mile beyond the bathing-place, and from this point the coast is really interesting; the rocks become higher and take fantastic shapessometimes isolated, as one sees them at Etretat (that charming Norman town by the sea), and then again hollowed out by the force of the waves into grottos, in which, at high tide, the sea plunges with a deafening roar. Farther on the rocks stretch out in a point named Grand Autel; and not far beyond this is the Trou du Kourican, a deep hollow said. to have been inhabited by a race of dwarfs. Farther on still is a little cove called Sable Menu, a capital bathingplace for those who prefer to dispense with cabins.

It is a long way to Grand Autel, and it is much better to drive on to the Etablissement before beginning to explore the coast, instead of alighting in the town, for there is little to see in Le Croisic itself, though it is a good plan to stay a few days there, so as to see something of the very original inhabitants of this peninsula.

The church Notre Dame de la Pitié is not remarkable.

Another chapel, St. Goustan, is now closed, but the women of Croisic still pray there for those at sea. From the Mont Esprit, at the end of a promenade called Le Mail, there is an excellent view of the town and harbour of Le Croisic : the town surrounded by the sandy waste of salt pans, and

rising from these the church towers of Batz and of La Guérande. Beyond the harbour is the Atlantic; there is a fine sea-view from Mont Lenigo. The population seems to be partly composed of fishermen and partly of salt-workers; but there is here, as well as in the Bourg de Batz, a certain separateness and exclusiveness both of costume and ideas.

MARRIAGE DRESS.

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The people of Le Croisic call themselves Croisicais, in contradistinction to Bretons, but they do not seem so fine a race as the people of the Bourg de Batz. Alain Bouchart, the historian, was born at Le Croisic; and in the fifteenth century this town seems to have been rich and prosperous, the centre of the salt-trade.

We stopped at Bourg de Batz, as we drove home, to look at some ruins near the church. These are very interesting, of late fifteenth century. They are part of a church dedicated to Notre Dame du Mûrier. From these ruins we went into the church. On the steps a group of young girls met us, and asked with an air of mystery if we wished to see a bride in her marriage dress. We said yes, eagerly, for we had heard that these wedding clothes of the Bourg de

Batz were quite a thing to see.

"Then if Messieurs and Madame will go and see the church first, the bride will be ready when they come out."

The church is uninteresting, the end of the chancel deviating to the right so as quite to spoil the effect. I believe our impatience to see the marriage dress rather hurried our examination of the building. When we came out the eldest of the girls had disappeared, but the other three grinned and showed their white teeth as they ran on in front to guide us.

They had turned out of the main street rather beyond the church, and presently they stopped at the door of a little one-storied house. The doorway was so low that both my companions had to stoop considerably as they stepped down into the room within. Standing in the middle of the floor, radiant with delight at her own appearance, and, as one of my companions observed, in the anticipation of francs,