SOURCE OF THE LOIRE.

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The towns and villages on either bank are chiefly inhabited by mariners, and especially by pilots, who, although useful in most rivers, are altogether indispensable in the Loire, the navigation of which is rendered difficult and dangerous by the sand-banks, that threaten, in the course of another generation, to render this fine river altogether useless for the purposes of commerce.

The Loire, in Latin Liger, takes its source at MontGerbier-le-Joux, in the department of Ardeche, in Languedoc; aud from thence it wanders a course of two hundred and twenty leagues, till it falls into the ocean. During this journey it swallows up one hundred and twelve rivers, and confers its name upon six departments of France-the Haute-Loire, the Saône-et-Loire, the Loire, the Indre-et-Loire, the Maine-et-Loire, and the Loire-Inférieure. At Roanne, in the department of the Loire, it first becomes navigable for boats; and at Briare, in that of the Loiret, it communicates, by means of a canal, with the Seine. Indeed, in the usual meaning of the word, it can hardly be called navigable till it reaches the latter place; but even from this point its navigation extends one hundred and seventy-four leagues.

The Loire, which has been reckoned one of the principal rivers of France, threatens to become one of the meanest, acted upon by some strange principle of destruction that is mingled with its very being. The islands, which form so frequent and picturesque an object in its scenery, are in most cases nothing else than sand-banks; and the same kind of formations, which we see to-day in their earlier phenomena, rising near or above the surface, interrupt the stream so much, and introduce so many different currents, as frequently to baffle the skill of the navigator. Thus the river, overflowing the banks, in con

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ISLAND OF GLORIETTE.

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sequence of the continual rising of its bed, loses in depth what it gains in breadth and would appear to the unobservant spectator to be a much more important stream than it really is.

There is historical evidence to prove, that nineteen hundred years ago the tide rose to the country of the Andegaves, or into Anjou, where Brutus, by order of Cæsar, built a fleet for the purpose of combating the Veneti, who had pushed their conquests even to the Loire. It is known, also, that only one hundred years ago the tide mounted to Ancenis; while now it is scarcely felt at Mauves. In the island of Gloriette, a stratum of shells is found sixty feet below the surface of the earth; and the cellars of the houses, which were built formerly, as at present, beyond the reach of spring-tides, are now, on such occasions, totally submerged. In 1825, a chapel was excavated, the vault of which was four feet under the surface of the street. It was ascertained that this was a chapel of the Knights Templars, which had been built in the thirteenth century; and the calculation was made at the time, that the bed of the Loire must have risen from forty to fifty feet between the years 1200 and 1830. As the river approaches the sea, the sand-banks, as we have seen, are numerous and dangerous. To these it is owing that vessels of large burden must be discharged at Paimbœuf; and perhaps the time is not very far distant when Nantes itself may become, to all intents and purposes, an inland city.

It is scarcely necessary to say, that in a great commercial city like Nantes the above facts have excited universal attention; and that the ingenious are constantly devising new plans to remedy an evil already so great, or avert a threatened ruin so overwhelming. Among these, the most

LAKE OF GRAND-LIEU.

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popular are the project of a series of lateral canals, and that of a line of dikes confining the stream to a narrower channel. It is held by the adherents of the latter plan, that the greater energy imparted to the waters would of itself clear away the sand and deepen the river; but, for our part, we would suggest that the Loire already is barely navigable, to any profitable purpose, against the stream, and that the additional impetuosity which would sweep away sand-banks would also add a month to the voyage from Nantes to Orleans. In 1825, however, the scheme was tried, to a certain extent, between Chouzé and Candes, and is said to have answered the purpose so far as it went; although nothing certain can be deduced from an essay which was supported by only a fourth part of the funds calculated upon by the administrators.

The river produces in abundance salmon, lamprey, shad, carp, bream, and pike. Eels are also plentiful; and their spawn, while ascending the river from the sea in early spring, are caught in vast quantities, like white bait in England, and esteemed a great delicacy.

The lake of Grand-Lieu being only three leagues to the south of Nantes, perhaps the reader will accompany us there before we proceed on our homeward route, in an opposite direction from the Loire. This lake is celebrated, in the first place, for the victory of Alain Barbe-Torte over the Normans in the year 936, popularly supposed to have been obtained upon its banks. The story is, that the Bretons, wearied, but unconquered, and thirsty with heat and loss of blood, retired to the fountain of Faux-Choux to drink, where they lay down to rest for some hours. The Normans, in the meantime, remained where they were; and from this circumstance the affair must be considered to have been as yet a drawn battle. Refreshed, at length,