Lighted by huge wax candles, I walked long and wonderingly through alleys lined by hogsheads, or barriques, as they are called. The value of these, as I was informed, was £120,000. There are generally 10,000 barriques in store, for the most part cobwebbed and venerable vessels emitting a peculiar aroma, something like that of new hay; for your first-class claret requires to be kept many years before it is ripe for post-prandial honours."

But sterile as seem the lands of the Médoc, where such treasures are produced, they come short in this respect of the appearance presented by the Landes of the Gironde, which have no such tales to tell of fruit and wine.

"A few miles from Bourdeaux," he writes, " you enter the Landes, across which the line is carried to Bayonne. Nothing can be more dreary than these apparently interminable wastes. Your passage

across them suggests ideas of the ocean, with this great difference however, that whereas the latter is rarely at rest, the vast tract of the Landes, comprising 600,000 hectares, equal to 1,482,600 acres, except when swept by hurricanes, presents a still and monotonous surface. The soil is sand-endless sand-vertically as well as superficially. Artesian wells have been sunk to nearly the depth of 1,000 feet, and then a scanty supply of wretched yellow water has been the only result. As may be supposed, the lives of the inhabitants of this unpromising region are short, feverish, and sickly. The Landais have a proverb

'Tant que Landes sera Landes
La pellagri te demande.'

The said pellagri, being a fatal disease occasioned by malaria and bad water. Amidst these wastes, lying to the east of the pine forests which fringe the sea coast, the Landais, who are with few exceptions shepherds, spend the long summer days with their flocks of sheep, each animal being as well known to them as their dogs. The Landais shepherd is a primitive being, fond of solitude, rarely venturing near the railway; when he does, he gazes wonderingly at the passing train-so to see him, you must penetrate into his wilderness. There, amidst the great wastes, clothed in sheeps' skins, and wearing the Navarre cap, you will find him mounted on tall stilts, become, from long habit, like a second pair of legs, for he has been accustomed to them from childhood; probably knitting while his flock cross the scanty herbage. There he stands, resting against his pole, a strange tripod-looking figure-stranger still when he strides

across the Landes in hot haste after a wandering sheep.

He has a small hut, sometimes a wife who aids him in cultivating a small patch of ground, from which he obtains a little corn and a few vegetables. A miserable existence is this, but the dawn of brighter days has, we may hope, appeared for the poor Landais."

Some two hours journeying by rail takes the traveller from Bourdeaux through clouds of dust and forests of pine to Arcachon. "Here," writes an English tourist, "houses, like Indian bungalows, with broad verandahs, and often of only one storey, run for more than a mile along the water's edge, each surrounded by its own 'compound,' to keep up the Indian phraseology, and each with its bathing-house and steps leading down to the beach. From these the lightly-clad inmates emerge at all hours, and pass the greater part of their time either paddling barefoot on the shore when the tide is out, or dancing in groups in the sea, which has the merit, in the eyes of the nervous part of the population, of always being as smooth as a mill-pond. I never saw a place so absolutely and completely given over to bathing. But the real charm of Arcachon lies in its pine forests, covering sand-dunes sometimes three or four hundred feet high, and stretching back over the landes, where fresh-water lakes glimmer in the blue distance. Picturesquely grouped within these resinous groves are perched the villas and cottages of the winter town, to which consumptive patients resort in the colder months to breathe turpentine mixed with the soft sea breeze. The extraordinary advantages of this hygienic compound seem to be getting more and more recognised, and each year the number of visitors increases. The high dunes completely shelter the winter town from the violence of the gales, while there is a life and purity in the atmosphere which have worked marvellous results. With a compass one may explore the recesses of these forests for miles on horseback, for there is scarcely any underwood, and one can therefore steer through them in any direction; though in fact there is not much danger of being very seriously lost, for the forest abounds with the wooden shanties of the collectors of turpentine, who are perpetually at work gashing the trees and emptying the little pots tied on to them, and which contain the sap, into the small tanks prepared to receive it. In the centre of the basin are a couple of sand-banks, one of them partially dry at low water, and on which any number of rabbits may be shot; and on the other an oyster-park, with an old hulk stranded upon it. Large parties of merry-makers sail to this moist and oozy spot, and,

taking off their shoes and stockings, catch their own shrimps, gather their own cockles, and knock the oysters off the tiles upon which they are growing, for themselves; and then retiring to the hulk, where sundry articles of diet may be purchased, make their cannibal pic-nic with the addition of these living creatures. Another

pleasing entertainment, much resorted to by both sexes, is spearing fish by torchlight. On a dark night the bay is sometimes brightly illuminated with the glare of the pine-splinters flaming from the prows of boats in iron cradles, and the shouts of laughter tell of unsuccessful prods with many-pronged spears at the eels and mullet which wriggle or dart round the bright reflection on the water. It requires considerable skill and practice to bring home a large basketful, but some ladies become tolerably expert at this sport."

And here, amidst all the gaiety of a fashionable watering-place, the residenter or the forester may find a solitude, for which he might seek in vain elsewhere, in the forest of pines." This, indeed," writes Weld, "is the characteristic feature of Arcachon. The great pine forest of the Landes, locally called pignadas, extends from the Adour to the Gironde, and is an extraordinary monument of man's skill and perseverance.

"Prior to 1789 this vast forest area was―

'A bare strand

Of hillocks heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,

Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds.'

The sand was so fine as to be wafted by the faintest breeze; while the great sea storms raised huge sand waves, which overwhelmed vegetation, and, rolling inland, frequently carried desolation and destruction among far distant villages and fields. Such was the state of this part of the country when M. Bremontier, an officer in the Government department of the administration of forests of France, conceived the idea of erecting wattle hurdles and boards near the sea, so as to break the storms; and of sowing in narrow zones, leeward and at right angles to the prevailing wind, seeds of the Pinus Pinaster and common broom, in the proportion of five pounds of the former to two of the latter per acre. The area sown was then covered or thatched with pine branches, care being taken to prevent these being blown away, by pinning them to the ground. In about six weeks the broom seeds produced plants six inches high, which attained the height of two feet at the close of the year. These

now afforded excellent shelter to the pine plants, which were but 4-inch striplings, and under their fostering protection the pines grew and flourished, until at length, with an ingratitude not unhappily confined to the vegetable world, they suffocated their infantine protectors, and rose high, defiant of the raging sand-storms.

"So effective was M. Bremontier's process that, in 1871, a commission, appointed by Government to examine the Landes, reported that 12,500 acres were covered with thriving and profitable pines; and the Landais, who had lived to see their howling wastes clothed with far-stretching forests, were enabled to gain a livelihood, less precarious and perilous than that obtained by fishing in the stormy waters of the Biscay Bay.

"Twenty-five years passed, and then the hand of man was busy among the pines. Good as the pinaster is for domestic purposes, La Fontaine says:

'Sera-t-il Dieu, table, ou cuvette?

it is far more valuable for the great quantity of resin, tar, and lampblack which it produces. As you ride through the pines you will meet the resin-gatherers, résiniers, as they are called, who during the summer months live in the forest; for the most part a rude set of men, speaking a strange patois, from which, however, you may glean some information. When the resin-harvest is at hand, the résinier goes forth provided with a short ladder and a curved axe. His manner of testing the fitness of a tree to be tapped is by throwing his arms around it. If the trunk be so thick that he cannot see his finger ends, the pine is ripe for the operation. This is performed with great quickness and dexterity. A longitudinal cut or groove is made in the trunk, down which the resin flows, and is caught at the bottom of the stem, in a little trough fashioned in a few moments from the bark removed by the cut. Weekly the wound is re-opened but not widened, and the operation is renewed yearly, until the entire trunk is scored in such a manner as to make you wonder how the maimed bole can support the superincumbent weight. But, stranger still, the pine is not injured by this scoring process; for, if the operation be judiciously performed, by the time that the résinier has gone round the tree, the first wound has healed, and the trunk is ready to be bled again. Wonderful too is the quantity of resin which exudes from these bountiful trees. You may know where the résiniers have lately been, by the palsamic odour proceeding from the wounded pine. A resin-gatherer told me that after a season's practice-from the first of May to the end of September-a good

hand could score 2,400 trees, scrape the résine molle, which encrusts the trunks, into the troughs with small iron rakes, and carry the resin to the pits where it is boiled. I saw a résinier frequently score a tree to the height of 15 feet, and make a trough in two minutes and a quarter. Such a proficient earns 25 francs weekly, a high wage in this part of France. Indeed, the résinier is far better off now than the small vineyard proprietor, who generally, destitute of capital, is ruined by a failure of his crop.

"When the pines have been scored and re-scored, those destined to make tar-called pins perdus-are cut down. The tar, commercially known as goudron des Landes, not so good, however, as that derived from the Scotch pine, is made by burning the roots and thick portion of the trunk very slowly in cavities made in sloping ground, and the tar is caught in cast-iron pans and run into barrels. An inferior kind of lamp-black is deposited from the smoke of the wood, but a better description is obtained by burning the straw used in straining the resin.

"Besides these products, the resin of the Pinus Pinaster yields common turpentine, and is used extensively for pills. Glaring placards and advertisements at Arcachon further inform the visitor that Sève de Pin Maritime est recommandée contre les affections de poitrine, catarrhes, bronchitis,' &c., by the French Faculty,—a revival by the way, in another form, of tar-water, whose varieties were extolled by Bishop Berkeley long ago, in his curious book, entitled Sevis'.

"And even now the economical uses of resin are not exhausted; so the Frenchman did not exaggerate when he asserted that, résine est l'or en barriques.

Many and delightful were the hours that I spent in the Pignadas, generally on horseback, for the country around Arcachon is very favourable for riding, and the small Landais horses are excellent. Arab blood runs in their veins.

"As all the agrémens of Arcachon are not yet chronicled in guide books, I may mention that by far the most enjoyable excursion is that to the Pointe du Sud, about six miles south of the town. Start early, when the tide is ebbing, so that you may enjoy the fine, broad, hard sand. At the Pointe du Sud you have the mighty Atlantic before you, the great Biscayan waves breaking at your feet; while behind dark pines fringe the coast. Return through the forest; avenues, called Gardes-feu cut through the pines to prevent the spread of fire, extend to Arcachon; and when you are on the right track, you will