do well not to stray from it, as it is quite possible to realise in these pignadas the unpleasant feeling of losing your way, particularly when the sun has set. "Few places are more impressive than dark pine forests, now screaming when the wind sweeps through to the trees, and now filling the solitude with murmering voices, when stirred by gentle breezes, and yet not a solitude; for as you pass through them in the noontide the air trembles with ceaseless hum. Pines are always a favourite home for insects; and here, in the warm south, they exist in countless multitudes, making even silence vocal; for, flashing through the air, or sluggishly basking in the summer sun, they are endowed with the power of making the forest resonant with strange sounds. By far the most remarkable of these noisy animals is the Cicada, which attains a great size in the pine forests in Southern France, and emits a loud sound, according to my observation, always increasing in intensity as the temperature rises." Agriculture, as from the first was intended, has followed in the wake of sylviculture. "After innumerable futile attempts to reclaim and fertilise portions of this desert, two joint stock companies (Compagnie des Landes, and Compagnie d'Arcachon), have succeeded in reclaiming a considerable portion of the Plaine de Cazaux. "Sheltered from the prevalent west winds, by the great maritime pine forest, the Plaine de Cazaux, situated to the east or leeward, as may be said, of that forest, is not so liable to the destructive effects of the great sand storms as other parts of the Landes. Rice, tobacco, and the topinambour or Jerusalem artechoke, for which the soil is admirably adapted, are the chief crops. The improvements are in a great measure due to a M. Pierre." From these pen and ink sketches some idea may be formed of the appearances presented by the pine plantations on the Landes of the Gironde. The forest-like character of these will bear comparison with that of the plantations seen from the tower of the cathedral of Antwerp. And a knowledge of the general appearance presented by the district may lead to the conclusion that the transformation cannot have been less complete. CHAPTER II. APPEARANCES PRESENTED BY LANDS ADJACENT TO THE PINE To appreciate aright the effect produced by the planting of the drift sands of the Landes with pine trees, it is necessary to know something of the appearance presented by the land thus utilised, and of the land around which has thus been transformed into what in comparison therewith is a paradise-a garden of delight. A description of the district, which may be reckoned one of the most dreary and dismal in the land, one altogether at variance with the ideas called up by the designation La Belle France, is given in a work by Arthur Mangin, entitled "The Desert World," from an English translation, of which I cite the following description: "The department which borrows its name from the Landes of Gascony is divided by the Adour into two wholly dissimilar parts. To the south of the river lies a rich, undulating, vine-bearing country, rich in pasturage and harvest, sown with pleasant villages and smiling country houses, and watered by full streams and little rivers. To the north the appearance of the country changes abruptly. When the traveller has crossed the alluvial zone of the Adour he sees before him a thin, dry, sandy level of a comparatively recent marine formation. Its only products are rye, millet; and maize; its only vegetation, forests of pines and scattered coppices of oaks; beyond these, and they do not extend far, all cultivation ceases, and the soil is stripped of verdure; you enter upon the Landes-seemingly vast as a sea-occupied by permanent or periodical swamps; and where, over a space of several square leagues, in an horizon apparently boundless, you perceive nothing but heaths, sheepfolds or steadings for the flocks of sheep that traverse these deserts, and shepherds keeping mute watch over their animals, living wholly among them, and having no intercourse with the rest of humanity, except when once a week they seek their masters' houses to procure their supply of provisions. It is these shepherds only (Landescots and Aouillys), and not, as is generally supposed, all the peasants of the Landes, who are perched upon stilts, so as to survey from afar their wandering flocks, and to traverse more safely the marshes which frequently lie across their path. B "Wild and uncouth are the figures which these stilt-walkers present, as they move rapidly over the country, often at the rate of six or seven miles an hour; occasionally indulging in an interval of rest, by the aid of a third wooden support at the back (curved at the top, so as to fit the hollow of the body), while they pursue their favourite pastime of knitting. The dress of the Landescot is singularly rude. His coat or paletôt is a fleece; cuisses and greaves of the same material protect his legs and thighs; his feet are thrust into sabots and coarse woollen socks, which cover only the heels and instep. Over his shoulder hangs the gourd which contains his week's store of provisions: some mouldy rye-bread, a few sardines, some onions and cloves of garlic, and a flask of thin sour wine. From sunrise to sunset he lives upon the stilts, never touching the ground. Sometimes he drives his flock home at eventide; sometimes he bivouacs sub jove frigido, under the cold heaven of night. Unbuckling his stilts, and producing his flint and steel, he soon kindles a cheery fire of firbranches, and gathering his sheepskins round him, composes himself to sleep; his only annoyances being the musquitoes, and his fears of the evil tricks of wizard or witch, who may peradventure catch a glimpse of him in the moonlight, as they ride past on their besom to some unholy gathering or demon-dance. "An English traveller has sketched in vivid colours the landscape of the Landes. Over all its gloom and barrenness, he remarks, over all its 'blasted heaths,' its monotonous pine-woods, its sudden morasses, its glaring sand-heaps, prevails a strong sense of loneliness, a grandeur and intensity of desolation, which invests the scene with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself. Emerging from the black shadows of the forest, the pilgrim treads a plain, 'flat as a billiardtable,' apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in one unvaried unbroken garb of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and ridges, or great ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine; sometimes belts of scraggy young fir trees appear rising from the horizon on the right, and sinking into it again on the left. Occasionally a brighter shade of green, with jungles of willows and water weeds, giant rushes, and clustered marish mosses,' will tell of the 'blackened waters' beneath 'Hard by a poplar shook alway, All silver-green with gnarléd bark; "The dwellings which stud this dreary, yet not wholly unpoetic landscape, are generally mere isolated huts, separated oftentimes by many miles. Round them spreads a miserable field or two, planted with such crops as might be expected on a poor soil and from deficient cultivation. The cottages are mouldering heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones, clustered round with ragged sheds composed of masses of tangled bushes, pine-stakes and broad-leaved reeds, beneath which the meagrest looking cattle conceivable find a precarious shelter. "The Landes are divided into the Little Landes, near Mont-deMarsan; and the Great Landes, stretching to the north and west of the department of which that town is the capital, and uniting uninterruptedly with those that occupy the vast country situated south of the Gironde. The total superficial area of these plains is estimated at upwards of 2,400,000 acres, of which two-thirds belong to the department of the Landes, and the remainder to that of the Gironde." Again-"In shape, the Great Landes may be compared to an immense rectangular triangle, having for its base the coast, which, from the mouth of the Gironde to Bayonne, or for a length of more than sixty leagues, is almost rectilineal. But they are separated from the sea by a long parallel chain of lakes and water-courses— a waste of shallow pools—a labyrinth of gulfs and morasses, and then by the continuous chain of the Dunes. "That which is commonly called the Great Lande is bounded on the north by the étang, or lake, of Cazau. It is a sandy, treeless plain, and upon which, for a traject of several leagues from east to west, not one habitation worthy of the name is perceptible until the traveller arrives at Mimizan, near the southern point of the lake of Aureilhan. This lake on the south-west pours its waters into the sea. To the north it communicates, through the canal of St. Eulalie, with the lake of Biscarosse, which is itself connected with that of Cazau. East of this chain of lakes lies the Lande; west of it stretches the range of Dunes, or sand hills. "The lake or pool of Cazau is a small sea of fresh water, perfectly clear, profoundly deep, and fourteen to fifteen thousand acres in extent. It has its whirlwinds and its tempests, so that in certain seasons it is perilous to embark on its surface. And were its banks clothed with rich woods, or raised aloft in irregular or precipitous cliffs, it would surely attract as great a throng of tourists as the mountain-tarns and lochs of Scotland or Cumberland, or the Arcadian waters of Northern Italy. The lake of Biscarosse, in form a triangle, with one side formed by the Dunes, covers about twelve thousand acres. It derives its name from a village situated at its northern angle, on the bank of the canal which connects it with the lake of Cazau. The lake of Aureilhan is the smallest of the three; the St. Eulalie canal, which links it to the preceding, traverses a series of peat-bogs bounded eastward by gloomy pine-forests, and westward by the interminable Dunes, which, by arresting the flow of the rainwaters, have really created these so-called lakes and extensive swamps. Enormous quantities of rain fall every year in the Landes, -which district the Romans would certainly have dedicated to Jupiter Pluvius, and find beneath the thin superficial stratum or crust of sand and earth, a sub-soil of tufa and allios-in other words, of compact chalk and sand agglutinated by a ferruginous sediment. Frequently this tufa possesses all the hardness of stone, and its imperviousness is its fundamental property. Hence it follows, that a portion of the heavy annual rainfall remains in the receptacles provided by the hollows and depressions of the soil, and in due time accumulates into marshes and lagoons, until gradually evaporated by the heat of spring. "When of old the scared peasants beheld the irresistible advance of these strange ministers of destruction, they had no other resource than to fell their woods, abandon their dwellings, and surrender their 'little all' to the pitiless sand and devouring sea. What could avail against such a scourge? Efforts were made to repel it. It is said that Charlemagne, during a brief residence in the Landes, on his return from his expedition against the Saracens, employed his veterans, and expended large sums of money in preserving the cities of the coast from imminent ruin; but whether the means employed were insufficient, or whether the imperial resources failed, and other urgent needs diverted the population and their leaders from this struggle against nature, the works were wholly abandoned." But in more propitious circumstances the work has been resumed with better success. "The reader," says the writer I have quoted, "must not believe this country to be a desert in the popular acceptation of the word; it has its forests of pines, where the extraction and preparation of resinous matter are carried on with considerable activity. It has its small towns, its pretty villages, its factories, and even its handsome villas. Finally, modern industry has cut the Landes in two by the Bordeaux railway, which traverses them from north to south, and bifurcates at Morans to throw off a line to Bayonne, and another to Tarbes." |