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ignorance really means, what blindness of intellect goes with it. And yet their enlightenment by the usual methods would be a doubtful blessing to themselves and others.

I was now descending to the valley, and not long after leaving the village an attempt to escape from the winding hot road led me into one of those wildernesses, which are to me infinitely more pleasing than the most artistic gardens, with their geometric flower-beds and their counterfeit lakes and grottoes. The surface of the land was thrown or washed up into dark brown hillocks of broken argillaceous schist, which repelled vegetation, but the hollows were wooded with mountain oak and many shrubs. Farther down there were other hillocks, equally bare, but formed of the blue-looking lias marl which the husbandman detests with good reason, for its sterility is incorrigible. This terre bleue, as the peasants call it, was not the only sign of a change in the formation; fragments of calcareous stone were mixed with the brown soil. I was leaving the dark schist and was approaching those immense accumulations of jurassic rock, whose singular forms and brilliant colors lend such extraordinary grandeur to the scenery of the Upper Tarn. There was also a change in the vegetation. A huge species of broom four or five feet high, covered with golden blossom the size of pea-flowers, although the common broom had long past its blooming, now showed itself as well as roseroot sedum, neither of which had I seen while coming over the schist. The cicadas returned and screamed from every tree. I captured one and examined the musical instrument a truly marvellous bit of mechanism that it carried in each of its sides. It is not legs which make the noise, as is the case with crickets and grasshoppers, but little hard membranes under the wings are scraped together at the creature's will. The sound is not musical, for when it is not a continuous scissor-grinding noise, it is like the cry of a corncrake with a weak throat; but what delight there is in it! and how it expresses that joy in the present and recklessness of the morrow, which the fabulist has in vain contrasted with the virtuous industry of the ant in order to point a moral for mankind! - vainly, because the cigale's short life in the sunlit trees will ever seem to men a more ideal one than that of the earth-burrowing ant, with its possible longevity, its peevish parsimony, and restless anxiety for the future. I could have laid down under a

tree like a gipsy in this wild spot, and let the summer dreams come to me from their airy castles amongst the leaves, if I had not made up my mind to reach St. Affrique before night. There was another reason which, although it clashes with poetry, had better be told for the sake of truth. Insects would soon have taken all pleasure from the siesta. Great black ants and great red ones, little ants too, that could have walked with comfort through the eye of a fine needle notwithstanding their wickedness, and intermediate species of the same much-praised family would have scampered over me and stung me, and flies of bad propensities would have settled upon me. An enthusiastic entomologist has only to lie down in the open air in this part of France at the end of July or in August, and he will soon be able to observe, perhaps feel, sufficient insects travelling on their legs or on the wing to satisfy a great deal of curiosity. Often the air is all a flutter with butterflies, many of them remarkable for their size or the beauty of their coloring. One I have particularly noticed; not large, but colored with exquisite gradations of bright yellow, orange, and pale green.

I believe I added to my day's journey by my excursion across country, but the time would have passed less pleasantly on the road. The winding yellow line however appeared again, and I had to tramp upon it. And a hot, toilsome trudge it was, through that long, narrow valley with scrubby woods reaching down to the road, but with no habitations and no water. was the desert. The afternoon was far advanced when the country opened and I saw a village of coquettish appearance, for most of the houses had been washed with red, and many of the window shutters were painted green.

It

I was parched with thirst, for the sun had been broiling me for hours; therefore, when I saw this village on the hillside, I hurried towards it with the impatience of a traveller who sees the palmtrees over well in the sands of Africa. In a place that could give so much attention to color there must surely be an auberge, I thought. And I judged rightly, for there were two little inns. I found the door of the first one closed, and learnt that the people were out harvesting. I walked on to the next, and found that likewise closed, and was again informed that all the family were out in the fields. The whole village was nearly deserted; amolst every one was busy reaping and putting up the sheaves. I stopped beside the village

pump and reflected upon my misery. I had resigned myself to water, when a woman carrying a sickle opened the door of one of the inns. Some friendly bird must have told her of my thirst and weariness-perhaps the merry little quail that I heard as I came up from the plain crying "To-whit! To-whit!" That blessed auberge actually contained bottled beer. And the room was so cool that butter would not have melted in it. These southern houses have such thick stone walls that they have the double advantage of being warm in winter and delightfully cool in summer. I had some difficulty in resisting the temptation to stop the night at this inn, but I did resist it, and was again on the road to St. Affrique before the heat of the day had passed.

Another toilsome trudge, during which I met an English threshing machine being dragged along by bullocks, and the familiar words upon it made me feel for a while quite at home. The apparition, however, gave me a shock, for the antique flail is still the instrument commonly used for threshing, in the southern provinces of France.

At a village called Moulin, lying in a rich and beautiful valley, I met the Sorgues, one of the larger tributaries of the Tarn, and for the rest of my journey I had the companionship of a charming stream. Evening came on, and the fiery blue above me grew soft and rosy. Rosy, too, were the cornfields, where bands of men and women, fifteen or twenty together, were reaping gaily, for the heat of the day was gone, the freshness of the twilight had come, and the fragrance of the valley was unloosened. I had left the last group of reapers behind, and the silence of the dusk was broken only by the tree crickets, and the rapids of the little river, when a woman passed me on the road and murmured "Adicias!" (God be with you), "Adicias!" I replied, and then I was again alone. Presently there was a jangling of bells behind, and I was soon overtaken by three horses and a crowded diligence. The sound of the bells grew fainter, and fainter, and once more I was alone with the summer night. The stars began to shine, and the river was lost in the mystery of shadow, save where a sunken rock made the water gleam white, and awoke the peace with a cry of trouble.

It was late when I reached St. Affrique, and I believe no tramp arrived at his bourne that night more weary than I, for I had been walking most of the day in the

burning sun. But although I lay down like a jaded horse, I was too feverish to sleep. To make matters worse, there was a cock in the yard just underneath my window, and the fiendish creature consid ered it his duty to crow every two or three minutes after the stroke of midnight. How well did I then enter into the feelings of a man I knew who, under similar provocation, got up from his bed, and taking a carving knife from the kitchen, quietly and deftly cut off the cock's head before the astonished bird had time to protest. Having stopped the crowing and assured himself that it would not begin again, he went back to bed and slept the sleep of the innocent.

I was out early the next morning, looking at the extraordinary astronomical dials of the parish church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls. All the straight lines, curves and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that their ignorance is hopeless. Such a display of science must be like wizard symbolism to the common people. The dials are exceedingly curious, and there are some really astonishing calculations, as, for instance, a table showing the "num ber of souls that have appeared before the Tribunal of God." Near a great sundial are these solemn words: Sol et luna faciunt quæ precepta sunt eis; nos autem pergrimamur a Domino." The church itself is one of the most fantastically ugly structures imaginable. All possible tricks of style and taste appear to have been played upon it. It is a jumble of heavy Gothic and Italian, and the apse is twisted out of line with the nave, in which respect, however, it is like the Cathedral of Quimper. As I left the church a funeral procession approached, women carrying palls by the four corners a little in front of the coffin, according to the custom of the country when the dead person is of their own sex. When a man dies, members of his sex carry the palls.

St. Affrique is a small town of about seven thousand inhabitants, lying in a warm valley and surrounded by high hills, the sides of which were once covered with luxuriant vineyards. These slopes, arid, barren, and sun-scorched, are perfectly suited to the cultivation of the vine, the fig, and the almond; but the elevation is still too great for the olive. As I toiled up the side of the valley in the direction of Millau, I noticed the Rocher de Caylus, a large reddish and somewhat fantastically shaped block of oolitic rock, perched on

the hill above the vineyards. Here the lower formation was schistous, the upper calcareous. The sun was intensely hot, but there was the shade of walnut-trees, which I took advantage of, although it is said to be poisonous, like that of the oleander.

When I reached the plateau there was no shade whatever, baneful or beneficent. If there was ever any forest here all vestige of it has disappeared. I was on the border of the Causse de Larzac, one of the highest, most extensive and savagely barren of the calcareous deserts which separate the rivers in this part of France. Not a drop of water save what may have been collected in tanks for the use of sheep, and the few human beings who eke out an existence there, is to be found upon them. Swept by freezing winds in winter and burnt by a torrid sun in summer, their climate is as harsh as the soil is ungenerous.

But although I was sun-broiled upon this causse, I was interested at every step by the flowers that I found there. Dry, chaffy, or prickly plants, corresponding in their nature to the aridity and asperity of the land, were peculiarly at home upon the undulating stoniness. The most beautiful flower then blooming was that of the catananche, which has won its poetic French name, cupidon bleu, by the brilliant color of its blossom. Multitudes of yellow everlastings also decked the solitude.

On reaching the highest ground the crests of the bare Cevennes were seen against the cloudless sky to the south. A little to the east, beyond the valley of the Cernon, which I intended to cross, were high hills or cliffs, treeless and sterile, with hard-cut angular sides, terminating upwards in vertical walls of naked stone. These were the buttresses of the Causse de Larzac. The lower sides of some of the hills were blue with lias marl, and wherever they were steep not a blade of grass grew.

Having descended to the valley, I was soon climbing towards Roquefort by the flanks of those melancholy hills which seemed to express the hopelessness of nature after ages of effort to overcome some evil power. And yet the tinkling of innumerable sheep-bells told that even here men had found a way of earning their bread. I saw the flocks moving high above me where all was wastefulness and rockiness, and heard the voices of the shepherds. There were the Roquefort sheep whose milk, converted into cheese

of the first quality, is sent into distant countries whose people little imagine that its constituents are drawn from a desert where there is little else but stones.

I came in view of the village, clinging as it seemed to the steep at the base of a huge bastion of stark jurassic rock. Facing it was another barren hill, and in the valley beneath were mamelons of dark clay and stones partly conquered by the great broom and burning with its flame of gold. When I reached the village I felt that I had earned a rest.

Cheese, which has been the fortune of Roquefort, has destroyed its picturesque. ness. It has brought speculators there who have raised great, ugly, square buildings of dazzling whiteness in harsh contrast with the character and sombre tone of the old houses. Although the place is so small that it consists of only one street and a few alleys, the more ancient dwellings are remarkable for their height. It is surprising to see in a village lost among the sterile hills houses three stories high. The fact that there is only a ledge on which to build must be the explanation. What is most curious in the place is the cellars. Before the cheese became an important article of commerce these were natural caverns, such as are everywhere to be found in this calcareous formation; but now they are really cellars that have been excavated to such a depth in the rock that they are to be seen in as many as five stages, where long rows of cheeses are stacked one over the other. The virtue of these cellars from the cheese-making point of view is their dryness and their scarcely varying temperature of about 8° centigrade summer and winter. But the demand for Roquefort cheese has become so great that trickery now plays a part in the ripening process. The peasants have learnt that "time is money," and they have found that bread-crumbs mixed with the curd cause those green streaks of mouldiness, which denote that the cheese is fit for the market, to appear much more readily than was formerly the case when it was left to do the best it could for itself with the aid of a subterranean atmosphere. This is not exactly cheating; it is com. mercial enterprise, the result of competition and other circumstances too strong for poor human nature. In cheese-making, bread-crumbs are found to be a cheap substitute for time, and it is said that those who have taken to beer-brewing in this region have found that box, which here is the commonest of shrubs, is a cheap substitute for hops. The notion

that brass pins are stuck into Roquefort cheese to make it turn green is founded on fiction.

sunshine, then I met the Tarn again and reached Millau, a weary and dusty way. farer.

Having remained at Roquefort long I stopped in Millau (sometimes spelt enough to see all that was needful, to Milhau) more than a day in order to rest lunch, and to be overcharged-commer- and to ramble-moderately. Although cial enterprise is very infectious I the town, with its sixteen thousand inhabturned my back upon it and scrambled itants, is the most populous in the departdown a stony path to the bottom of the ment of the Aveyron, it is so remote from valley where the Cernon - now a mere all large centres and currents of human thread of a stream curled and sparkled movement that very little French is spoken in the middle of its wide channel, the yel- there. And this French is about on a par low flowers and pale green leaves of the with the English of the Sheffield grinders. horned poppy basking upon the rocky In the better-class families an effort now banks. Following it down to the Tarn I is made to keep patois out of doors for the came to the village of St. Rome de Cer- sake of the children; but there is scarcely non, where the houses of dark grey stone, a middle-aged native to whom it is not the built on a hillside, are overtopped by the mother tongue. The common dialect is round tower of a small mediæval fortress not quite the same throughout Guienne which has been patched up and put to and Languedoc; but the local variations some modern use. I thought the people are much less marked than one would very ill-favored by nature here, but per- expect, considering that the langue d'oc haps they are not more so than others in has been virtually abandoned as a literary the district. The harshness of nature is vehicle for centuries. Curiously enough, strongly reflected in all faces. Having the word oc (yes), which was once the passed a man on the bank of the stream most convenient sound to distinguish the washing his linen - presumably his own dialect from that of the northern half of -with bare arms, sinewy and hairy like France, has fallen completely into disuse; a gorilla's, I was again in the open coun- so much so, that all the Languedocians try; but instead of following donkey-paths whom I questioned on the subject did not and sheep-tracks I was upon the dusty know what it meant, until at length an highroad. Well, even a route nationale, educated one told me that the form was however hot and dusty, so that it be not very old and had long died out. All these too straight, has its advantages, which are people can understand Spanish when felt after you have been walking an uncer- spoken slowly. Many can catch your tain number of miles over a very rough meaning when you speak to them in country, trusting to luck to lead you where French, but reply in patois. I had grown you wished to go. The feeling that you accustomed, although not reconciled, to may at length step out freely and not this manner of conversing with peasants, worry yourself with a map and compass but I was surprised to find on entering a is a kind of pleasure which, like all others, shop at Millau that neither the man nor is only so by the force of contrast and his wife there could reply to me in the charm of variety. I knew that I French. could now tramp along this road without troubling myself about anything, and that I should reach Millau sooner or later. It was really very hot; ideal sunstroke weather, verging on 90° in the shade; but I had become hardened to it, and was as dry as a smoked herring. For miles I saw no human being and heard no sound of life except the shrilling of grasshoppers and the more strident song of the cicades in the trees. By and by houses showed themselves, and I came to the village of St. Georges beside the bright little Cernon, but surrounded by wasteful, desolate hills, one of which, shaped like a cone, reared its yellow, rocky summit far towards the blue solitude of the dazzling sky. I passed by little gardens where great hollyhocks flamed in the afternoon

This town lies in the bottom of a basin; some of the high hills, especially those on the east, showing savage escarpments with towering masses of yellow or reddish rock at the summits. The climate of the valley is delightful in winter, but sultry and enervating in summer. It is so protected from the winds that the mulberry flourishes there; and countless almondtrees rise above the vines on the burning hillsides.

Millau presents a good deal of interest to the archæologist. Very noteworthy is the ancient market-place, where the first and upper stories project far over the pav. ing and are supported by a colonnade. Some of the columns, with elaborately carved Romanesque capitals, date from the twelfth century, and look ready to fall

into fragments. At one end of the square is an immense modern crucifix - a sure sign that the civic authorities do not yet share the views of the municipal councillors of Paris in regard to religious emblems. Protestants, however, are numerous at Millau as well as at St. Affrique, both towns having been important centres of Calvinism at the time of the Revocation of the Fdict of Nantes; and after the forced emigration many of the inhabitants must have strongly sympathized with their persecuted neighbors, the Camisards. Nevertheless the department of the Aveyron, taken in its entirety, is now one of the most fervently Catholic in France.

The church is Romanesque with a marked Byzantine tendency. It has an elegant apse decorated in good taste; but the edifice having received various patchings and decorations at the time of the Renaissance, the uniformity of style has been spoilt. The most striking architectural feature of the town is a high Gothic belfry of octagonal form with a massive square tower for its base.

In the Middle Ages the government of this town was vested in six consuls who received twenty gold florins a year as salary, and also a new robe of red and black cloth with a hood. In 1341 they furnished forty men-of-arms for the war against the English, but the place was given up to Chandos in 1362. The rising of 1369 delivered the burghers again from the British power, but for twenty-two years they were continually fighting with the English companies.

The evening before I left Millau I strolled into the little square where the great crucifix stands. I found it densely crowded. Three or four hundred men were there, each wearing a blouse and carrying a sickle with a bit of osier laid upon the sharp edge of the blade along its whole length, and firmly tied. All these harvesters were waiting to be hired for the following week. They belonged to a class much less numerous in France than in England the agricultural laborers who have no direct interest in the soil that they help to cultivate, and the crops that they help to gather in. I have often met them on the dusty roads, frequently walking with bare feet, carrying the implements of their husbandry and a little bundle of clothes. It must be very hard to ask for work from farm to farm. I can enter fully into the attachment of the French peasant to his bit of land which, although it may yield him little more than his black bread, cannot be taken from him so long as he

can manage to live by the sweat of his brow. Many of these peasant proprietors can barely keep body and soul together; but when they lie down upon their wretched beds at night, they feel thankful that the roof that covers them, and the soil that supports them, are their own. The wind may howl about the eaves, and the snow may drift against the wall, but they know that the one will calm down, and that the other will melt, and that life will go on as before-hard, back-breaking, grudging even the dark bread, but secure and independent. Waiting to be hired by another man almost like a beast of burden - what a trial is here for pride! Happily for the human race, pride, although it springs naturally in the breast of man, only becomes luxuriant with cultivation. The poor laborer does not feel it unless his instinctive sense of justice has been outraged. EDWARD HARRISON BARKER.

From The Spectator.

"DEATH WEEK" IN RURAL RUSSIA. "DEATH WEEK," the "Smartna Nedelya" of the Slavonic peoples, marks the end of winter in rural Russia. It is kept during the last seven days of March, and is a survival pure and simple of early paganism. In the old Slavonic mythology, as in the minds of the mass of untaught Russians nowadays, the idea of Death and Winter is closely associated; and the ceremonies proper to the "Death Week," from the sacrifice to the "Vodyanoi," or WaterSpirit, with which it begins, to the driv ing-out and drowning of Death, with which it terminates, are based upon the superstition that was formerly universal in northern Europe. That writers on Russia and the Russians have given no account of the "Death-Week" celebration, is due, no doubt, to the fact that it takes place at a time of year when travellers are rarely tempted to visit Russia, and is confined to rural districts out of the beatentrack, which are unlikely to attract foreigners.

When the ice begins to break on the water, winter is considered over in Russia; and the breaking of the ice is due — the Russian peasants hold to the

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Vodyanoi," or Water-Spirit, who has his abode in the rivers and streams. He has slept over the winter, they say, and awakes hungry and angry, with the first rays of the returning sun. He bursts the congealed

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