1890-91.] CELTIC, ROMAN AND GREEK TYPES. 183 



nothing. Tradition assigns their origin to the old Romans. * * * * 

 When I bade good-bye to Vernou, took the railroad from Tours to Rourges and on to 

 Bourn, I was not a little surprised to find all along the low ridges of limestone hills 

 which skirt the railroad, a similar series of endless caves. * * * -pi^e 

 mayor of Vernou informed me that in his canton alone there were no less than looo 

 dwellers in caves." 



THE LANGUK D'OC. 



We had ample time to see the beautiful and interesting city of 

 Bordeaux, but as I am not writing an itinerary or traveller's notes on 

 general subjects, I will pass over the vine covered plains of the Medoc 

 region, the prune orchards of Agen, the cornfields of Toulouse (where 

 maize has taken for a time the place of the vine, destroyed by the 

 phylloxera) and come at once to Montpellier, a beautifully situated city 

 in sight of the mountains on the one hand and the Mediterranean on 

 the other ; a city like many others in France, encircled by walls, once its 

 strong defence, now only a constraint ; a city with some new, broad 

 streets and houses of modern architecture, but more interesting to me in 

 the older quarters, where the streets are winding and often steep, where 

 you can sometimes almost stretch your arms from one side of the rue to 

 the other, with "bits" that would delight the sketch club, at every turn- 

 As you go east from the humid air of the Bay of Biscay — humid, but so 

 warm that they have in the gardens at Bordeaux a lovely grove of 

 palms — the climate gets drier at. every stage, and before you reach 

 Montpellier you see signs of a change in vegetation, while by the time 

 you get to Nimes, mulberry trees, lemons and figs are common, and the 

 olive shares the chief honors with the vine. It was in Montpellier that 

 we first noticed the soft Provencal speech. We used to go to the public 

 markets, whenever we had the chance, deeming that we could learn 

 much there about the habits and resources of a country. We looked 

 with some astonishment on the raw cuttlefish sold in Santander, such as 

 Lucian sneeringly says, Diogenes died from swallowing ; on the minute 

 subdivisions of the poultry at Bordeaux, where you could buy a single 

 leg of a chicken, or the fly bones of the wings, or the white meat of the 

 breast, or the bony skeleton after legs, wings and breast had been cut 

 away — valuable, of course, for soup. At Toulouse we saw the curious 

 collection of second hand things dealt in by open air vendors in the 

 cathedral square, which marked the poverty of that stricken district — 

 but we heard French everywhere, and every enquiry was politely 

 answered in that language. At Montpellier, however, we were non- 

 plussed. The fine Mediterranean lobsters, lacking the great nipper 

 claws of ours, the red mullets, the slices of tunny, the Japanese apricots 

 the fresh lemons, the olives salted in tubs, the profusion of flowers were 



