FLOCKS AND HERDS IN PROVENCE. 287 



With the milk from these Vacheries they make a 

 kind of cheese, which is so rank that as it is being 

 carried down the valley you can smell it almost before it 

 comes in sight. I suppose that they consume this nasty 

 stuff themselves, for it is not likely that any one could 

 be persuaded to buy it. 



In the first days of October the cattle are driven 

 down by the snow from the heights where they have 

 been grazing to pass the Winter in the reeking village, 

 imprisoned in dark vaults beneath the houses. 



In the beautiful district east of the Var there are 

 no snug farmhouses scattered through the smiling 

 valley. The whole population, together with the 

 cattle, crowd into the dirty villages. Even the swine 

 are kept in those cave-like stables under each house. 

 Fowls fly in and out at the windows, and the refuse is 

 thrown into the little stream which flows through the 

 middle of the street. The population is sallow and 

 goitrous, and badly tainted with cretinism. Some of 

 these poor creatures cannot even speak, but utter 

 hoarse grunts. They carry great weights like beasts 

 of burden. I have never seen so much cretinism, 

 unless it be in some parts of the Salzkammergut. 

 The children are killed off by dirt and disease. Squalor 

 and ignorance are branded upon everything. Most 

 unlovely are these mountain villages to the east of the 

 Var ; they form a wretched contrast to the divine 

 beauty of the scenery. 



Perhaps the custom of seeking the shelter of the 

 village every night dates from those early days when 

 each little community was at war with its neighbours, 

 when every stranger was a foe, and no man was safe 

 who slept outside the walls. Possibly, also, before 



