1017 



FINISTERE. 



FINISTERE. 



1018 



The department contains 1,660,032 acres. Of this surface 675,141 

 acres are arable, 101,09-{ are natural pasturage, 84,524 are covered 

 with woods and forests, 24,797 are laid out in orchard3, nurseries, and 

 gardens, and 658,681 consist of heath and moorland. The best soils 

 are near the coast or in the neighbourhood of the rivers. The ol< 

 district of Le'on, which forms the western part of the arrondissemen 

 of Morlaix, is the best soil in all Bretagne ; but the eastern part o 

 the arrondissement, which is called Treguier, is poor and ill-cultivated. 

 The arrondissement of Brest comprises some very fertile lands ; i 

 remarkable breadth of land is appropriated here to the growth o: 

 strawberries. With the exception of the canton of Pont-l'Abbe' 

 which consists of excellent well-tilled soil, the arrondissement o: 

 Quimper has but little good land. The arrondissement of Quimperlt 

 is a pretty and well-wooded country, but the soil is in general light. 

 The most unproductive part is the arrondissement of Chateaulin 

 which consists almost entirely of vast moors and heaths. Here, the 

 people being for the most part shepherds and cattle-breeders, sheep 

 horses, oxen, and cows, all of the Breton breed and small, form their 

 chief wealth. Almost the only crop raised in this district for the 

 sustenance of man is black oats ; and whenever this fails the district 

 is visited by famine. 



It is not unfrequently said that the state of agriculture in this 

 department is backward ; but this is not exactly correct, the lane 

 under crops is in almost every instance well tilled, however unscientific 

 the method may be. More of the land might be cultivated it is 

 true; but the cause of this apparent neglect is want of capital. 

 Notwithstanding this drawback, and that more than a third of the 

 surface consists of nothing but barren heath and hungry moor, 

 the department is made to yield more wheat and rye than are 

 required for consumption for a tolerably dense population. Barley, 

 oats, buckwheat, great quantities of peas and beans (which form a 

 large part of the food of the peasantry), and kitchen vegetables, are 

 also grown. Other objects of cultivation are flax, hemp, tobacco, and 

 cider fruits, yielding annually about 1,540,000 gallons of cider. The 

 fields are generally divided by hedge-rows, in which oak, ash, white- 

 thorn, and broom flourish. Besides the animals before mentioned, 

 great numbers of excellent pigs are bred. Bees and game (deer, wild 

 boars, partridges, &c.) are abundant. Eels, trout, salmon, lobsters, 

 and oysters are plentiful ; but the pilchard fisheries along the coast 

 afford the most profitable occupation to the Breton fishermen. In 

 this pursuit more than 1000 vessels of small size, and about 4000 

 men are employed, and a gross annual value of 2,000,000 francs is 

 obtained. This includes the value of the enormous quantities of the 

 common pilchard (4,400,000 Ibs.), the anchovy pilchard, caught off 

 Concarneau in ForSt Bay (1,1 00,000 Ibs.), and a large quantity of oil 

 pressed from fish which are not cured. These fisheries form an 

 excellent nursery for the French navy, which draws its best seamen 

 from Bretagne. 



Iron, coal, lead, bismuth, and zinc-mines are worked. An excellent 

 stone, easily worked, and capable of resisting the action of the 

 weather, is found at Daoulas and one or two other places near the 

 Brest Roads : it is of a light green colour, and when worked presents 

 the appearance of bronze. It is called ' Kersanton ' stone, and of it 

 several of the churches in the department are built. Granite, marble, 

 building stone, and slates are quarried ; potters'-clay, kaolin, and 

 whetstones are found. There are cold mineral springs at various 

 places in the department. The manufactures consist of sailcloth, 

 linen, soda, soap, seed oil, caudles, ropes, pottery, paper, leather, 

 refined sugar, litharge, and tobacco. Ship-building is carried on at 

 Brest and in most of the towns on the coast. The commerce of the 

 department is composed of the various products already named, and 

 of wine, brandy, beer, Dutch cheese, butter, salt, and colonial produce. 

 About 450 fairs are held. Roadway accommodation is afforded by 

 ten royal and five departmental roads. A railway is in course of 

 construction from Paris to Brest through Chartres and Rennes, which 

 is now (June 1854) open as far as Le-Mans. A section of the canal 

 from Nantes to Brest traverses the arrondissement of Chateaulin. 



The climate is damp and foggy ; the average number of days on 

 which rain falls is 220; sometimes the rain falls almost without 

 cessation for weeks together. Frost and snow are rare. Fine days 

 are few even in summer ; and in the same day one may experience 

 the climate of thfe four seasons, so great is the variation of tempe- 

 rature. Storms are very frequent along the coasts ; and nowhere in 

 the world are the terrible sublimities of a raging sea seen to greater 

 advantage than near the village and promontory of Penmarck, at the 

 junction of the Atlantic with the Bay of Biscay ; the sound of the 

 waves dashing against the rocks is often heard to a distance of 12 

 and 18 miles inland. The prevailing winds are the west, south-west, 

 and north-west. 



The Bretons are an interesting people, strongly attached to the 

 Catholic religion, to their old customs, and to their language, which is 

 a dialect of the Celtic ; hospitable, humane, and courageous enough, 

 but easily excited to anger and to quarrel. Many of them under- 

 stand French, but few of them speak it. They are imaginative and 

 uperstitious, the air and all the other elements are peopled by 

 millions of genii, every field has its fairy, every buried treasure its 

 guarding giant, every well its sprite and healing qualities. The song 

 of birds, the howling of dogs, the distant roar of the ocean, are each 



invested by the imaginative peasant with a power of communicating 

 future good or ill, according to circumstances. All the members of 

 a Breton family (we here speak of the mass of the peasant class) 

 eat at the same table, the master of the house commencing first, next 

 his male children and men-servants, then the wife, daughters, and 

 female servants. In everything the men take precedence of the 

 women. The labourer's food is porridge, or stirabout, a sort of thick 

 soup made of oatmeal, barley-bread, or bread made of barley and 

 wheateu meal mixed ; meat they seldom get. The habitations of 

 the peasantry are mostly long, narrow, smoky huts, with a single 

 window, and divided by a frail partition into two apartments, one of 

 which is occupied by the man of the house, his wife, children, and 

 it may be his grandchildren ; the other contains the cows, calves, 

 pigs, and other animals of the farm. Two large cupboards without 

 doors, consisting of two stories, and separated into several small 

 apartments or berths, which are strewed with hay or straw, form 

 the sleeping places of the whole establishment. Feather-bed or 

 mattrass is equally unknown ; a blanket is rare, the most usual night 

 coyer being a cloth made of coarse tow-yarn, or sometimes a piece of 

 haircloth. The men, who in general wear their hair long, are dressed 

 in broad-brimmed hats, short waistcoats, breeches of vast size, gaiters, 

 and sabots; in some districts they are wrapped up in goat-skins. 

 The costume of the women is in general neat and attractive. In 

 connection with the Breton churches, many of which are fine structures, 

 there are ' reliquiaires,' or bone-houses, into which the bones of the 

 dead are gathered after a certain number of years by the surviving 

 relatives, and in which the skulls, each marked with the name or 

 initials of its former owner, are arranged on shelves open to view. 

 The department contains many druidical remains. 



The department is divided into five arrondissements, which, with 

 their subdivisions and population, are as follows : 



1. In the first arrondissement the chief town, Qtiimper, which is 

 also the capital of the department, is built in a pretty situation on 

 the slope of a hill at the junction of the Eir with the Odet, 330 miles 

 W. from Paris, and has 9664 inhabitants in the commune. The town 

 is in general ill built ; but the more modern part of it contains some 

 good houses. The principal public buildings are the cathedral, 

 which dates from 1424, and is the largest of the cathedrals of Basse- 

 Bretagne; the church of St.-Matthieu, an ugly edifice; the church of 

 the priory of Locmaria, which stands at the end of a long and 

 beautiful promenade on the left bank of the Odet, and part of which 

 has stood since the 10th century ; the manor-house of Poulquiuan, 

 which stands on a height near the last-mentioned church, and is said 

 to have been the residence of the Breton king Grallou. The other 

 remarkable objects are the military hospital, the theatre, the public 

 baths, the residence of the prefect, and behind it a fine promenade, 

 cut out in zigzag avenues up a wooded hill above 650 feet high, from 

 which there is a very extensive view. The town has tribunals of 

 first instance and of commerce, an ecclesiastical school, and a communal 

 college, held in a large building which formerly belonged to the 

 Jesuits. Vessels of 300 tons come up to the town. The chief 

 industrial establishments are potteries, tan-yards, breweries, nurseries, 

 and ship-building yards. The pilchard fishery is actively carried on, 

 and there is a good trade in corn, wine, brandy, honey, butter, dry 

 and salt fish, iron, wool, hemp, flax, linen, and cattle. Steamers ply 

 regularly f r0 m this town to Nantes. Quimper is sometimes called 

 Quimper-Corentin, in honour of its first bishop. It was in the 5th 

 century the capital of the Armoric Cornwall (Cornouailles), whose 

 first king was the famous Grallon. It was first inclosed with walls in 

 A.D. 1209, but these were soon demolished by the advice of the then 

 Dishop of Quimper. Pierre de Dreux caused it to be surrounded with 

 a terraced-wall faced with cut stone, and flanked with massive towers, 

 which, as well as the ramparts, were surmounted by projecting 

 parapets with machicolations. A great part of these fortifications 

 still exist. In 1344 Charles of Blois took the town by assault, 

 during the wars of the League Quimper took part with Henri IV., 

 )ut it was besieged and taken by Marshal d'Aumont. In revo- 

 utionary nomenclature Quimper was styled Montagnc-sur-Odet. 

 Among the other towns of the arrondissemeiit we give the following, 

 with the remark that the population throughout is that of the 

 commune : Briec, 9 miles N.N.E. from Quimper, population 5149. 

 Concarneau, partly on an island in the Bay of Forfit and partly on 

 ;he mainland, is a small fortress with 1984 inhabitants, who are 

 almost all engaged in the fisheries along the coast, and take from 

 2,000 to 15,000 barrels of pilchards and anchovies every year. 

 Jouarnenez, at the head and on the north shore of the Bay of 

 )ouarnenez, has 3646 inhabitants engaged in the profitable fishery of 



