V NOT ALIENS 271 



class week-end tickets was stamped, 'Issued 

 subject to the Aliens Immigration Act.' I had 

 visions of being herded with exceptionally 

 verminous aliens Into a big wooden room; of 

 trying to convince an East-country inspector of 

 human cargoes that Jim's broad Devonian tongue, 

 with its modified 11, was not foreign English; of 

 having to worry our way back to our own Eng- 

 land. 'I hain't no alien!' said Jim. But had It 

 not been remarked that he singularly resembles a 

 Breton fisherman in build and, as If to confirm It, 

 had not a London 'busman shouted out to him in 

 the Strand in cockney French ? We almost wished 

 ourselves back in our own West-country. 



'The fishermen and their families,' so Baedeker 

 says of Boulogne, 'occupy a separate quarter, La 

 Beurriere, on the W. side of the town, and form 

 one-tenth of the population. They partly adhere 

 to the picturesque costume of their ancestors, and 

 differ somewhat in character and customs from the 

 other inhabitants of the town.' It was the fisher- 

 folk we hoped to fall in with. For cleanliness' 

 sake we chose a grand hotel to sleep in, and forced 

 our way to it through a pestering crowd of out- 

 porters, interpreters, and touts. 



'Be thlc the sort o' thing they does hereabout?' 



