BRITTANY. 205 



agricultural implements and mode of tilling the soil, were 

 pretty nearly the same amongst the Breton peasantry as in 

 the time of Henri IV. 



By the time I was installed in my residence at Quimperle 

 the fishing season of all kinds was over, it being about the 

 beginning of November, and I formed an acquaintance 

 with the only English resident that I have above alluded to, 

 and who was a thorough sportsman, in order to be initiated 

 into the chasse aux becasses and perdrix rouges, which, if the 

 quantity exposed for sale in the market was any criterion, I 

 was led to expect must be very abundant ; but in this I was 

 rather doomed to be disappointed, although I cannot on the 

 whole complain of some good days' sport. The Breton 

 peasantry are all excellent poachers, or rather cunning en- 

 trappers of their own game, for they are nearly all landed 

 proprietors and freeholders; and although they do not pre- 

 tend to preserve their game in the strict sense of the word, 

 are jealous of the interference of strangers, and it requires a 

 knowledge of the language (for few of them speak French), 

 either individually or by an interpreter, and a few other 

 ruses, such as timely offerings of eau de vie and tobacco, to 

 conciliate them, and obtain free access to their lands for 

 sporting purposes. 



An Englishman, with a gun in his hand, and in a foreign 

 country, is apt to ride roughshod over everything, and to 

 care little for the feelings or prejudices of the inhabitants, 

 until sometimes rather disagreeably reminded of his folly, 



which was in one or two instances the case with E n 



and myself in the Finisterre, when we had to back our way 

 out of some private enclosures, *or fields of buck- wheat and 

 clover, with our double-barrelled guns at the shoulder, and 

 presented towards a posse of angry Bretons, armed with 

 sticks and staves, in flowing locks and trunk-hose, and who 

 would no doubt have demolished us, had they not been 



