THE GREAT AND LITTLE LANDES. 29 



unhewn and unmortared stones, clustered round with ragged sheds 

 composed of masses of tangled bushes, pine-stakes and broad-leaved 

 reeds, beneath which the meagrest looking cattle conceivable find a 

 precarious shelter.* 



The Landes are divided into the Little Landes, near Mont-de- 

 Marsan ; and the Great Landes, stretching to the north and west of 

 the department of which that town is the capital, and uniting unin- 

 terruptedly with those that occupy the vast country situated south of 

 the Gironde. The total superficial area of these plains is estimated at 

 upwards of 2,400,000 acres, of which two-thirds belong to the de- 

 partment of the Landes, and the remainder to that of the Gironde. 



Yet the reader must not believe this 'country to be a desert in the 

 popular acceptation of the word ; it has its forests of pines, where the 

 extraction and prepai-ation of resinous matter are carried on with con- 

 siderable activity. It has its small towns, its pretty villages, its 

 factories, and even its handsome villas. Finally, modern industry 

 has cut the Landes in two by the Bordeaux railway, which traverses 

 them from north to south, and bifurcates at Morans to throw off a 

 line to Bayonne, and another to Tarbes. 



In shape, the Great Landes may be compared to an immense rec- 

 tangular triangle, having for its base the coast, which, from the mouth 

 of the Gironde to Bayonne, or for a length of more than sixty leagues, 

 is almost rectilineal. But they are separated from the sea by a long 

 parallel chain of lakes and water-courses a waste of shallow pools 

 a labyrinth of gulfs and morasses, and then by the continuous chain 

 of the Dunes, of which we shall speak in the following chapter. 



That which is commonly called the Great Lande is bounded on 

 the north by the tiang, or lake, of Cazau. It is *a sandy, treeless 

 plain, and upon which, for a traject of several leagues from east to 

 west, not one habitation worthy of the name is perceptible until the 

 traveller arrives at Mimizan, near the southern point of the lake of 

 Aureilhan. This lake on the south-west pours its waters into the 

 sea. To the north it communicates, through the canal of St. Eulalie, 

 * Angus Reach, " Claret and Olives.'' 



