THE ARCHIPELAGO OF CHAUSEY. 29 



amounted to one hundred and twenty or thirty : 

 almost all the men were Bretons from St. Malo and 

 its immediate vicinity. They lived in wooden bar- 

 racks or huts, about ten of which, grouped around 

 Port Marie, composed the hamlet known as the St. 

 Malo village. Two of their huts were used as can- 

 teens, in which tobacco, cider, and brandy were sold ; 

 a third was employed as a smithy : each of the other 

 huts served as a sleeping place for some dozen work- 

 men, whose beds were ranged in tiers above each 

 other. In almost every case the wife of one of the 

 men was charged with the duty of cooking for the 

 community, and in that case she shared the room 

 with the rest, from whom she was only separated 

 by a coarse canvas curtain. 



Finally, we come to the barilla-collectors, who 

 constitute the lowest class among the population. 

 These workmen come, year by year, from the neigh- 

 bourhood of Brest and Cherbourg, to collect the 

 wrack, or seaweed, from the submerged rocks of 

 Chausey, and convert it into soda by burning. The 

 men disperse themselves in parties of six over the 

 archipelago, and construct a sort of shed in the centre 

 of the circuit they intend to explore, and here they 

 take shelter for the night. At low tide they strip 

 the fucus from the rocks*, and collect it into large 

 masses, which are sustained upon the surface of the 



* The different kinds of fucus employed in the fabrication of 

 soda or for manuring the land on our western sea-coasts are the 

 Fucns nodosus, commonly called in England, knobbed wrack, or 

 sea-whistle, F. vesiculosus, known as bladder fucus, and F. serratus, 

 known as black wrack, or prickly tang. 



