4 APPEARANCE PRESENTED BY PLANTATIONS. 



across the Landes in hot haste after a wandering sheep. He has 

 a small hut, sometimes a wife who aids him in cultivating a small 

 patch of ground, from which he obtains a little corn and a few 

 vegetables. A miserable existence is this, but the dawn of brighter 

 days has, we may hope, appeai-ed for the poor Landais." 



Some two hours journeying by rail takes the traveller from 

 Bourdeaux through clouds of dust and forests of pine to Arcachon. 

 *' Here," writes an English tourist, " houses, like Indian bungalows, 

 with broad verandahs, and often of only one storey, run for more 

 than a mile along the water's edge, each surrouuded by its own 

 * compound,' to keep up the Indian phraseology, and each with its 

 bathing-house and steps leading down to the beach. From these the 

 lightly-clad inmates emerge at all hours, and pass the greater part of 

 their time either paddling barefoot on the shore when the tide is out, 

 or dancing in groups in the sea, which has the merit, in the eyes of 

 the nervous part of the population, of always being as smooth as a 

 mill-pond. I never saw a place so absolutely and completely given 

 over to bathing. , . But the real charm of Arcachon lies in its pine 

 forests, covering sand-dunes sometimes three or four hundred feet high, 

 and stretching back over the landes, where fresh-water lakes glimmer 

 in the blue distance. Picturesquely grouped within these resinous 

 groves are perched the villas and cottages of the winter town, to 

 which consumptive patients resort in the colder months to breathe 

 turpentine mixed with the soft sea breeze. The extraordinary 

 advantages of this hygienic compound seem to be getting more and 

 more recognised, and each year the number of visitors increases. 

 The high dunes completely shelter the winter town from the violence 

 of the gales, while there is a life and purity in the atmosphere which 

 have worked marvellous results. With a compass one may explore 

 the recesses of these forests for miles on horseback, for there is 

 scarcely any underwood, and one can therefore steer through them 

 in any direction ; though in fact there is not much danger of being 

 very seriously lost, for the forest abounds with the wooden shanties 

 of the collectors of turpentine, who are perpetually at work gashing 

 the trees and emptying the little pots tied on to them, and which 

 contain the sap, into the small tanks prepared to receive it. In the 

 centre of the basin are a couple of sand-banks, one of them partially 

 dry at low water, and on which any number of rabbits may be shot ; 

 and on the other an oyster-park, with an old hulk stranded upon it. 

 Large parties of merry-makers sail to this moist and oozy spot, and, 



