10 APPEARANCE OF THE LANDES. 



"Wild and uncouth are the figures which these stilt-walkers 

 present, as they move rapidly over the country, often at the rate of 

 six or seven miles an hour ; occasionally indulging in an interval of 

 rest, by the aid of a third wooden support at the back (curved at the 

 top, so as to fit the hollow of the body), while they pursue their 

 favourite pastime of knitting. The dress of the Landescot is singu- 

 larly rude. His coat or palet6t is a fleece; cuisses and greaves of the 

 same material protect his legs and thighs ; his feet are thrust into 

 sabots and coarse woollen socks, which cover only the heels and instep. 

 Over his shoulder hangs the gourd which contains his week's store of 

 provisions : some mouldy rye-bread, a few sardines, some onions and 

 cloves of garlic, and a flask of thin sour wine. From sunrise to sun- 

 set he lives upon the stilts, never touching the ground. Sometimes 

 he drives his flock home at eventide ; sometimes he bivouacs sub jove 

 frigido, under the cold heaven of night. Unbuckling his stilts, and 

 producing his flint and steel, he soon kindles a cheery fire of fir- 

 branches, and gathering his sheepskins round him, composes himself 

 to sleep ; his only annoyances being the musquitoes, and his fears of 

 the evil tricks of wizard or witch, who may peradventure catch a 

 glimpse of him in the moonlight, as they ride past on their besom to 

 some unholy gathering or demon-dance. 



" An English traveller has sketched in vivid colours the landscape 

 of the Landes. Over all its gloom and barrenness, he remarks, over 

 all its 'blasted heaths,' its monotonous pine-woods, its sudden 

 morasses, its glaring sand-heaps, prevails a strong sense of loneliness 

 a grandeur and intensity of desolation, which invests the scene with 

 a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself. Emerging from the black 

 shadows of the forest, the pilgrim treads a plain, ' flat as a billiard- 

 table,' apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in one unvaried un- 

 broken garb of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and ridges, or great 

 ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine ; sometimes 

 belts of scraggy young fir trees appear rising from the horizon on the 

 right, and sinking into it again on the left. Occasionally a brighter 

 shade of green, with jungles of willows and water weeds, giant rushes 

 and 'clustered marish mosses,' will tell of the 'blackened waters' 

 beneath — 



' Hard by a poplar shook alway, 



All silver-green with gnarl<5d bark ; 



For leagues no other tree doth mark 

 The level waste, the rounding gray.' 



" The dwellings whioh stud this dreary, yet not wholly unpoetio 



