CHAPTER II. 



Appearances Presented by Lands Adjacent to the Pine 

 Plantations in Gascont. 



To appreciate aright the effect produced by the planting of the drift 

 sands of the Landes with pine trees, it is necessary to know some- 

 thing of the appearance presented by the land thus utilised, and of 

 the land around which has thus been transformed into what in com- 

 parison therewith is a paradise — a garden of delight. A description 

 of the district, which may be reckoned one of the most dreary and 

 dismal in the land, one altogether at variance with the ideas called 

 up by the designation La Belle France, is given in a work by Arthur 

 Mangin, entitled " The Desert World," from an English translation, 

 of which I cite the following description : 



" The department which borrows its name from the Landes of 

 Gascony is divided by the Adour into two wholly dissimilar parts. 

 To the south of the river lies a rich, undulating, vine-bearing country, 

 rich in pasturage and harvest, sown with pleasant villages and smiling 

 country houses, and watered by full streams and little rivers. To 

 the north the appearance of the country changes abruptly. When 

 the traveller has crossed the alluvial zone of the Adour he sees before 

 him a thin, dry, sandy level of a comparatively recent marine for- 

 mation. Its only products are rye, millet, and maize ; its only vege- 

 tation, forests of pines and scattered coppices of oaks ; beyond these, 

 and they do not extend far, all cultivation ceases, and the soil is 

 stripped of verdure ; you enter upon the Landes — seemingly vast as 

 a sea — occupied by permanent or periodical swamps ; and where, 

 over a space of several square leagues, in an horizon apparently 

 boundless, you perceive nothing but heaths, sheepfolds or steadings 

 for the flocks of sheep that traverse these deserts, and shepherds 

 keeping mute watch over their animals, living wholly among them, 

 and having no intercourse with the rest of humanity, except when 

 once a week they seek their masters' houses to procure their supply 

 of provisions. It is these shepherds only (Landescots and Aouiilys), 

 and not, as is generally supposed, all the peasants of the Landes, who 

 are perched upon stilts, so as to survey from afar their wandering 

 flocks, and to traverse more safely the marshes which frequently lie 

 across their path. b 



