

Photo by Arthur Stanley Riggs 

 EITTEE GIRLS OE PONT i/ABBE : BRITTANY 



"Even the littlest children are in costume on pardon days, and the tinier they are the 

 droller they look." The beautiful Bigouden costumes are gradually giving way to the mean- 

 ingless modern dress (see text, page 412). 



sageway and a vault have been excavated, 

 and the researches of the archaeologists 

 have proved conclusively that these curi- 

 ous structures were neither Druid altars 

 nor religious in their significance at all, as 

 at first thought, but merely family or 

 tribal burial vaults. Here and there, on 

 the inner side of the end stone, one finds 

 a wonderful inscription in wavy char- 

 acters like snake trails — a language of the 

 past, clear and distinct, yet unreadable — 

 a puzzle as deep as the mystic inscrip- 

 tions of Mexico and Central America. 



SUNNY-TEMPERED ANGERS 



Although Angers, the great city of the 

 ancient province of Anjou, used to be 

 called Black Angers, there is today no 

 brighter, more attractive town north of 

 the Loire. It is a city that has not only 

 fine modern boulevards and buildings re- 



placing its ancient walls, but a perfect 

 wealth of architectural relics that keep its 

 historic past always in mind — churches, 

 half-obscured arches and reliefs, towers, 

 and especially beautiful old houses, whose 

 mere visages whisper of romance. And 

 the women of Angers, even when they 

 take the places of dogs in hauling carts 

 about the streets, are sunny-tempered 

 and pleasant-faced, as though hard work 

 neither sours nor wearies them (p. 435). 

 Through the city runs the muddy, 

 sprawling serpent of the River Maine, 

 and dominating it bulks the low mass of 

 the thirteenth century castle, one of the 

 most impressive and imposing strong- 

 holds in France, notwithstanding most of 

 its 17 towers have been beheaded and 

 made level with the tremendous walls. 

 The beauty of the castle today is that of 

 age. Its stones are gray and hoary, and 



420 



