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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



'eternal youth of phantasy.' Here, it is 

 not only 'the spirit that haunts the last 

 year's bowers,' but the spirit of ages past, 

 that looks you in the face. 



"The traveler must not regard the mel- 

 ancholy Breton, alternately taciturn and 

 eloquent, simply as an unlettered and mo- 

 rose peasant, but as a being cradled in 

 superstition, endowed by nature and edu- 

 cation with a vivid imagination, with a 

 deep, true, poetical sense, with strong 

 and gloomy religious views, to whom the 

 'spirit-land' is an ever-present, an ever- 

 living reality, and who indemnifies him- 

 self for his hard lot on earth by a con- 

 stant reference to the future joys of 

 heaven." 



ABOUT THE SIZE OF MARYLAND 



Brittany is a small country. Its ex- 

 treme length from north to south is only 

 150 miles and its greatest width is about 

 the same. The area is 13,600 square 

 miles, or a little larger than the State of 

 Maryland. 



The peninsula has a backbone of crys- 

 talline rock, and the country should be 

 classed as semi-mountainous, although 

 there are no noteworthy elevations. It 

 bears a strong resemblance to the penin- 

 sula of Cornwall, the nearest land toward 

 the north, but the parts away from the 

 coast are much inferior to Cornwall in 

 fertility and attractiveness and contain 

 no mineral deposits of great value. Some 

 rather extensive forests still remain, but 

 the characteristic feature of the interior 

 regions is the vast tracts of wild moor- 

 land, marked only by melancholy stone 

 monuments. 



The coast is much intersected and is 

 the only part of France that abounds in 

 good harbors ; this fact, together with the 

 abundance of water products, has made 

 the sea the dependence of a large propor- 

 tion of the population. 



The characteristic dress of the people, 

 changing as little as their beliefs and cus- 

 toms, is practically the same in every de- 

 tail as it was generations ago. Now and 

 then we see a man or woman who has 

 been to Paris or London and affects a 

 modern style ; but the great mass of the 



population have no intention or desire to 

 adopt any newfangled fashions, and it is 

 this fact that gives such a distinctive 

 charm to city and suburban sights. 



For all ordinary purposes and on all 

 ordinary occasions, the women dress in 

 short skirts and loose waists of some 

 cheap black or dark-blue fabric, and 

 usually wear a broad white collar and 

 often a white or colored apron. While 

 caps with or without lace are invariably 

 worn out of doors, and the hair is usually 

 scrupulously concealed. 



In the coastwise districts the dress of 

 the men usually consists of a coarse 

 blouse, loose trousers, and a flat woolen 

 or cloth cap. On special occasions, such 

 as weddings and church festivals, the 

 men wear a short black velvet or cloth 

 jacket with large buttons, and a low- 

 crowned, wide-rimmed hat with long rib- 

 bons hanging down behind. 



The dress of both men and women 

 shows slight peculiarities depending on 

 the district or section, so that it is often 

 possible for a foreigner soon to determine 

 the village or town from which given per- 

 sons may have come, and even adjacent 

 villages will have slight differences in 

 shape of cap, style of neckwear, or cut 

 of skirt that are readily appreciated when 

 once pointed out. There are also slight 

 peculiarities of dress dependent on occu- 

 pation. 



Along the extensive coast the sea in- 

 cessantly exacts a heavy human toll, and 

 the extent of this is everywhere and on 

 every occasion manifest in the sign of 

 mourning worn by the women — a partly 

 black cap replacing the white one. Some- 

 times I met groups of women nearly 

 every one of whom showed by her dress 

 the recent loss of husband, father, son, 

 or brother. 



SOME CUSTOMS OF THE PEOPLE 



A bride among the peasant and fishing 

 people may be recognized by the hand- 

 somely embroidered apron and abun- 

 dance of hand-made native lace on bon- 

 net, skirt, and waist. 



Apropos of lace, I may state that phi- 

 lanthropic people in Paris, America, and 



