Description of the Landes of Acquitania. lil 
met with in the country. They are termed common, (high-way ;) 
but are not at all good for that purpose sinking deep into the sand. 
The progress is at all times laborious, and the traflic and communi- 
cations in the country is very trivial. 
The territory of the Landes contain, however, several small 
towns and considerable villages, scattered more particularly along 
the line of the lagune ; and as their history is interesting, in mark- 
ing the revolutions which natural changes produce in the history of 
man, we shall briefly allude to some of the principal. 
On the borders of the basin of Arcachon, at nearly its most wes- 
terly point, occurs a group of houses, the resort of bathers from 
Bordeaux, and even occasionally of idlers from Great Britain. Its 
present denomination is Teste or Téte de Buch, the ancient Beios 
or Testa Botiorum, retrograding to the first ages of the Gallic era, 
when it constituted one of the twelve cities of the Novempopula- 
nia. This town had, before the revolution, a chief under the title 
of chaptal, a seignorship of great antiquity ; among them figured 
Jean de Graille, who lived in 1360, and was one of the greatest 
captains of the age. He served under Edward, was taken prisoner 
in France, and perished in prison, for not having been willing to 
take an oath not to fight against that country. Paul Merula tells us, 
in his Cosmogony, published at Amsterdam, p. 431, that the chap- 
taux of Buch were once governors of Acquitania, and that the il- 
lustrious family of De Candalle, to whom the chaptalat. belonged, 
was nearly allied to the kings of Navarre and Hungary ; and it 
will be remembered that Jeanne d’Albert, mother to Henry IV. of 
France, was also a De Candalle. Its present population, consist- 
ing of proprietors, fisherman, and resin-makers, amounts to 2,300 
souls, who are disseminated over a surface of more than a square 
league. ve 
The ancient port of Mimizan, mentioned in the “ Catalogue de 
Roles Gascons et Normans,” said to be deposited in the Tower of 
London, is buried under the sands, and the town is represented by 
a handful of houses grouped around a church, whose size, structure, 
and architectural monuments, proclaims to have belonged to a once 
opulent place. The central parish church-yard was to the west ; 
the place where it was supposed to have been is still pointed out, 
and is now covered with downs from 90 to 100 feet in height. The 
steeple of the abbey was an ancient light-house ; it is now sepa- 
rated from the sea by three ranges of sand-hills, or nearly three 
miles in distance. ital : 
The actual town of St. Julien is more than a league from the 
place which it formerly occupied ; the ancient town, with the har- 
bour of Conti, situated at the base of an arm of the sea, between 
Mimizan and St. Julien, have disappeared. Its ancient site is 
unknown, unless the manuscript already quoted alludes to it, ‘ ad 
costas maris de Sancto Julieno seu de sart.” 
The-town of Vieux Boucau, (eld mouth,) celebrated when the 
Adour bathed its walls, is now composed only of about thirty in- 
