Читать книгу Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside - Edward Harrison Barker - Страница 6

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The night being passed at Bort, the next morning I continued my journey by the Dordogne. Again the sky was cloudless. I kept on the right bank of the river—the Limousin side, leaving the Cantal to some future day, that may never come. A little beyond the spot where the Dordogne and the Rue met and embraced uproariously, the path entered a narrow lane bordered by tall hedges chiefly of hazel and briar overclimbed by wild clematis—well termed the traveller's joy, for it is a beautiful plant that reminds many a wanderer of his far-away home.

[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE CORRÈZE.]

Then I passed under precipitous naked rocks, with the river on the other hand, skirted by low bushes of twiggy willow that looked like tamarisk from a distance. The sun was now hot, and the ground was again all astir with lizards. Looking upon the path just in front of me, I brought myself to a sudden stop. Had I advanced a step or two more I could hardly have failed to tread upon a serpent that lay dozing in the sun just in my way. I was glad that I did not do so, for I recognised it, by its olive skin with reddish patches, as the dreaded aspic, or red viper. There it lay stretched out its full length, about a foot and a half, either asleep or enjoying the morning sun so much that it was in no humour to move. I do not kill snakes indiscriminately, like the peasants whenever they get the chance, but this one being dangerous, I resolved that it should never take another sun-bath. After being roused by a blow, the creature did not attempt to run, but did battle bravely, fiercely striking at the stick.

The path I had been following with so much confidence dwindled away and was lost. Again the gorge became a deep rift in the rocks, which left no margin on which one could walk. The only way to follow the windings of the stream would have been to wade or swim. Once more I had to own myself beaten by natural obstacles. The Dordogne is a river that cannot be followed throughout its savage wildernesses, except perhaps in a light flat-bottomed boat, and then not without serious difficulties. Anglers might have splendid sport here until they broke their necks, for the trout abound where the shadow of a man seldom or never falls. In the neighbourhood of towns and large villages the fishing is often spoilt by the casting-net.

Having realized the situation, I turned my back to the stream and commenced climbing the steep side of the gorge, choosing a spot where it was well wooded, for the sake of the foothold. For some distance the ground was green with moss and wood-sorrel; but the tug-of-war came when the vast banks of loose stones—hot, bare, and shale-like—were reached. On gaining the plateau, I threw myself down upon the heather and looked at the scene below. The mingling of rock, forest, and stream was superbly desolate. Even the naked steeps of slate-coloured broken stone had an impressive grandeur of their own.

Leaving the Dordogne with the intention of cutting off a wide bend and meeting it again the next day or the day after, I struck across the half-cultivated open country, hoping soon to find a village; for I had spent much time in the gorge and made very little progress, while the sun had moved nearly up to the centre of his arc. The rays fell fiercely, and there was no shade upon the plateau. There was a road, but it was abominable. Only tramps understand the luxury of-walking upon a good road.

I came to a hamlet that looked very miserable. The daily toil had scattered the men afield, and only a few women were to be seen. Not one of them wore a stocking, nor even a wooden shoe. Some to whom I spoke did not understand me; those who understood told me that there was no inn in the place—that there was no one who could give me a meal. One of them must have thought that I was begging my way, or was exceedingly hard up, for she said: 'Ah! mon pauvre ami, vous êtes dans un malheureux pays.'

Continuing, I came to a village which was not shown on my map. Here I learnt there was a single auberge, which was also the tobacco shop and grocery of the place. It was kept by an old man who lived alone. This inn was a cottage without any sign over it. I tried the door, but it was locked, and nobody responded to the noise I made. It took me half an hour to find the solitary at the farther end of the village. He returned with me, and, opening the door, we both entered the only room of the cottage. It was shop, bedroom, and kitchen. There was a bed against the wall, and near the window was a small stock of tobacco, snuff, and groceries all mixed up. My host's back was much bent and his face deeply furrowed. He wore a shirt with a high collar, and a blue waistcoat. He was an honest, kindly man, and seemed to take pleasure in doing what he could for me apart from the thought of gaining by it.

In the way of food he had only eggs, bread, cheese, and butter. It was decided that he should fry some eggs. He lighted some sticks upon the hearth, and there was soon a good blaze; then he laid his great frying-pan upon it, resting the long handle upon a chair. While the butter was melting, he opened a trap-door in the floor and went down a ladder into his cellar. Presently he reappeared with a litre of wine, and having set this before me, he proceeded to crack the eggs and empty them into the frying-pan. As a cook he had no pretensions, but he knew how to fry eggs. When my meal was ready, and he had placed everything before me upon the bare board, he sat at a little distance eating a dry old crust with a piece of goat cheese. This was his lunch. I insisted upon his sharing the wine with me, and this little attention made him thoroughly confiding and cheery.

He was left a widower, he told me, with four children, at the age of thirty-eight, and he would not take a second wife because, his father having done so, he remembered the trials and tribulations of his own childhood which came of his having 'a mother who was not a mother.' He said to himself, 'My children shall not run the risk of going through what I went through.' He toiled on alone, brought up his family himself, added to his bit of land in course of years, and acquired other property. His children were now all settled in life, and he had given them everything he had except the cottage in which he lived. I was struck by the strong virtue of this illiterate peasant, who had evidently no notion of his own value, and who would not have told the simple story of his life passed amidst the moors of the Corrèze had I not drawn it from him.

[Illustration: A PEASANT OF THE MOORS.]

As I watched the old man, prematurely bent by labour, eating his hard crust, cheerful and contented, after giving to others the fruit of his many years of toil, I thought, 'If man were nothing but an animal, such a life would be not only absurd, but impossible.' Another glass of wine made my host and cook still more talkative. He told me that not long ago he had walked from this village to Tulle, distant about thirty-five miles, to see a soldier son who was to pass through the place with his regiment. He started at three in the morning and arrived at five in the afternoon, but was only able to exchange a few words with his son. They could not even 'break a crust' together. The old man then turned his face towards his village, and walked the whole night.

'I hope your son would walk as far to see you,' I said, with a little scepticism in my mind.

This is what he replied, almost word for word:

'Ah! children do not do for their parents what their parents do for them. The commandment says, 'Honour your father and your mother'—not honour your children. Nevertheless, it is the parents who deny themselves the most. As soon as your children are married they generally forget you.

Perhaps if I had married again I should be happier now. All the same, I am contented. I can keep myself. When I am no longer able to take care of myself, my children must do something for me.'

I confess that I was sorry when the time came for me to leave this old man, knowing well that I should never see again his rugged face and his kind eyes twinkling under their shaggy brows. Perhaps he, too, had some such regret, for we had had a long talk, and he may have tired out all his other listeners, especially those of his own family. When a man has grown old and is near the end, it would often be better for him to go out into the wilderness and talk to the rocks and trees than to repeat the stories of his life upon his own hearth-stone. Before I left the peasant fetched a bottle, which he only brought out on rare occasions, and insisted upon my drinking a parting glass with him.

I passed through another hamlet where there was a high wooden cross. There were walnut-trees, and men were knocking down the nuts. The women here wore wide-brimmed black straw hats over white caps. I soon left these figures behind, and was alone in a birch-wood, where there were many yellow leaves between me and the blue sky. Then I met the road to Neuvic, and following it came to the Artaud, a tributary of the Dordogne, threading its way through deep ravines, amidst wild rocks, dark woods, and bracken-covered steeps. The road crossed the ravine upon a bridge of three arches.

The scene was one to raise the mind above common things. The stream rushed madly down the rocky chasm with a mighty roar, now losing itself in the leafy vaults of overhanging trees, now reappearing like a torrent of fire where the glorious lustre of the September sun struck it and mingled with it.

As I ascended the opposite hill a still deeper ravine came into view, wooded down to the water and all in dark shadow, except a rocky ridge facing the sinking sun and bathed in warm light.

When the top of the hill had been reached, an old man, who wore a large and very weather-beaten felt hat, was sitting on the step of a wayside cross with a flock of geese feeding around him. Next I passed a bare-footed cantonnier breaking stones, and he told me that if I made haste I might reach Neuvic before dark. On the outskirts of a village—Roche-le-Peyroux—a wandering tinker and his boy were at work by the side of the road with fire and bellows, and I felt a trampish or romantic desire to stay with them awhile in the cheerful glow; but thinking of the coming night, I smothered the impulse.

Upon the moor which I was now traversing was a very old stone cross, upon which the figure of the Saviour was rudely carved in relief. The form was so uncouth as to be scarcely human. The head was half as wide again as the space across the shoulders, and the hands were nearly as large as the head. How many centuries ago did Christian piety raise this rough image of its hope upon the moors amidst the purple heather and the yellow broom?

The road crossed another stream not far from the spot where it fell into the Dordogne. There was a wooded quietude here, with an odour of fresh grass and water that enticed me to linger; but the evening light in the tops of the trees and the twittering of the birds settling amongst the leaves for the night spurred me on. I had walked many miles since the morning, but had made very little way according to the map, so full of deception is this wild Limousin country to the wanderer who does not know it. I had still some eight miles to walk before reaching Neuvic.

There was a little mill at the bottom of the grassy valley, but it seemed deserted by all living creatures save a dog. This rather large and shaggy animal seized the rare opportunity that was now offered him for a little excitement. Not satisfied with barking at me furiously from his own ground, he followed me about a mile up the hill I had now to climb, but without venturing very near. At length I thought I had had enough of his company, so at the next bend in the road I came to a stand beside a heap of stones that a cantonnier had neatly piled up in geometrical pattern. There I waited, and the animal came on gaily, little expecting to find himself suddenly at close quarters with me. Just as he turned the corner he raised a howl that said he was both surprised and shocked. Skipping with great agility, he avoided the next stone, and the expression of his face told me that he was already feeling very home-sick. He turned tail as quick as he could, and used very bad dog-language as the stones followed him down the hill. As a rule, dogs lose all their courage when they are out of sight of their own homes, unless someone whom they know well is near at hand to give them confidence in themselves.

I am again upon the moor. There is a deep silence over the heather, for the last bees have left the pink and purple bells. But there is still a wan glow in the air, which gives a sad beauty to the quiet, mournful land. A boy is returning with some cattle after spending the day upon the heath, and he sings as he thinks of his poor home, the blazing sticks on the hearth, the soup, the buckwheat cake, or the potatoes. Through a mask of silver birches I see a solemn ruddy light as of a funeral-torch in the far western sky. The breath of evening is made sweeter by the odour wafted from some distant fresh-cut grass or broom that has been drying in the September sun. A field-cricket, waking up, breaks the silence with its shrill cry that is quickly taken up by others near at hand and far away in the dusk. The light and colour of the day are now gone, but there is one beautiful star flashing in front of me like a lamp of the sanctuary when the vaulted minster is filled with shadow.

The rest of the walk to Neuvic was by night. The first auberge I entered in this small town of some three thousand inhabitants was a little too rough even for me. The family were at dinner, or at supper, as they would say, eating upon the bare board, without plates, potatoes boiled in their skins. I do not doubt there were hollows cut in the table to serve instead of plates, for this primitive contrivance still lingers in the wildest parts of the Limousin. In answer to my inquiry as to bed accommodation, I was told that I should have to sleep in the same room with others, probably the whole family. I had sufficient taste for civilization left to decline the proposed arrangement, and went in search of another inn.

Happily there was one, and of a better sort. It was thoroughly rustic, but there was not the squalor I had just encountered. In the kitchen, paved with small pebbles, two months' accumulation of used linen had been pressed down in an old wine-cask, and boiling water was now being poured upon it through a cloth covered with a layer of wood ashes. In these rural places the washing-day is usually once in two or three months. This simplifies matters, but it needs a considerable stock of linen, which, by-the-bye, peasants generally possess. The wash-house odour that arose from the lessive was not grateful, but I tried to accommodate myself to it. On the floor was a baby swaddled up, and tightly fitted into a small wooden cradle on huge rockers—a cradle that might have served for scores of babies, and been none the worse for wear. Although the fire on the hearth looked tempting, the proximity of the wine-cask and the linen that was being purified with potash made me glad to hear that my meal would be served in another room.

Considering the region, the dinner was not a bad one. I had soup, veal, eggs, and a fair wine. I had also a companion, but would rather have been without him. He was a young man, whose appearance gained by the contrast of a dusty wayfarer's, and he gave himself airs accordingly. I set him down as a petty functionary of the place, and a pensionnaire of the auberge. All the time I was with him his mind was exceedingly restless as to my intentions and business in those parts, and such explanations as I gave him to appease his insatiable curiosity and awkwardly-veiled suspicion evidently left him unsatisfied.

The next morning the hostess brought out her police register for me to enter my name, nationality, age, profession, destination, etc. I had no doubt that my acquaintance of the night before had reminded her of this little formality in order that he might afterwards see what I had written. All innkeepers in France are liable to a fine if they do not make every traveller who passes the night with them leave this record of himself for inspection, but the formality is much more often omitted than observed. I have not been able to overcome my English dislike of the practice, which is annoying and useless, like much more that belongs to the French administrative system.

By daylight I found Neuvic to be a cheerful, pleasant little town, with a venerable-looking old church, apparently of the twelfth century. It is entered by a cavernous portal under a very massive low tower, but the interior shows little of interest. What struck me, however, as something quite uncommon was a small altar in the centre of the nave just below the sanctuary. Upon it was an image of the Virgin, which a boy told me had been found in a neighbouring wood about a century ago.

On leaving Neuvic I noticed a woman carrying to the baker's a large dish of edible boleti, known to the French as cépes. This excellent fungus during the late summer and autumn is a very important article of food in France wherever there are extensive chestnut-woods. The orange mushroom is also much eaten in the same regions, for it likewise loves the chestnut forest; but it may be mistaken by those who do not know the signs for its relative, the crimson-capped fly-agaric, one of the most deadly of cryptogams.

After seeing the dish of cépes, I was not surprised to find many chestnut-trees along the road that I now took to St. Pantaléon. The country was less barren than that which I had passed over the day before. Although there was much heather, broom and furze, trees and pasture broke the monotony of the moorland. Here was the better Limousin landscape—every knoll and mamelon covered with heather and other moor-plants, woods and meadows in the dells and dips. The numerous clumps of silver birches, and the gorse arrayed in its new flowers of bright gold, added to the charm of the sunlit scene.

To me the weather was all the more delightful by being very warm, for I had run away from winter on the Auvergne mountains. The whirring noise of the grasshoppers as they flew across the road, and the tremulous sheen of their wings, coloured like blooming lavender, brought back to me the best recollections of other wayfaring days in the warm South, when all these things were new, and the sight feasted upon them with the eagerness of bees that suck the first flowers of spring.

I passed a little field of buckwheat that had been cut some days and had fully ripened. A woman was threshing out the grain with a flail upon a spread canvas, surrounded by a circle of purple-tinted cones, the sheaves leaning together. Now the wide level moor returned, but Nature was not quite the same here as she had been before. The vast expanse was dotted over with dark little juniper bushes. These were covered with berries which nobody seemed to think worth the picking. Rock-cist flourished, starring the turf all over with its yellow discs. This moor was an absolute desert.

Long I walked without seeing another human being. At length I met a woman carrying a distaff, and tried to get into conversation with her, but it was impossible; she could not speak a word of French, and I knew nothing of her Limousin patois.

By steadfastly following the road, I came to the village of St. Pantaléon, on the brow of a hill overlooking the Luxège, and stopped at a wayside inn. It was a poor auberge; but there was an air of reaching toward some ideal of superior life and softened manners that made itself felt in small ways not to be described with any certainty, but none the less real. The innkeeper, who was also a peasant-farmer, possessed the doubtful blessing of a mind that rose above what the logic of his existence, sternly bound to a plot of grudging soil and the petty needs of still poorer neighbours, demanded of it. He was blessed or afflicted with that hunger of knowledge and refinement which lifts and casts down, rejoices and saddens. He knew that such ambition with regard to himself was vain, that it was his destiny to live out his days on the edge of a moor in the Corrèze, and that it was his duty to thank Heaven that he was sheltered and had sufficient food, fuel, and clothing for himself and his family: all this he knew, and he accepted his lot bravely. But the fire was only damped down; it glowed in its hidden heart, and strove for a vent. It was not lighted without a purpose. The peasant had a son, to whom the flame had been passed on; for he aimed at the priesthood. This has ever been a refuge of ambitious minds that cannot rise by any other means above the dullness of the peasant's life, which is the more endurable the more the man is able to place himself upon the animal level of his plodding ox. The son was being educated in a seminary, but he was now home for the holidays. Presently he appeared. He was a youth of about nineteen, wearing a blouse like any other peasant. There was certainly nothing in his appearance to indicate that he was destined for the cure of souls. The proud father said: 'He is in philosophy.' The young man had a twinkle in his eye that might have been philosophical. Neither of them had a suspicion of the vanity concealed in the high-sounding phrase.

But I am forgetting to say anything about what was more important to me than aught else at that time. I had to eat and drink in order to look at nature with an admiring eye, note the interwoven aims and motives and troubled duties of human life; to be 'in philosophy' after my own humble fashion. My meal was chiefly of fried eggs and ham, the latter nearly as hard as leather. I ate in a small room where there was a bed with a red curtain. No knife was given me, for in these out-of-the-way inns you are expected to carry your knife in your pocket, which a century ago was the case in most of the French hostelries. In the remotely rural districts the ways of life have changed very slightly in a hundred years. But, if the knife was overlooked, the white napkin and small tablecloth were remembered. While talking with the aubergiste over the coffee—there was really some coffee here that was not made either from acorns or beans—he told me, as an example of the low rate of wages in the district, that a road—mender, who worked in all weathers, was paid forty francs a month. In the whole commune there were only two or three persons who had wine in their houses. He lent me his two sons—the séminariste and his young brother—to walk with me as far as the Luxège, and put me on the path to La Page, at which village I proposed to pass the night.

As we left, a grand expanse of chestnut forest came into view, following the hills that bordered the curved line of the Luxège. The little river, like all the tributaries of the upper Dordogne, runs at the bottom of a deep gorge. Standing upon the brink of it, I perceived that I was about to enter another sylvan solitude of enchanting beauty. The dense forest descended the abrupt escarpments to the channel and hid the stream, and over the leafy masses was that play of sunshine, shadow, and thin vapour which I had so often watched in a dreamily joyous mood lying at the foot of some pine in the Vosges.

About half-way down the gorge was a ruinous Romanesque chapel upon a rock, the polygonal apse being on the very edge of a precipice. At each exterior angle of the imperfect polygon was a column with a cubiform capital. The interior was all dilapidated; the floor of the sanctuary had fallen in, but the altar-stone—a block of granite—remained in its place. This chapel belonged to a priory. Little is left of the adjoining monastery except some subterranean vaults and the gaping oven of the ruined bakery; all ferny, mossy, given up to the faun and the dryad. The upper masonry was carried away years ago to build a chapel upon the hill. A bit of green slope, where the sunbeams wantoned with yellow mulleins, wild carrot, and bracken, was the cemetery, as a few stone crosses almost buried in the soil plainly told. These crosses doubtless mark the graves of nameless priors. And the dust of the humble monk and serving brother, where is that? Every plant draws from it something that it needs to fulfil its purpose. It is as good for the nightshade as for the violet; flowers that are rank and deadly, and others that are sweet and innocent, strive for the right of clasping with their hungry roots the dust of men.

The innkeeper's sons left me by an abandoned mill on the other side of the stream, which was crossed by a rough wooden bridge. Ascending the opposite hill by a narrow path in the shadow of chestnuts and beeches, and fringed with gorse and heather, I passed another deserted house, the roof of which had fallen in. The gorge was getting very shadowy when I reached the tableland above it. I saw the small town of Laplau in the plain away to the left, but my path did not lie through it, for I preferred the wilder country towards La Page. When I passed a little lake in a hollow, half surrounded by firs, the slanting rays were diving into its liquid stillness, over which the motionless trees bent gazing at their likeness.

When the sun left me I was upon a hilly waste, amid darkening bushes of holly and juniper, tall bracken, heather, and gorse. The spirit of desolation threw out broad wings under the fading sky; but from afar towards the west, whither I was going, came through the dusk the shine and twinkle of many fires that had been lighted by the peasants upon their patches of reclaimed desert. They flashed to me the sentiment of the autumn fields, of hopeful husbandry, of laying up for the winter, and preparation for harvests that would be gathered under next year's sun.

Tired and hungry, I reached La Page in the darkness. The village looked very poor and dreary; but I had been told that it contained a 'good hotel,' and I set about looking for it. It turned out to be a rather large but exceedingly rough auberge. On opening the door I saw a great kitchen with pebbled floor, lighted only by the glow of embers on the hearth. The figure of a woman standing in the chimney opening was lit up by the glare. I walked towards her, and asked her if she could give me lodging. After scanning me very acutely for some seconds, she replied, 'Yes.' She was puzzled, if not startled, by the apparition in front of her; but having thrown down my pack and taken a seat in the chimney-corner like a familiar of the house, I talked to her about the comfort of being in such a place after a long walk in so wild a district as hers, and succeeded in making her quite genial. She was the mayor's wife, but she was not too proud to cook for me after lighting a flickering oil-lamp. While I was waiting for my meal peasants came in, and had theirs at the bare tables, of which there were several in the great kitchen. Their soup was ladled out from the immense black pot that hung over the fire, and the noise they made as they fell to it was very grating to the nerves. But the wanderer in the chimney-corner had no business to be there, unless he was prepared to accept all that was customary without wincing. My own dinner commenced with some of this soup, which was like hot dishwater with slices of bread thrown into it. The bit of boiled veal that followed was an improvement, although anything but a captivating dish. Goat-cheese, hard and salt, and with a flavour that left no doubt as to the source from which it came, made up the frugal fare. I returned to the chimney-corner and smoked in silence, now peering up the sooty cavern where the wind moaned, and now watching the clear-obscure effects of the dimly-lighted room. Presently a trap stopped outside, and in walked the aubergiste, accompanied by a sprightly little man who I afterwards learnt was a pedlar.

Monsieur le maire was not exactly a polished gentleman; he took no notice of me after the first searching glance. He made an unpleasant impression, but this wore off when I found that he was a well-meaning man, who had not cultivated fine manners. Why should he have cultivated what would have been of little or no use to him? These rural functionaries are just like the people with whom they live. The young séminariste told me an amusing story of a mayor of St. Pantaléon, who had had a very narrow escape of being caught by gendarmes when upon a poaching expedition. 'Tout le monde est braconnier ici,' added my informant with a sincerity that was very pleasing. Of course, he was a poacher himself when reposing from his theological and philosophical studies. I thought none the worse of him for that. After all, poaching in France generally means nothing more immoral than neglecting to take out a gun license, and to respect the President's decrees with regard to the months that are open and those that are not.

On my way to bed I saw in a corner of the staircase a spinning-wheel of the pattern known throughout Europe. I was told that it had not been used for many years. The distaff and spindle which are to be seen on Egyptian monuments are still employed by thousands of French, peasant-women, but the wheel invented in the sixteenth century is rarely used now, unless it be by Martha in the opera.

The next morning I made friends with the pedlar, who was about to start upon my road, and who offered to give me a lift in his trap as far as La Roche Canillac. Meanwhile, he had unpacked all his samples of cloth with a view to doing a little business with the mayor. This personage, however, was not allowed to have much voice in the matter; it was his spouse who represented his interests in the bargaining battle that was now waged with deafening din and much apparent ferocity for three-quarters of an hour. The little pedlar was used to this kind of thing, and was quite prepared for the fray. When the lady offered him, after much depreciatory fingering of the chosen material, two-thirds of what he asked for the stuff that was to be made into a pair of winter trousers for the mayor, he spun round and jumped like a peg-top just escaped from the string. Then he raged and swore, said he was being mocked at, dabbed his hat on his head, and made a pretence of gathering up his samples and rushing off. The mayor watched the scene with a quiet smirk on his face: he knew that he would somehow get the trousers. I have no doubt that he did have them, but I walked out instead of waiting to see the end of the battle. When I returned, the haggling was over, the hostess and the pedlar were on the most affable terms, and there was not a sign of the recent storm.

Presently the pedlar, myself, and the innkeeper's son—a young man who had received his education elsewhere, and had learnt much that did not chime in with his present surroundings—were in a light cart, drawn by a lively horse, speeding along the road over the moors. Here and there, near the village, were small fields of buckwheat in the midst of the heather and bracken. My companions explained that each commune was surrounded by a considerable extent of moorland that belonged to it, and that any native of the commune had the right of selecting a piece, which became his absolute property after he had cleared it and brought it under cultivation; thus anyone could have what land he wanted in reason for nothing. Quite an Arcadian state of things this, were not the conditions of nature such as to chill the ambition to acquire such freeholds. Three years of back-breaking labour are needed before the land is fit to be put to some profitable purpose. And then what does it yield? Buckwheat, and perhaps potatoes. Although the peasants have the faculty of extending their landed property in the manner described, the consideration of means generally stands in the way. They cannot afford to work and wait three years. Their existence is truly wretched, and if it were not for the luxuriant chestnut-woods, which cover the sides of the narrow valleys or gorges with which the barren plateau is deeply seamed every few miles, the population of the region would be more scanty than it is, for the chestnut goes far to sustain the people through the worst months of the year.