Читать книгу Rambles in Brittany - M. F. Mansfield - Страница 6

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TOURISTS are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homœopathic excitements of the little horses in some popular watering-place.

It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests, which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say nothing of being amused and instructed, too.

The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as a province where “husbandry was no further advanced than among the Hurons,” as a writer of the eighteenth century said within twenty-four hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel. Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea takes its place.

Brittany, in husbandry, may not be so advanced as some other parts. There are no such elaborate operations going on here as in the regions where high farming is practised—in Beauce, or Normandy, or Anjou. Neither are such numbers of mechanical farming-tools in operation, but in spite of all this there is a very considerable and prosperous industry born of the soil of which most strangers to Brittany, and some who have travelled there, are entirely ignorant. All along the great highways crossing and recrossing Brittany one sees the little roadside farms with their attendant small flocks of live stock, sheep, cattle, geese, ducks, and fowls, which point, at any rate, to the fact that the peasant need not be as ill-nourished as he is generally supposed to be; and really he is not.

The charm of journeying by road in France is indescribable, perhaps, to its fullest degree. Natural beauties count for much, but in a land peopled with historic castles, churches, and abbeys, as Normandy and Brittany are, it is found doubly enjoyable even though one professes no expert architectural knowledge, or no profound aptitude for historical research. These, however, are but side-lights, which make the actual pilgrimage among such shrines greatly to be cherished among one’s personal experiences.

It is the whole which pleases, and not fragmentary and piecemeal beauties and charms; and never was this more true than of a well-beloved land, be it one’s own or an alien shore.

Brittany and its travel routes, whether by road or rail, offer as full a measure of all these attractions as it is possible for one to conceive.

The great highways of Brittany have not the same favour with travellers by road as those of other parts of France. They are equally important and equally well cared for by a paternal government, but their inclines are steeper—sometimes suicidal—and certainly more frequent than elsewhere in France, and distances stretch out interminably.