Lares

“ As early as the fifteenth century the countrywomen from the mountains of the Vélay would congregate together during the winter within the walls of the neighbouring cities, and there, forming themselves into companies, gain their subsistence by making coarse lace to ornament the albs of the priests, the rochets of the bishops, and the petticoats of ladies of quality. And very coarse and tasteless were these early products, to judge from the specimens which remain tacked on to faded altar-cloths, still to be met with in the province, a mixture of netting and darning without design. ”

“ The river, the bluff, and the lake are there; but waste and desolation frown on these, and the fat earth's rich fruits are yielded no more. Fanaticism's hot breath has breathed upon it, and war's red hand (her legitimate offspring) has stricken down the laborer; tillage has ceased, and gaunt poverty and hungry want only are left in her train.
When the great La Salle moored his little fleet at the foot of this bluff, ascended to its summit, and looked over this then forest-clad plain, did he contemplate the coming future of this beautiful discovery of his genius and enterprise? ”

“ While La Salle was vainly struggling to accomplish the end for which he had sailed to Louisiana, the French were not idle in the North. In the rich peltries of the far West the fur-traders found a source of wealth rivaling even the mines of the South, and a class of men—unique alike in their manners and their experiences—sprang up, as it were, in the heart of the wilderness, to whom the name of coureurs des bois was given. ”

“ Approaching Laruns, the valley appears terminated by high crags, and we could just distinguish the road to Spain, leading into a deep ravine, which seems scarcely more than a crevice in the rock. But here, turning off to the left, we passed through the town of Laruns itself, which is as odd a building as ever I beheld. Perhaps some people might find a great deal of amusement in searching into the history of the place, for both the materials and structure appear of an antique date. The lower story of the houses are only inhabited by the cows; pigs, and horses ”

“ In fact, Haute Loire is the most important centre in the world. In the report on the lace at the Exhibition at Chicago, it is stated that the number of women there engaged on this dainty and beautiful art was 92,000, whereas in Belgium but 65,000 are thus employed.
In the most remote hamlets, in the most solitary cottages among the mountains, the societies of lace workers still gather, in summer before their doors, in winter in the cottage of la béate. The house of this woman is surmounted by a little bell-cott. One such is to be found in the smallest cluster of cottages. ”

“ Distance upon distance, one mountain range rising above another, almost in endless succession, the various stages showing infinite gradation of colour—subtle, distracting, absolutely unpaintable! No wonder the air is unspeakably fresh and exhilarating, seeing that it blows north, south, east and west from lofty Alps. We have in view the sombre walls of the three Causses, the wide outline of the Larzac, in a vast semicircle the western spurs of the Cévennes, whilst from east to west stretch the Cantal chain, the Lozère, and the Cévennes des Gardons. ”

“ In the evening I visited the town of Lari: it stands on an eminence, and may probably contain two thousand inhabitants. The huts are built of the rush which grows by the sides of the lake, have conical tops, and look very like well thatched stacks of corn in England. They have neat inclosures round them, made with fences of the same reed, and passages leading to them like labyrinths. In the inclosure is a goat or two, poultry, and sometimes a cow. The women were almost all spinning cotton, which grows well, though not abundantly, near the town and lake. ”

“ Lace is, in fact, so indelibly associated with the chalets perched high on mountain tops, with little cottages in the valleys of the Appenines and Pyrenees, with sequestered convents in provincial France, with the raiment of men and women whose names loom large in the history of the world, and the futile as well as the successful efforts of inventors to relieve tired eyes and weary fingers, that, no matter how one attempts to treat the subject, it must be colored now and again with the hues of many peoples of many periods. ”

“ Florent is bordered by acacia trees most of the way, while the Loire winds through the meadows on either hand, is pleasant and pretty. Up a narrow lane, from whose walls of unhewn stones hung common English ferns, I passed more huge boulders wedged in the ground. Some peasant women were sitting on them, resting and enjoying the lovely view of the valley of the Loire, with Saumur and its four-towered castle crowning the rocks. For the French peasant has a keen sense of natural beauty. ”

“ Lazarus was untouched by the magnificence of the imperial apartments. He remained stolidly indifferent, as though he saw no contrast between his ruined house at the edge of the desert and the solid, beautiful palace of stone. Under his feet the hard marble of the floor took on the semblance of the moving sands of the desert, and to his eyes the throngs of gaily dressed, haughty men were as unreal as the emptiness of the air. ”

“ Such was the vision that rose before La Salle day and night—a vision of the long river valley held together by a chain of forts and depots for the fur trade, of friendly Indians coming with their canoes laden with furs to exchange with the French for merchandise, of French settlements growing up in the wilderness, of a great post at the mouth of the river, and of swift-sailing ships plying between the Gulf and far-away France. ”

“ As far as the eye can reach, one swelling line of hill-top rises and falls behind another; and if you climb an eminence, it is only to see new and further ranges behind these. Many little rivers run from all sides in cliffy valleys; and one of them, a few miles from Monastier, bears the great name of Loire. The mean level of the country is a little more than three thousand feet above the sea, which makes the atmosphere proportionably brisk and wholesome. There is little timber except pines, and the greater part of the country lies in moorland pasture. ”

“ The scenery along the Loire has a character which I should think could not be found in any other kingdom, and on any other river. Towns, windmills, steeples, ancient castles and abbeys still entire, and others with nothing remaining but their lofty walls; hills covered with vines, and alternate woods and corn-fields—altogether form a landscape, or rather a chain of landscapes, which remind one of a poem, and successively refresh, delight, animate, and exalt the imagination. ”

“ The Laird is the original owner of the land, whose natural power must be very great, where no man lives but by agriculture; and where the produce of the land is not conveyed through the labyrinths of traffick, but passes directly from the hand that gathers it to the mouth that eats it. The Laird has all those in his power that live upon his farms. Kings can, for the most part, only exalt or degrade. The Laird at pleasure can feed or starve, can give bread, or withold it. ”

“ I had now passed the provinces of Bretagne and Poitou, as they border the Loire; and, in point of beautiful and romantic scenery, this district can scarcely be surpassed. The left bank of the river, running along the country of Le Bocage, from Nantes to Angers, a distance of seventy-two miles, is a continued range of lofty hills, agreeably diversified with corn lands, and studded with vineyards. The opposite bank is a more flat and variegated country, with pleasant eminences and broad plains, watered by branches of the Loire, which in many parts contains small islands covered with trees. ”

“ The Lalos (children of the Great Spirit) guard the lake, and far in the past one of our own tribe reached it, but not propitiating the spirits, they killed him, and his body was sunk in the depths of the blue waters. ”

“ Her tall graceful form, her brilliant black locks falling under her tall hat, her dark eyes overshadowed by long lashes, and the long white feather which waved in her hat, reminded me of her noble ancestry in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. Behind them rode John Lasar by his mother's side on a chestnut mare of pure Arab blood, then came the youngest daughter and the youngest son, MacDonnell and Clifton, several neighbours from the Mustang, and lastly loaded pack-horses with a number of mules. The caravan came over the last height to the Fort, and was joyfully welcomed by us. ”

“ The darkness deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in the wall.
Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed) , and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet. ”

“ The hapless colony, cast ashore like a wreck on the sands of Matagorda Bay, must gather up its shattered resources and recruit its exhausted strength, before it essayed anew its pilgrimage to the "fatal river." La Salle during his explorations had found a spot which he thought well fitted for a temporary establishment. ”

“ The Loir, male, is the river, not La Loire of the feminine gender. Le Loir is a river that rises in the north-east, traverses the fertile upland plain of Beauce, and falls into and is lost in La Loire at Angers. It is a river rarely visited by English tourists, but it does not deserve to be overlooked. It has cut for itself a furrow in the chalk tufa, and the hospitable cliffs on each side offer a home to any vagrant who cares to scratch for himself a hole in the friable face, wherein to shelter his head. ”

“ The hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air, the tender foliage, the opening flowers, betokened the reviving life of Nature. For several days more they followed the writhings of the great river on its tortuous course through wastes of swamp and cane-brake, till on the thirteenth of March [235] they found themselves wrapped in a thick fog. Neither shore was visible; but they heard on the right the booming of an Indian drum and the shrill outcries of the war-dance. La Salle at once crossed to the opposite side, where, in less than an hour, his men threw up a rude fort of felled trees. ”

“ By this time we had coasted along the moat till we came to the Loire, where a whole swarm of boatmen, honest fellows in red caps and striped shirts, came up, shouting, ‘Vive Monsieur!’ ‘Vive Mademoiselle!’ and declaring that it was a shame to lock her out of her fathers own town. ”

“ Bruges itself, and the country round, is full of lace-workers, some working in factories or ateliers at the guipure de Flandres, others working at the coarse cheap torchon, sitting in the sun by the quiet canal-sides, or in the stone-cobbled lanes of the old city, where their house-door opens into a room as dark and narrow as a fox-earth, and leading a life so poor that English competition in the cheaper forms of lace is impossible. ”

“ We attended to the horses, carried our baggage to other fires at which we intended to spend the night, and then gradually collected in front of Lasar's tent, where the coffee was already boiling and various kettles for supper were standing in the ashes. The negroes too soon rode up with heavily-loaded cattle, and each of us put some of the meat on a spit in front of the fire, or laid a marrow-bone to roast. The night was magnificent, not a breath of air stirred the dark leaves of the primæval evergreen live oaks, which spread out their long horizontal branches over our heads. ”

“ Hereabouts the barren, stony, wilderness-like country betokens the region of the Causses. We are all this time winding round the rampart like walls of the great Causse de Larzac, which stretches from Le Vigan to Millau, rising to a height of 2,624 feet above the sea-level, and covering an area of nearly a hundred square miles. This Causse affords some interesting facts for evolutionists. The aridity, the absolutely waterless condition of the Larzac, has evolved a race of non-drinking animals. ”

“ Sister Robertine On a wet, cheerless day between Christmas and New Year’s, I started with Madame de Beughem and Madame Allard for the most important lace district of Eastern Flanders. The Alost region, which in 1896 counted 8,500 workers, is known throughout the lace world for its Needle Point and Venise.
We went first to Alost itself, the center of the area, where, however, modern industries have won their already oft-repeated victory over the lace. ”

“ Throughout most of the river's course, one sees, stretching to the horizon, row upon row of staked vineyards with fruit and leaves in luxuriant abundance and of all rainbow colours. The peasant here, the worker in the vineyards, is a picturesque element. He is not particularly brilliant in colouring, but he is usually joyous, and he invariably lives in a well-kept and brilliantly environed habitation and has an air of content and prosperity amid the well-beloved treasures of his household.
The Loire is essentially a river of other days. ”

“ Leaving Father Hennepin, and coming back to his one armed co-laborer, Tonti, we find that the Illinois promptly banished him on the departure of La Salle, so that he had to take refuge at the old camp on Green bay. And from which point, Tonti sent back to Canada, a dismal report of all his troubles, and the destruction of the fort at Peoria, and the probable death of La Salle at the hands of Indians. But La Salle was not dead. The lion-hearted hero of the great American wilderness was alive and equal to the great reverses of his fortune. ”