Loire River

“ Along the banks of the Loire, moreover, France has woodlands, and lawns, and an, intermixture of wood and water, and of every possible variety of surface, which no country in the world but France can produce. The Loire is perhaps the only river in Europe which is bordered by hills and hillocks, and which, in so long a course, so seldom passes through a mere dead level. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Several towns have constructed special works to defend themselves against the floods; Tours, the most exposed of all, is surrounded by a circular dyke.
Various schemes for the systematic regulation of the Loire have been discussed. It has been proposed to construct in the upper valleys of the several affluents a number of gigantic dams or reservoirs from which the water, stored during flood, could be let off into the river as required. ”

“ Langeais follows, and the Indre, the Cher, and the Vienne, all ample and historic rivers, go to swell the flood which passes under the bridges of Saumur, Ancenis, and Ponts de Cé.
From Tours to the ocean, the Loire comes to its greatest amplitude, though even then, in spite of its breadth, it is, for the greater part of the year, impotent as to the functions of a great river.
Below Angers the Loire receives its first great affluent coming from the country lying back of the right bank: the Maine itself is a considerable river. ”

“ Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency sleep on the river-bank, their proud monuments rising high in the background,—the massive tower of Cæsar and a quartette of church spires. Just below Orleans is the juncture of the Loiret and the Loire at St. Mesmin, while only a few kilometres away is Cléry, famed for its associations of Louis XI.
The Loiret is not a very ample river, and is classed by the Minister of Public Works as navigable for but four kilometres of its length. This, better than anything else, should define its relative importance among the great waterways of France. ”

“ A second feature in the river system of Haute Loire is that a certain number of the affluents of the Loire run into it from the direction in which it is flowing, and their mouths are more or less against the stream they are about to feed. ”

“ The broad Loire, the longest river of France, sweeps the foot of the sloping plain on which the city stands, and bears its commerce to the sea. Near by grows a magnificent forest, one of the largest in France, covering no less than ninety-four thousand acres. Within the city appears the lofty spires of a magnificent cathedral, while numerous towers rise from a maze of buildings, giving the place, from a distance, a highly attractive aspect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mauves, which was our first stage, is most romantically situated on a hill, which forms one of the banks of the Loire. The country about it, in the richness of its woods, and the verdure of its meadows, most strongly reminded me of England; but I know of no scenery in England, which together with this richness and variety of woodland and meadow, has such a beautiful river as the Loire to complete it in all the qualities of landscape. ”

“ The most charming part of Tours is naturally the shaded quay that overlooks it, and looks across too at the friendly faubourg of Saint Symphorien and at the terraced heights which rise above this. Indeed, throughout Touraine, it is half the charm of the Loire that you can travel beside it. The great dike which protects it, or, protects the country from it, from Blois to Angers, is an admirable road; and on the other side, as well, the highway constantly keeps it company. A wide river, as you follow a wide road, is excellent company; it heightens and shortens the way. ”

“ As one leaves Tours by the road which skirts the right bank of the Loire, he is once more impressed by the fact that the cailloux de Loire are the river's chief product, though fried fish, of a similar variety to those found in the Seine, are found on the menus of all roadside taverns and restaurants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Historic France is there! Auvergne is Auvergne, Languedoc is only Languedoc; but Touraine is France; the most national river for Frenchmen is the Loire, which waters Touraine. For this reason we ought not to be surprised at the great number of historically noble buildings possessed by those departments which have taken the name, or derivations of the name, of the Loire. At every step we take in this land of enchantment we discover a new picture, bordered, it may be, by a river, or a tranquil lake reflecting in its liquid depths a castle with towers, and woods and sparkling waterfalls. ”

“ The river road down the Loire was most promising at first, but a head wind sprang up and made a détour the other side of Blois more tempting by argument of a fair wind that blew down one of the roads leading away from the river. For a time I made full twenty-five kilometers an hour, but the wind died out and I returned to the river road and reached Tours in time for the enjoyment of a magnificent sunset effect and a most appetising and satisfying table d'hôte dinner. ”

“ Of all the provinces of France, those which compose the department of the Loire are the richest, and best cultivated; and if any foreigner would wish to fix his residence in France, let it be on the banks of this river.—Fish, as I have said before, is cheap and plentiful, and fowls about one-fourth of the price in England. The climate, not so southerly as to be intolerably hot, nor so northerly as to be continually humid, is perhaps the most healthy and pleasant in the world—the sun shines day after day in a sky of etherial blue ”

“ 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. ”

“ After traversing the basin of Emblavès below Le Puy, the Loire enters a second defile, where its passage was barred by a great current of clinkstone, or laminated lava, poured forth from Mézenc, and of this two colossal remnants exist, the rocks Miaune and Gerbison, rising one on each side of the river to a height of 1,800 feet above it. This enormous dyke suddenly thrown across the valley must have caused the waters of the Loire to accumulate into a vast lake, till they effected their escape by sawing through it. ”

“ Windmills are very frequent along the whole line of the Loire, the wheat of the country being ground in the vicinity of the river, so as to be more convenient for transportation. These mills are beautifully situated on the hills and rising grounds, and add much to the cheerfulness of the scenery. The road, moreover, was as various as it was beautiful. Sometimes it passed through open fields, in which the peasantry were at work to get in their harvest. ”

“ An upper course in a country of impervious rock means that the volume of water is not reduced by absorption, and the difficulties of the river are increased when it encounters the tertiary beds of the formation to which Paris gives its name. In this soft soil the Loire gathers up great quantities of detritus, which it deposits farther down, producing the sand-banks which cost the communities large sums to remove. ”

“ It is only on the Loire between Angers and Nantes that there is any semblance of river traffic such as one sees on most of the other great waterways of Europe. There is a considerable traffic, too, which descends the Maine, particularly from Angers downward, for Angers with its Italian skies is usually thought of, and really is to be considered, as a Loire13 town, though it is actually on the banks of the Maine some miles from the Loire itself. ”

“ Footnote Jj:
The river Loiret, which has the honour of giving name to a department, rises out of the earth at a place, called La Source, a league and a half south-east of Orleans, and taking at once the character of a considerable stream, winds under a most delicious bank on its left, with a flat country of meadows, woods, and vineyards on its right, till it falls into the Loire about three or four leagues below Orleans. ”

“ The town is also accessible by railroad, but the steamer journey from Nantes, which is made in less than an hour, is more attractive as well as more direct. In this section the Loire is flanked on either side by bottom lands, reduced in places to narrow strips, which are followed at intervals by elevations called, by courtesy, hills or buttes. To the west of Couëron, and especially at Pellerin, which stands high, these buttes come close to the river, which is eating them away. ”

“ The town of Saumur is built on both banks of the Loire, with a handsome stone bridge over it; an ancient castle, built on a high rock, commands the whole town. The road from Angers to this place is a high raised causeway, paved, and runs parallel to the river, within a few paces of its banks, the whole distance. Here we entered into Touraine from the province of Anjou. From Saumur to Tours, the road is like the former. The river Loire is on the right hand, and a flat level country on the left, covered with orchards, groves, and meadows. ”

“ The town itself is not attractive; one long, narrow lane-like street, lined on each side by habitations neither imposing nor of a tumble-down picturesqueness, borders the Loire. There is nothing very picturesque, either, about the homes of the vineyard workers round about. Below and above the town the great highroad runs flat and straight between Tours and Blois on either side of the river, and auto118mobilists and cyclists now roll along where the state carriages of the court used to roll when François Premier and his sons journeyed from one gay country house to another. ”

“ Away to the south, across the Loire to Muides, runs the route to Chambord, through the Sologne, where immediately the whole aspect of life changes from that on the borders of the rich grain-lands of the Orléannais and La Beauce.
All the way from Beaugency to Blois the Loire threads its way through a lovely country, whose rolling slopes, back from the river, are surmounted here and there by windmills, a not very frequent adjunct to the landscape of France, except in the north.
Near Mer is Menars, with its eighteenth-century château of La Pompadour; Suèvres, the site of an ancient Roman city ”

“ All of us have a natural desire to know more of historic ground, and whether we make a start by entering the valley of the Loire at the luxurious midway city of Tours, and follow the river first to the sea and then to the source, or make the journey from source to mouth, or vice versa, it does not matter in the least. We traverse the same ground and we meet the4 same varying conditions as we advance a hundred kilometres in either direction. ”

“ Here the river first takes on a complexion which previously it had lacked, for it is only when the Loire becomes the boundary-line between the north and the south that one comes to realize its full importance.
The Orléannais, like many another province of mid-France, is a region where plenty awaits rich and poor alike. Not wholly given over to agriculture, nor yet wholly to manufacturing, it is without that restless activity of the31 frankly industrial centres of the north. ”

“ But to cross the great river which divides France into two lands widely differing he must leave the city by the east gate; for the only bridge over the Loire within forty miles of Angers lay eastward from the town, at Ponts de Cé, four miles away. ”

“ COUNTRY SOUTH OF THE LOIRE.--LE BOCAGE.--CLISSON.--HISTORICAL ANECDOTES.--THE GARENNE, AND RIVER SÈVRES.
The best method of travelling in this country is on horseback: in fact, it is impossible to proceed in any other way, after quitting the main road. Having procured a guide and horses, I set out early in the morning, crossing the Loire by the Pont Rosseau, to Verton, keeping along the banks of the River Sèvres. Verton is a romantic village standing on a hill: most of the houses are in ruins, from the effect of the destructive war of La Vendée. ”