Now and then a
barn with thatched roof; here a battered boat overturned to make Piggy
and family a habitation; there heavy and lumbering three wheeled
carts, with the third rotator placed between the shafts, so the poor ox
who draws the queer vehicle hasn't much room to spare.
Huge loads of hay pass us, and other large farm wagons, drawn invariably
by handsome oxen. The ox-yokes are a constant marvel to us; for,
divested of the bows, they are fastened with leather straps to the bases
of the poor creatures' horns. Evidently there is no "S. P. C. A." here;
and we cannot convince those with whom we converse on the subject that
the poor animals would pull better by their shoulders than by their
heads. At several places we see the clumsiest windmills for sawing wood;
not after the fashion of the picturesque buildings which Don Quixote so
valiantly opposed, but a heavy frame work or scaffolding about twelve
feet in height. To this is attached a wheel of heaviest plank with five
fans, each one shaped like the arm of a Greek cross, and the whole so
ponderous we are confident that nothing less than a hurricane could
make it revolve.
Here is a house entirely covered with diamond shaped shingles, having
also double and triple windows, which are long, narrow, and pointed at
the top, yet not suggestive of the gothic.
Next we pass a point where an old post inn once stood, and where the
curiously curved, twisted, and strangely complicated iron frame which
once held the swinging sign still remains.
Many a bleak ride did that mounted carrier have, no doubt, in days of
yore; and we can imagine him saying: -
"The night is late, I dare not wait, the winds begin to blow,
And ere I gain the rocky plain there'll be a storm, I know!"
At our final halting place all is bustle, in preparation for a two days'
fête, which commences next day; nevertheless, had we been princes of the
realm, we could not have been shown truer hospitality. Père Basil Armand
himself waits upon us, while his wife is cooking dainties for the coming
festival; and the pretty Monica, giving up her neat apartment to one of
our party, lodges at a neighbor's.
Monsieur R., though seventy-eight years of age, retains all his
faculties perfectly, is straight as an Indian, his luxuriant hair
unstreaked with gray, and he is over six feet in height. He reminds us
of the description of Benedict Bellefontaine:
