land, and burying whole villages. In 1786 Nicholas Théodore Brémontier suggested the means of arresting this onward march, which menaced even the existence of Bordeaux. His method, that was at once adopted, was simple enough, the planting of this desert with maritime pines. Now, that which was a country like the desert of Sahara has become a vast forest. In the reign of Louis XVIII a statue was erected on the dunes, which he had fertilized, to the memory of the man who had conquered for his country upwards of 370,000 acres, and who had arrested the desolating onward march of the sand.
The inhabitants of the Landes are not a long-lived race. Probably the amount of arenaceous particles they inhale affects their lungs. Nor are they a bright and hilarious people. At a much later date I was able to procure a collection of their folk songs and melodies, but they were without much character, and were rather monotonous and mournful, like the features of the natives.
For day after day the humpy paved road ran through the vast sombre pine-forest, over level or scarce undulating land, and the spirit became depressed, as the body ached with the jolting over the pavé.
In spring the journey is not so intolerable, for the road is lined on both sides with acacias, rose-coloured and white, that luxuriate in that sandy soil, drooping the burdened masses of blossom, as overcharged, and filling the air with fragrance. But at the fall of the year they are leafless, the gorse and the heather are out of bloom, and the eye wanders over miles upon miles of solemn pine-tops to the horizon.
There are moments unforgettable in one's life, moments of bursting, overflowing joy, such as in all one's career are looked back upon with delight. One such moment was that when having surmounted an unwonted hill, the distant range of the Pyrenees, turquoise blue, tipped, streaked with silver, burst on our view far away beyond the sombre sea of pines. What a cry broke from us children as we clapped our hands! How my dear mother rose in the carriage to look at that incomparable vision! How my father, with unconscious reverence, took off his hat! How Mr. Hadow put his ignited cigar inconsiderately into his pocket, where it promptly burnt a hole in his coat! And Pengelly, in the rumble,
