shook and swayed with the jolting of few old vineyards which, after being this rustic hearse, moved towards the church, nearly the whole of the population followed. Only the day before another woman was carried along the same white road towards the little cemetery, but the coffin then was borne upon the shoulders of four persons of her own sex. Now and again fatigue brought the bearers to a standstill; then they would change shoulders by changing places. And the white coffin moving up and down as a waif on the swell of the sea, passed on towards the glowing west, where presently the purple-tinted wings of evening covered it. But the peasants are not sentimentalists; far from it. Always practical, they are very quick to perceive the futility of nursing grief, and especially the unreasonableness of wishing people back in the world who were no longer able to do their share of its work. A young man came into the village with a donkey and cart to fetch a coffin for his father who had just died. "Apé! I dare say he was old," was the reflection of our servant a Quercynoise. If it had been the old father who had come to fetch a coffin for the young man, she would have found something more sympathetic to say than that. Sometimes at sunset I climb the rugged hill behind the house. Then the stony soil no longer dazzles by its white glitter, but takes a soft tint of orange, or rose, or lilac, according to the stain of the sky, and there is no light in the rocky South that so tenderly touches the soul as this. Here the spurge drinks of the wine of heaven with golden lips wide open; but the hellebore, which has already lost all its vernal greenness, and is parched by the drought, ripens its drooping seeds sullenly on the shadowy side of the jutting crag, and seems to hate the sun. Higher and yet far below the plateau is a little field where the lately cut grass has been thrown into mounds. Here the light seems to gain a deeper feeling, and the small vineyard by the side holds it too. It is one of the very stricken nearly unto death by the phylloxera, have revived, and by some unknown virtue have recovered the sap and spirit of life. The ancient stocks gnarled and knotted. and as thick as a man's arm, together with the fresh green leaves and the hanging bunches of buds that promise wine, wear a color that cannot be rightly named a transparent, subtle, vaporous tint of golden pink or purple, which is the gift of this warm and wonderful light. A cricket that has climbed up one of the tender shoots, strikes a low note, which is like the drowsy chirrup of a roosting bird. It is the first touch of a fiddler in the night's orchestra, and will soon be taken up by thousands of other crickets, bell-tinkling toads, and creaking frogs in the valley, and the solitary owl that hoots from the hills. Below, how the river seems to sleep under the dusky wings of gathering dreams where the white bridge spans it! Beyond, where the blue-green sky is cut by a broken line of hill and tree, the rocks become animated in the clear obscure, and the apparently dead matter, rousing from its apathy, takes awful forms and expressions of life. My small boat had been lying on the Vézère several days doing nothing when I decided upon a little waterfaring as far as Le Moustier. This boat had no pretensions to beauty. It had been knocked together with a few deal boards, and it had, as a matter of course, a flat bottom, for a boat with a keel would be quite unsuitable for travelling long distances on rivers where, if you cannot float in four inches of water, you must hold yourself in constant readiness to get out and drag or push your craft over the stones. This exercise is very amusing at the age of twenty, but the fun grows feeble as time goes on. My boat was not made to be rowed, but to be paddled, either with the short, single-bladed paddle which is used by the fishermen of the Dordogne, and which they call a "shovel," or by the one that is dipped on both sides of the canoe alternately. There being rapids about every half mile on the Vézère, and the current in places being very strong, I realized that no paddler would be able to get up the stream without help, and so I induced my landlord to accompany me and to bring a pole. He was a good-tempered man, somewhat adventurous, with plenty of information, and a full-flavored local accent that often gave to what he said a point of humour that was not intended. The voyage, therefore, commenced under circumstances that promised nothing but pleasantIt was a perfectly beautiful May afternoon, with a fresh north breeze blowing that tempered the ardor of the ness. sun. Having passed the first rapids easily, we talked, and the conversation turned upon - cockchafers! My companion had been much impressed by the strange doings of a party of gypsy children whom he had lately passed on the highroad. One of them had i climbed up a tree, the foliage of which had attracted a multitude of cockchafers, and he was shaking down the insects for the others to collect. But it was not this that made the teller of the story stop and gaze with astonishment; it was the use to which the cockchafers were put. As they were picked up they were crammed into the children's mouths and devoured, legs, wings, and all. At first he thought the small gypsies were feasting on cherries. He declared that the sight disgusted him, and spoilt his appetite for the rest of the day. In this I thought his stomach somewhat inconsistent, for I knew of a little weakness that he had for raw snails, which, to my mind, are scarcely less revolting as food than live cockchafers. He would take advantage of a rainy day or a shower to catch his favorite prey upon his fruit-trees and cabbages. Having relieved them of their shells and given them a rinse in some water, he would swallow them as people eat oysters. He had a firm belief in their invaluable medicinal action upon the throat and lungs. His brother, he said, would have died at The water changed like the moods of a child who has only to choose the form and manner of his pleasure. Now it pictured in its large eye, whose depth seemed to meet eternity, the lights and forms and colors of the sky, the rocks, and the trees; now it leapt from the shaded quietude and, splitting into two or more currents, separated by willowy islets or banks of pebbles, rushed with an eager and joyous cry a hundred yards or so; then it stopped to take breath, and moved dreamily on again. Where the water was shallow was many a broad patch of blooming ranunculus; so that it seemed as if the fairies had been holding a great battle of white flowers upon the river. We glided by the side of meadows where all the waving grass was full of sunshine. On twenty-three instead of at fifty-three the bank stood purple torches of dame's violet, and the dog-rose climbing upon the guelder rose was pictured with it in the water. On the opposite bank stood the great rocks which have caused this part of the river to be called the Gorge of Hell. Here, too, human beings in perpetual terror of their own kind cut themselves holes in the face of the precipice and lived where now the jackdaw, the hawk, the owl, and the bat are the only inhabitants. In the Middle Ages the English we had our worst fight with the companies turned the side of the preci- rapids, and were nearly beaten. It pice into a stronghold which was the was the last push of the pole from terror of the surrounding district. The the man behind me when he had no rock shows some curious traces of their more breath in his body that saved us work. from being whirled round and carried had it not been for snails. I have met After passing the Nine Brothers -a name given to nine rocks of rounded outline standing by the water like towers of a fortress built by demigods back. Before one gets used to it, the rock were freshly green, and the low plaint of the nightingale and the jocund cry of the more distant cuckoo broke the sameness of the great chorus of grasshoppers in the sunny meadWhen I returned to my companion, He sensation of struggling up a river where it descends a rocky channel at a rather steep gradient is a little bewildering. The flash of the water dazzles, and its rapid movement makes one Ows. giddy. There is no excitement, however, so exhilarating as that which I found that he was clothed again, but comes of a hard battle with one of the not in a contented frame of mind. forces of nature, especially when na-accompanied me as far as Tursac, and ture does not get the best of it. This then started off home on foot. He had tug-of-war over, we were going along had enough of the river. There was smoothly upon rather deep water when still sufficient daylight for me to conI heard a splash behind me, and on tinue the voyage to Le Moustier, but looking round saw my companion in a apart from the fact that I could not get position that did not afford him much up the rapids alone, I was quite willing opportunity for gesticulation. He was to pass the night at Tursac. Having up to his middle in the water, but chained the boat to a willow, I walked hitched on to the side of the boat with through the meadows towards a group his heels and hands. He had given a of houses, in the midst of which stood vigorous push with his pole upon a a church, easily distinguished by its stone that rolled, and he rolled too. walls and tower. When I had arNow the boat being very light and nar-ranged matters for the night, I passed row, an effort on his part to return to through the doorway of this little his former position would have filled it church, under whose vault the same with water; so he remained still while human story that begins with the chrisI, bringing my weight to bear on the tening, receives a new impetus from › other side, managed to haul him up by marriage, and is brought to an end by the arms. After this experience he the funeral, had been repeated by so was restless and apparently uncomfort- many sons after their fathers. The air able, and we had not gone much far- was heavy with the fragrance of roses ther before he expressed a wish to land from the Lady Chapel, where a little on the edge of a field. Here he took lamp gleamed on the ground beside the off the garments which he now felt altar. As the sun went down, the were superfluous, vigorously wrung the roses and leaves began to brighten with water out of them, and spread them in the shine of the lamp, like a garden the sun to dry. I left him there fight- corner in the early moonlight. ing with the flies, whose curiosity and enterprise were naturally excited by such rare good luck, and went to dream a while in the shadow of the rock on the very edge of which are the ramparts of the ruined castle of La Madeleine. This is the most picturesque bit of the valley of the Vézère; but to feel all the romance of it, and all the poetry of a perfect union of rocks and ruin, trees and water, one must glide upon the river that here is deep and calm, and is full of that mystery of infinitely intermingled shadow and reflection which is the hope and the despair of the landscape painter. Now in this month of May the shrubs that clung to the furrowed face of the white 'I had learnt to put up with a good At the inn I met one of those commercial travellers who work about in the rural districts of France, driving from village to village with their samples, fiercely competing for the favors of the rustic shopkeeper, doing their utmost to get before one another, and be the first bee that sucks the flower, taking advantage of one another's errors and accidents, but always good friends and excellent table companions when they meet. I learnt that my new acquaintance was "in the drapery." We were comparing notes of our experience in the rough country of the Corrèze, when he, as he rolled up another cigarette, said : deal in the Corrèze, but one day I had fifty kilomètres. a surprise which was too much for me. I had dined at one of those auberges that you have been speaking of, and then asked for some coffee. It was an old man who made it, and he strained it through — guess what he strained it through ?" I guessed it was something not very appropriate, but was too discreet to give it a name. What a bouquet! What a fine goût du terroir!' He will not be able to bear much more of this if he has any of the wine. Unless you are pretty sure that he has some, it is not worth while talking about it. Expect him to disappear, and to come back presently with a dirty-looking bottle, which he will handle as tenderly as if it were a new baby." Those whose travelling in France is "Eh bien! It was the heel of an carried out according to the directions old woollen stocking." “ And did you drink the coffee?" “No. I said that I had changed my mind." given in guide-books — the writers of which nurse the reader's respectability with the fondest care will of course conclude that the best hotels in the We did not take any coffee that wine districts are those in which the evening. We had something less likely best wine of the country is to be had. to set the fancy exploring the secrets This is an error. The wine in the larger of the kitchen, where through the open hotels is almost invariably the "wine doorway we could see our old peasant of commerce;" that is to say, a mixhostess seated on her little bench in ture of different sorts more or less the ingle and nodding her head over "doctored" with sulphate of lime, to the dying embers of her hearth. Her overcome a natural aversion to travelhusband was induced by the traveller to bring up from the cherished corner of his cellar a bottle of the old wine of Tursac, made from the patriarchal vines before the pestilential insect drew the life out of them. The hillsides above the Vézère are growing green again with vineyards, and again the juice of the grape is beginning to flow abundantly; but years must pass before it will be worthy of being put into the same cellar with the few bottles of the old wine which has been treasured up here and there by the grower, but which he thinks it a sacrilege to drink on occasions less solemn than marriages or christenings in the family. "You can often coax the old wine from them," said my knowing companion, "if you go the right way to work." "And what is the secret?" ling. The hotel keeper in order to keep on good terms with the representatives of the wine merchants-all mixers who stop at his house, distributes his custom amongst them. Those who set value on a pure vin du pays with a specific flavor belonging to the soil should look for it in the little out-ofthe-way auberge lying amongst the vineyards. There it is probable that some of the old stock is still left, and if the vigneron-innkeeper says it is the old wine, the traveller may confidently believe him. I have never known in such cases any attempt at deception. The next morning I reached Le Moustier. Here the valley is broad, but the rocks, which are like the footstools of the hills, shut in the landscape all around. These naked, perpendicular masses of limestone, yellow like ochre "Flattery; there is nothing like it. or as white as chalk, and reflecting the Flatter the peasant and you will be brilliance of the sun, must have afforded almost sure to move him. Say, Ah, shelter to quite a dense population in what a time that was when you had the days when man made his weapons the old wine in your cellars!' He and implements from flints, and is will say, 'N'est-ce pas, monsieur !' and supposed to have lived contemporanebrighten up at the thought of it. Then ously with the reindeer. Notwithstandyou will continue: Yes, indeed, that ing all the digging and searching that a wine worth drinking. There has gone on of late years on this spot, was nothing like it to be found within the soil in the neighborhood of the in was habited caverns and shelters is still full of the traces of prehistoric man. Shortly before my coming, a savant everybody is called a savant here who goes about like a chiffonnier with his nose towards the ground gave a man two francs to be allowed to dig for a few hours in a corner of his garden. The man was willing enough to have his ground cleared of stones on these terms. The savant therefore went to work, and when he left in the evening he took with him half a sackful of flints and bones. In a side valley close to Le Moustier is a line of high vertical or overleaning rocks. A ledge accessible from the ground runs along the face, and nearly in the centre, and at the back of it, are numerous hollows in the calcareous stone, some natural, and others partly scooped out with the aid of metal implements whose marks can still be seen. Each of these shelters was inhabited. Holes and recesses have been cut in the walls to serve for various domestic purposes, and on the ground are traces of fireplaces, reservoirs for water, etc. The original inhabitants of these hollows may have been savages no more advanced in the arts than those who worked flints, but it is certain that the latest occupiers were much more civilized. Rows of holes roughly cut in the limestone show where the ends of beams once rested, and the use of these timbers was evidently to support a roof that covered much of the ledge. It is quite certain that people lived here in the Middle Ages, and they might do so now but for the difficulty of bringing up water. The security which the position afforded could hardly have been lost sight of in the days when the inhabitants of Guyenne were separated into two chief categories robbers and those who were continually being robbed. One must therefore be guarded against wild talk about prehistoric man in connection with these rock dwellings, which in many cases were used as fortresses during the three hundred years' struggle between the English and French in Aquitaine. My water-faring back to Les Eyzies was far easier than the voyage upstream. Nevertheless, there was some excitement in it, for when the rapids were reached, the current snatched the boat, as it were, from me, but carried me with it, by little reefs each marked out as an islet as white as snow, by the floating flowers of the water ranunculus; but when its strength failed, it left me to drift where in the dark shadow of rock and tree the water rested from its race. Presently the rapids were seen again dancing in the sun, and the boat, gliding on to just where the smooth surface curved and the current took its leap without a ripple, darted forward like a startled waterbird. Once a back current whirled my fragile boat completely round. Then I remembered the good advice of the friendly "Otter" at Beynac with reference to going down these streams, where the water has to be watched with some attention if one does not wish to get capsized: "Tenez-vous toujours dans le plus fort du courant." Again in calm water, I recognized, beyond the still grass and the scattered flame of the scarlet poppies, the high walls of the fortress-like church of Tayac with the light of the sinking sun upon them. Then a little lower down at the ford, which was my stopping-place, a pair of bullocks were crossing the river with a wagon-load of hay; so that the picturesque, the idyllic, and the sentiment of peace were all blended so perfectly as to make me feel that the pen was powerless, and that the painter's brush alone could save the scene from passing away forever. E. HARRISON BARKER. From The Nineteenth Century. MEDIEVAL MEDICINE. IT has been said that nothing is anything except relatively. It is an epigram pregnant with truth and worthy In the present of being pondered. paper we propose to consider what medical science and practice were in the Middle Ages, to the end that we may |