Part 6 (2/2)
”Comme une conque immense ouverte au bord des eaux, En Cornouaille est un port, il y vient cent bateaux.
Un sable jaune et fin couvre ses cotes plates, Mais un infect amas de rogues, de morgates, D'oss.e.m.e.nts de poissons sur le rivage epars, La saumure qui filtre entre ses deux remparts, Soulevent tous les sens quand cette odeur saline Arrive au voyageur qui tourne la colline, Laissant derriere lui les taillis de Melven, La belle lande d'or qui parfume Aven, Et ces mouvants aspects de plaines, de montagnes Que deroulent sans fin nos sauvages campagnes.
Plus de batteurs de seigle ici, plus de faucheurs, Mais des canots charges de mousses, de pecheurs, Partant et revenant avec chaque maree, Et sur les quais du pont versant a leur rentree, Des sardines en tas, des congres, des merlus, Des homards cuira.s.ses, de gros crabes velus; Et, du fond des paniers, mille genres enormes, De toutes les couleurs et de toutes les formes, Avec leur il vitreux et leur museau beant, Tous enfants monstrueux du grand monstre Ocean.
Aussitot le pressier les seche, les empile, Et quand leur gra.s.se chair a degorge son huile, De Nantes a Morlaix cherchant les acheteurs, On voit bondir sur mer les hardis caboteurs.””
_Les Bretons_-BRIZEUX.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 29. Concarneau, with Sardine Boats.]
Thus the Breton poet describes Concarneau, a little fortified town, which has been called the St. Malo of Cornouaille, and is celebrated for its sardine fishery. The road lay through a wooded country, with steep hills and valleys, intersected by streams: on the right a view of the Bay of La Foret, where extensive oyster-culture is going on. After a tedious journey with miserable horses, we reached Concarneau at nine, a distance of little more than thirteen miles, having set off a few minutes after four.
Concarneau proper is on a rocky island, surrounded by fortifications, with eight or nine towers and thick walls, and communicating with the mainland by means of a drawbridge. This is called the ”Ville Close.” It consists of only one street. When Duke John IV. embarked from here for England, he left Sir Robert Knollys governor of the duchy. The constable Du Guesclin, after the surrender of Hennebont and Quimperle, took Concarneau by storm and slew all the English garrison, except the captain, who received quarter.
Opposite the island is the faubourg Sainte Croix, which is more populous than the Ville Close, and where all the business of the place is carried on. The sardine fishery, from June to November, occupies two-thirds of the population. From three to four hundred vessels are employed with five men to each boat. Calm weather is most favourable for fis.h.i.+ng. The sardines are taken in large seine nets, one side floating with corks on the surface of the water, the other falling vertically. The sardines, attracted by the bait, try to force themselves through the meshes of the net, and are caught by their gills. The bait used is called ”rogue:” the best is composed of the roe of the cod-fish, pounded and steeped in salt water for several days; sometimes the roe and flesh of the mackerel is used. Rogue is made in Norway and Denmark, but princ.i.p.ally at Drontheim, and is very expensive, costing about sixpence the lb.; hence an inferior bait is subst.i.tuted, composed of shrimps and other small crustacea, with fish salted, and the heads of anchovies, all pounded and putrified together.
But this kind of decomposed bait is forbidden by the fishery laws. The employment of it accounts for the rareness of good sardines, as the remaining of such a substance in the body of the animal cannot fail of corrupting it. It is a pretty sight to behold the little fleet employed in the sardine fishery return in the evening, laden with the results of the day's work. The fish, when landed, are counted out into baskets, shaken in the water, and taken up to one of the curing-houses: of these there are about sixty in Concarneau. In the first shed we saw above fifty women employed in taking off their heads-”deteter” it is called-an operation they effect with great dexterity. With one cut at the back of the neck the head is separated and the fish ”eventre” at the same time.
The sardines are next placed in little wire trays, with divisions like a double gridiron, and fried or dipped in boiling oil, an operation princ.i.p.ally performed by the women of Pont l'Abbe, who are supposed, like the Germans of our baking and sugar-refining houses, to be peculiarly const.i.tuted to resist heat. The gridirons are then hung up to drain. The sardines are next packed in tin boxes, cold oil poured over them, and the boxes soldered down. From 800 to 900 boxes are placed in a boiler and boiled for half an hour to test the boxes, and those which leak are put aside. They are of English tin, and the making of them is the winter's occupation. Finally, the boxes are stamped with the name of the establishment, and packed in deal cases for exportation. The sardine is a very delicate fish, and easily decays. It is only taken out of the net with a rake (_raquette_); in summer, numbers are spoiled from being heaped in the boats, and at whatever hour the boats come in the fish go through the whole process of curing, as they will not keep till the next day.
Concarneau exports from 15,000 to 20,000 barrels of sardines annually.
Only a part are ”anchoitee,” that is, preserved like the anchovies of the Mediterranean, the others are salted in casks; and quant.i.ties, only slightly salted, are packed in baskets, to be sent to the provincial markets. It is estimated that twelve hundred million fish have been caught this year. The sardine fishery extends along the whole western coast of Brittany from Douarnenez to the Loire.
One of the curiosities of Concarneau is its aquarium, under the direction of M. Guillon. It consists of six cisterns, made by the blasting of the solid rock, and comprising an area of large extent, within a walled enclosure. In these cisterns the water is renewed at each turn of the tide through narrow openings in the wall. Three of these reservoirs are reserved for fish, the others for crustacea-lobsters and langoustes. Of these they keep from 10,000 to 15,000 at a time, and send them off daily, when fattened, to Paris and the princ.i.p.al markets of France. It was curious to see the dread shown by the common lobster to the langouste.
They all were adhering to the sides of the reservoirs as if afraid to encounter their more powerful companions. Quant.i.ties of turbot, also reared for sale, were in one of the cisterns, darting with the greatest rapidity in the water when the keeper threw in pieces of sardines for them to eat. At the end of these cisterns is a building, with every arrangement for the culture of fishes-rows of little troughs, and other vessels, to contain them. Many of the fish are so tame, they came immediately to the keeper on his making a noise in the water with his fingers. Here are fish of every description, and naturalists have every facility of studying their habits. Among others, we saw the graceful little sea-horse or hippocampus, a native of the seas of Brittany as well as of the Mediterranean.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 30. Dolmen. Tregunc.]
From Concarneau to Quimperle is a distance of above eighteen miles. The road runs near the sea, over a large tract of land covered with furze (ajonc), which, in Brittany, grows from five to six feet high, forming a solid impenetrable ma.s.s. Huge blocks of granite are scattered about in every direction, jutting out from among the furze-menhirs, cromlechs, and dolmens-a perfect wilderness of Celtic remains. We drove over an extent of several miles of furze-covered hills and heathy land. Before we reached the village of Tregunc we stopped to see a large dolmen on the side of the road, and further to the right a rocking-stone, twelve feet long and nine feet thick, standing about fifteen feet from the ground, the second largest in Brittany. It is poised by a little projection, like an inverted cone, upon another rock lying half-buried in the ground. The upper block can easily be set in motion by the hand. It is called by the country people ”La pierre aux maris trompes,” and was formerly consulted by husbands to test the fidelity of their wives. Even now the partner of a faithless wife is said to be incapable of giving to the stone the rocking motion it so easily receives from another.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 31. Rocking Stone. Tregunc.]
On the left we pa.s.sed the majestic ruins of the castle of Rustephan, _i. e._ Run, mound, of Stephen, having been built by Stephen Count of Penthievre at the beginning of the twelfth century. It belonged in the thirteenth to Blanche of Castile, the mother of St. Louis. The present edifice dates from the fifteenth. One of the sides remaining has a cylindrical tower with pinnacled doorway, and the windows have stone mullions.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 32. Chateau of Rustephan.]
Pursuing our road through blocks of granite, we descended into the valley of Pontaven, the town of millers, according to the old saying-
”Pont Aven, ville de renom; Quatorze moulins, deux maisons;”
a little port built upon rocks, at the foot of two elevated mountains, over which are scattered ma.s.ses of granite boulders, obstructing the course of the river which bounds over them. The banks are lined with woody slopes; wooden bridges cross the river at intervals; mills are established on the ledges of the rocks on its sides; and the noise of the mills, with that of the sparkling river tumbling through the rocks in waterfalls, keep up a perpetual din. Pontaven is celebrated for the quant.i.ty of its salmon: so much is taken, that it used to be said that the millers fattened their pigs upon this fish, which was literally true, as they took the small salmon, called glesils, in nets (_poches_) for that purpose. Salmon now is very dear. At the mouth of the Pontaven river was a castle, whose proprietor had the privilege of firing upon the fis.h.i.+ng-boats which returned up the river without giving to the castellan their finest fish, which his steward went down to select. Pontaven is seven and a half miles from Bannalec, the nearest railway station. After remaining a few hours we drove on to Quimperle-in Breton, Kemper (confluence) Elle-so called, because it is at the confluence of two rivers, the Elle and Isole:-
”Vous reverrai-je encore, o fleuve de l'Elle, Vous, Izole, ou mon cur est toujours rappelle!
Les eaux sombres de l'Elle, claire ceux de l'Izole; De ces bords enchantes je dirais chaque saule.”
BRIZEUX.
Quimperle is a great resort for fis.h.i.+ng, the Quimperle salmon and trout being renowned throughout Brittany, and even at Paris. This town is beautifully situated, surrounded by high hills, in a valley, watered by these bright rivers, the hills covered with gardens, orchards, the Ursuline, Capucine, and other convents, and crowned by the steeples of the Gothic church of St. Michael. Its princ.i.p.al building is the church of St.
Croix, formerly that of a Benedictine abbey, celebrated for its riches.
The island of Belle-Ile-en-Mer then belonged to it. It is a most singular edifice, built in the eleventh century, after the model of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In 1862 it fell down, but is at present in course of restoration, after its original plan. The old abbey buildings are now occupied by the Prefecture. We were given permission to pa.s.s through the convent garden-the workmen and building materials having blocked up the other entrances-to see the crypt in which is the tomb of Saint Gurloes, first abbot of Quimperle. His effigy, with crosier in hand, his feet resting on a dragon, lies upon a monument, about three feet high, with an opening in the lower part. The saint-Saint Urlose, as the Bretons call him-is invoked princ.i.p.ally for the gout, and persons so afflicted crawl through the hole under the tomb, where, suspended by chains, is an iron hook. They twist a lock of their hair round this hook, and tear it off with violence, hoping to propitiate the saint by this mortification-evidently a remnant of heathen times, when hair was sacrificed to deities or to the memory of departed friends.
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