HUELGOAT
To reach Huelgoat one must take the hotel omnibus from the
railway-station, and wind up and up for about an hour. Then you reach
the village. The scenery is mountainous, and quite grand for Brittany.
The aspect of this country is extraordinarily varied. On the way to
Huelgoat one passes little ribbon-like rivers with bridges and
miniature waterfalls, and hills covered by bracken and heather. The
air is bracing.
At the top of one of the hills the carriage was stopped, and a chubby
boy in a red beré and sabots presented himself at the door, with the
request that we should descend and see the 'goffre.' Not knowing what
the 'goffre' might be, we followed our imperious guide down a
precipitous path, all mud and slippery rocks, with scarcely sufficient
foothold. At length we found ourselves in a dark wood, with mysterious
sounds of rushing water all about us. When our eyes became accustomed
to the darkness we discovered that this proceeded from a body of
water which rushed, dark-brown and angry-looking, down the rocks, and
fell foaming, amber-coloured, into a great black hole. Plucking at our
skirts, the child drew us to the edge, whispering mysteriously, as he
pointed downwards, 'C'est la maison du diable.' A few planks had been
lightly placed across the yawning abyss, and over the rude bridge the
peasants passed cheerfully on their way to work or from
it--woodcutters with great boughs of trees on their shoulders, and
millers with sacks of flour. One shuddered to think what might happen
if a sack or a bough were to fall and a man were to lose his balance.
Even the child admitted that the place was _un peu dangereux_, and led
us rapidly up the muddy path to the road. There we found to our
astonishment that the carriage had gone on to the hotel. As my mother
is not a good walker and dislikes insecure places and climbing of any
kind, we felt rather hopeless; but the child assured us that the
distance was not great. He seemed rather disgusted at our feebleness
and hesitation. Without another word, he crossed the road and dived
into a forest, leaving us to follow as best we might. Soon we were in
one of the most beautiful woods imaginable, among long, slim
pines, of which you could see only the silver stems, unless you gazed
upwards, when the vivid green of the leaves against the sky was almost
too crude in its brilliancy. The path was covered with yellow
pine-needles, which, in parts where the sun lit upon them through the
trees, shone as pure gold. On either side grew bracken, salmon, and
red, and tawny-yellow; here and there were spots of still more vivid
colour, formed by toadstools which had been changed by the sun to
brightest vermilion and orange. I have never seen anything more
beautiful than this combination--the forest of slim purple stems, the
bracken, the golden path, and, looking up, the vivid green of the
trees and the blue of the sky. The child led us on through the wood,
never deigning to address a word to us, his hands in his pockets, and
his beré pulled over his eyes. Sometimes the path descended steeply;
sometimes it was a hard pull uphill, and we were forced to stop for
breath. Always the merciless child went on, until my mother almost
sobbed and declared that this was not the right way to the hotel. Now
and then we emerged into a more open space, where there were huge
rocks and boulders half-covered with moss and ivy, some as much as
twenty feet high, like playthings of giants thrown hither and thither
carelessly one on the top of the other. Over some of these, slippery
and worn almost smooth, we had to cross for miles until we reached the
hotel, tired.
[Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE, HUELGOAT]
Luncheon was a strange meal. No one spoke: there was silence all the
time. About thirty people were seated at a long table, all lodgers in
the hotel; but they were mute. Two young persons of the bourgeois
class, out for their yearly holiday, came in rather late, and stopped
on the threshold dumbfounded at sight of the silent crowd, for French
people habitually make a great deal of noise and clatter at their
meals. They sat opposite to us, and spent an embarrassed time.
When you visit Huelgoat you are told that the great and only thing to
do is to take an excursion to St. Herbot. This all the up-to-date
guide-books will tell you with _empressement_. But my advice to you
is--'Don't!' Following the instructions of Messrs. Cook, we took a
carriage to St. Herbot. It was a very long and uninteresting drive
through sombre scenery, and when we arrived there was only a very
mediocre small church to be seen. The peasants begged us to visit the
grand cascade; our driver almost went down on his bended knees to
implore us to view the cascade. We would have no cascades. Cascades
such as one sees in Brittany, small and insignificant affairs, bored
us; we had visited them by the score. The driver was terribly
disappointed; tears stood in his eyes. He had expected time for a
drink. The peasants had anticipated liberal tips for showing us the
view. They all swore in the Breton tongue. Our charioteer drove us
home, at break-neck speed, over the most uneven and worst places he
could discover on the road.
[Illustration: FISHING-BOATS, CONCARNEAU]
[Illustration: AT THE FOUNTAIN, CONCARNEAU]