ANJOU AND BRETAGNE
As one crosses the borderland from Touraine into Anjou, the whole aspect
of things changes. It is as if one went from the era of the Renaissance
back again into the days of the Gothic, not only in respect to
architecture, but history and many of the conditions of every-day life
as well.
Most of the characteristics of Anjou are without their like elsewhere,
and opulent Anjou of ancient France has to-day a departmental etiquette
in many things quite different from that of other sections.
A magnificent agricultural province, it has been further enriched by
liberal proprietors; a land of aristocracy and the church, it has ever
been to the fore in political and ecclesiastical matters; and to-day the
spirit of industry and progress are nowhere more manifest than here in
the ancient province of Anjou.
The Loire itself changes its complexion but little, and its entrance
into Saumur, like its entrance into Tours, is made between banks that
are tinged with the rainbow colours of the growing vine. What hills
there are near by are burrowed, as swallows burrow in a cliff, by the
workers of the vineyards, who make in the rock homes similar to those
below Saumur, in the Vallee du Vendomois, and at Cinq-Mars near Tours.
Anjou has a marked style in architecture, known as Angevin, which few
have properly placed in the gamut of architectural styles which run from
the Byzantine to the Renaissance.
The Romanesque was being supplanted everywhere when the Angevin style
came into being, as a compromise between the heavy, flat-roofed style of
the south and the pointed sky-piercing gables of the north. All Europe
was attempting to shake off the Romanesque influence, which had lasted
until the twelfth century. Germany alone clung to the pure style, and,
it is generally thought, improved it. The Angevin builders developed a
species that was on the borderland between the Romanesque and the
Gothic, though not by any means a mere transition type.
The chief cities of Anjou are not very great or numerous, Angers itself
containing but slightly over fifty thousand souls. Cholet, of thirteen
thousand inhabitants, is an important cloth-manufacturing centre, while
Saumur carries on a great wine trade and was formerly the capital of a
"_petit gouvernement_" of its own, and, like many other cities and towns
of this and neighbouring provinces, was the scene of great strife during
the wars of the Vendee.
In ancient times the _Andecavi_, as the old peoples of the province were
known, shared with the _Turonii_ of Touraine the honour of being the
foremost peoples of western Gaul, though each had special
characteristics peculiarly their own, as indeed they have to-day.
After one passes the junction of the Cher, the Indre, and the Vienne, he
notices no great change in the conduct of the Loire itself. It still
flows in and out among the banks of sand and those little round pebbles
known all along its course, nonchalantly and slowly, though now and then
one fancies that he notes a greater eddy or current than he had observed
before. At Saumur it is still more impressed upon one, while at the
Ponts de Ce--a great strategic spot in days gone by--there is evidence
that at one time or another the Loire must be a raging torrent; and
such it does become periodically, only travellers never seem to see it
when it is in this condition.
When Candes and Montsoreau are passed and one comes under the frowning
walls of Saumur's grim citadel, a sort of provincial Bastille in its
awesomeness, he realizes for the first time that there is, somewhere
below, an outlet to the sea. He cannot smell the salt-laden breezes at
this great distance, but the general appearance of things gives that
impression.
From Tours to Saumur by the right bank of the Loire--one of the most
superb stretches of automobile roadway in the world--lay the road of
which Madame de Sevigne wrote in "Lettre CCXXIV." (to her mother), which
begins: "_Nous arrivons ici, nous avons quitte Tours ce matin._" It was
a good day's journey for those times, whether by _malle-post_ or the
private conveyance which, likely enough, Madame de Sevigne used at the
time (1630). To-day it is a mere morsel to the hungry road-devouring maw
of a twentieth-century automobile. It's almost worth the labour of
making the journey on foot to know the charms of this delightful
river-bank bordered with historic shrines almost without number, and
peopled by a class of peasants as picturesque and gay as the
Neapolitan of romance.
[Illustration: _Chateau de Saumur_]
"_Saumur est, ma foi! une jolie ville_," said a traveller one day at a
_table d'hote_ at Tours. And so indeed it is. Its quays and its squares
lend an air of gaiety to its proud old _hotel de ville_ and its grim
chateau. Old habitations, commodious modern houses, frowning
machicolations, church spires, grand hotels, innumerable cafes, and much
military, all combine in a blend of fascinating interest that one
usually finds only in a great metropolis.
The chief attraction is unquestionably the old chateau. To-day it
stands, as it has always stood, high above the Quai de Limoges, with
scarce a scar on its hardy walls and never a crumbling stone on its
parapet.
The great structure was begun in the eleventh century, replacing an
earlier monument known as the Tour du Tronc. It was completed in the
century following and rebuilt or remodelled in the sixteenth. Outside of
its impressive exterior there is little of interest to remind one of
another day.
To literary pilgrims Saumur suggests the homestead of the father of
Eugenie Grandet, and the _bon-vivant_ reveres it for its soft pleasant
wines. Others worship it for its wonders of architecture, and yet
others fall in love with it because of its altogether delightful
situation.
Below Saumur are the cliff-dwellers, who burrow high in the chalk cliff
and stow themselves away from light and damp like bottles of old wine.
The custom is old and not indigenous to France, but here it is
sufficiently in evidence to be remarked by even the traveller by train.
Here, too, one sees the most remarkable of all the _coiffes_ which are
worn by any of the women along the Loire. This Angevin variety, like
Angevin architecture, is like none of its neighbours north, east, south,
or west.
Students of history will revere Saumur for something more than its
artistic aspect or its wines, for it was a favourite residence of the
Angevin princes and the English kings, as well as being the capital of
the _pape des Huguenots_.
While Nantes is the real metropolis of the Loire, and Angers is
singularly up-to-date and well laid out, neither of these fine cities
have a great thoroughfare to compare with the broad, straight street of
Saumur, which leads from the Gare d'Orleans on the left bank and crosses
the two bridges which span the branches of the Loire, to say nothing of
the island between, and finally merges into the great national highway
which runs south into Poitou.
Fine houses, many, if not most of them, dating from centuries ago, line
the principal streets of the town, which, when one has actually entered
its confines, presents the appearance of being too vast and ample for
its population. And, in truth, so it really is. Its population barely
reaches fifteen thousand souls, whereas it would seem to have the
grandeur and appointments of a city of a hundred thousand. The
revocation of the Edict of Nantes cut its inhabitants down to the extent
of twenty or twenty-five thousand, and it has never recovered from the
blow.
In the neighbourhood of Saumur, for a considerable distance up and down
the Loire, the hills are excavated into dwelling-houses and wine-caves,
producing a most curious aspect. One continuous line of these cliff
villages--like nothing so much as the habitations of the cliff-dwelling
Indians of America--extends from the juncture of the Vienne with the
Loire nearly up to the Ponts de Ce.
The most curious effect of it all is the multitude of openings of
doorways and windows and the uprising of chimney-pots through the chalk
and turf which form the roof-tops of these settlements.
In many of these caves are prepared the famous _vin mousseux_ of
Saumur, of which the greater part is sold as champagne to an
unsuspecting and indifferent public, not by the growers or makers, but
by unscrupulous middlemen.
Saumur, like Angers, is fortunate in its climate, to which is due a
great part of the prosperity of the town, for the "Rome of the
Huguenots" is more prosperous--and who shall not say more content?--than
it ever was in the days of religious or feudal warfare.
Near Saumur is one shrine neglected by English pilgrims which might well
be included in their itineraries. In the Chateau de Moraines at
Dampierre died Margaret of Anjou and Lancaster, Queen of England, as one
reads on a tablet erected at the gateway of this dainty "_petit castel a
tour et creneaux_."
Manoir de la Vignole-Souzay autrefois Dampierre
Asile et derniere demure
de l'heroine de la guerre des deux roses
Marguerite d'Anjou de Lancastre, reine d'Angleterre
La plus malheureuse des reines, des espouses, et des meres
Qui Morut le 25 Aout 1482
Agee de 53 Ans.
The Salvus Murus of the ancients became the Saumur of to-day in the year
948, when the monk Absalom built a monastery here and surrounded it with
a protecting wall. Up to the thirteenth century the city belonged to the
"Angevin kings of Angleterre," as the French historians proudly claim
them.
The city passed finally to the Kings of France, and to them remained
constantly faithful. Under Henri IV. the city was governed by
Duplessis-Mornay, the "_pape des Huguenots_," becoming practically the
metropolis of Protestantism. Up to this time the chief architectural
monument was the chateau, which was commenced in the eleventh century
and which through the next five centuries had been aggrandized and
rebuilt into its present shape.
The church of Notre Dame de Nantilly dates from the twelfth century and
was frequently visited by Louis XI. The oratory formerly made use of by
this monarch to-day contains the baptismal fonts. One of the columns of
the nave has graven upon it the epitaph composed by King Rene of Anjou
for his foster-mother, Dame Thiephanie. Throughout, the church is
beautifully decorated.
The Hotel de Ville may well be called the chief artistic treasure of
Saumur, as the chatteau is its chief historical monument. It is a
delightful _ensemble_ of the best of late Gothic, dating from the
sixteenth century, flanked on its facade by turrets crowned with
_machicoulis_, and lighted by a series of elegant windows _a
croisillons_. Above all is a gracious campanile, in its way as fine as
the belfry of Bruges, to which, from a really artistic standpoint,
rhapsodists have given rather more than its due.
The interior is as elaborate and pleasing as is the outside. In the
Salle des Mariages and Salle du Conseil are fine fifteenth-century
chimneypieces, such as are only found in their perfection on the Loire.
The library, of something over twenty thousand volumes, many of them in
manuscript, is formed in great part from the magnificent collection
formerly at the abbeys of Fontevrault and St. Florent. Doubtless these
old tomes contain a wealth of material from which some future historian
will perhaps construct a new theory of the universe. This in truth may
not be literally so, but it is a fact that there is a vast amount of
contemporary historical information, with regard to the world in
general, which is as yet unearthed, as witness the case of Pompeii
alone, where the area of the discoveries forms but a small part of the
entire buried city.
At Saumur numerous prehistoric and _gallo-romain_ remains are
continually being added to the museum, which is also in the Hotel de
Ville. A recent acquisition--discovered in a neighbouring vineyard--is a
Roman "_trompette_," as it is designated, and a more or less complete
outfit of tools, obviously those of a carpenter.
The notorious Madame de Montespan--"the illustrious penitent," though
the former description answers better--stopped here, in a house
adjoining the Church of St. John, to-day a _maison de retrait_, on her
way to visit her sister, the abbess, at Fontevrault.
From Saumur to Angers the Loire passes an almost continuous series of
historical guide-posts, some in ruins, but many more as proudly
environed as ever.
At Treves-Cunault is a dignified Romanesque church which would add to
the fame of a more popular and better known town. It is not a grand
structure, but it is perfect of its kind, with its crenelated facade and
its sturdy arcaded towers curiously placed midway on the north wall.
Here one first becomes acquainted with _menhirs_ and _dolmens_,
examples of which are to be found in the neighbourhood, not so
remarkable as those of Brittany, but still of the same family.
The Ponts de Ce follow next, still in the midst of vine-land, and
finally appear the twin spires of Angers's unique Cathedral of St.
Maurice. Here one realizes, if not before, that he is in Anjou; no more
is the atmosphere transparent as in Touraine, but something of the grime
of the commercial struggle for life is over all.
Here the Maine joins the Loire, at a little village called La Pointe:
"the Charenton of Angers," it was called by a Paris-loving boulevardier
who once wandered afield.
Much has been written, and much might yet be written, about the famous
Ponts de Ce, which span the Loire and its branches for a distance
considerably over three kilometres. This ancient bridge or bridges
(which, with that at Blois, were at one time, the only bridges across
the Loire below Orleans) formerly consisted of 109 arches, but the
reconstruction of the mid-nineteenth century reduced these to a bare
score.
[Illustration: _The Ponts de Ce_]
As a vantage-point in warfare the Ponts de Ce were ever in contention,
the Gauls, the Romans, the Franks, the Normans, and the English
successively taking possession and defending them against their
opponents. The Ponts de Ce is a weirdly strange and historic town which
has lost none of its importance in a later day, though the famous
_ponts_ are now remade, and their antique arches replaced by more solid,
if less picturesque piers and piling. They span the shallow flow of the
Loire water for three-quarters of a league and produce a homogeneous
effect of antiquity, coupled with the city's three churches and its
chateau overlooking the fortified isle in mid-river, which looks as
though it had not changed since the days when Marie de Medici looked
upon it, as recalled by the great Rubens painting in the Louvre. Since
the beginning of the history of these parts, battles almost without
number have taken place here, as was natural on a spot so strategically
important.
There is a tale of the Vendean wars, connected with the "Roche-de-Murs"
at the Ponts de Ce, to the effect that a battalion, left here to guard
any attack from across the river, was captured by the Vendeans. Many of
the "_Bleus_" refused to surrender, and threw themselves into the river
beneath their feet. Among these was the wife of an officer, to whom the
Vendeans offered life if she surrendered. This was refused, and
precipitately, with her child, she threw herself into the flood beneath.
On the largest isle, that lying between the Louet and the Loire, is one
vast garden or orchard of cherry-trees, which produce a peculiarly juicy
cherry from which large quantities of _guignolet_, a sort of "cherry
brandy," is made. The Angevins will tell you that this was a well-known
refreshment in the middle ages, and was first made by one of those
monkish orders who were so successful in concocting the subtle liquors
of the commerce of to-day.
It is with real regret that one parts from the Ponts de Ce, with La
Fontaine's couplet on his lips:
"... Ce n'est pas petite gloire
Que d'etre pont sur la Loire."
Some one has said that the provinces find nothing to envy in Paris as
far as the transformation of their cities is concerned. This, to a
certain extent, is so, not only in respect to the modernizing of such
grand cities as Lyons, Marseilles, or Lille, but in respect to such
smaller cities as Nantes and Angers, where the improvements, if not on
so magnificent a scale, are at least as momentous to their immediate
environment.
For the most part these second and third class cities are to-day
transformed in exceedingly good taste, and, though many a noble monument
has in the past been sacrificed, to-day the authorities are proceeding
more carefully.
Angers, in spite of its overpowering chateau and its unique cathedral,
is of a modernity and luxuriousness in its present-day aspect which is
all the more remarkable because of the contrast. Formerly the Angevin
capital, from the days of King John up to a much later time Angers had
the reputation of being a town "_plus sombre et plus maussade_" than any
other in the French provinces. In Shakespeare's "King John" one reads of
"black Angers," and so indeed is its aspect to-day, for its roof-tops
are of slate, while many of the houses are built of that material
entirely. In the olden time many of its streets were cut in the slaty
rock, leaving its sombre surface bare to the light of day. One sees
evidences of all this in the massive walls of the great black-banded
castle of Angers, and, altogether, this magpie colouring is one of the
chief characteristics of this grandly historic town.
Both the new and the old town sit proudly on a height crowned by the two
slim spires of the cathedral. In front, the gentle curves of the river
Maine enfold the old houses at the base of the hillside and lap the very
walls of the grim fortress-chateau itself, or did in the days when the
Counts of Anjou held sway, though to-day the river has somewhat receded.
Beyond the ancient ramparts, up the hill, have been erected the
"_quartiers neufs_," with houses all admirably planned and laid out,
with gardens forming a veritable girdle, as did the retaining walls of
other days which surrounded the old chateau and its faubourg. To-day
Angers shares with Nantes the title of metropolis of the west, and the
Loire flows on its ample way between the two in a far more imposing
manner than elsewhere in its course from source to sea.
Angers does not lie exactly at the juncture of the Maine and Loire, but
a little way above, but it has always been considered as one of the
chief Loire cities; and probably many of its visitors do not realize
that it is not on the Loire itself.
The marvellous fairy-book chateau of Angers, with its fourteen
black-striped towers, is just as it was when built by St. Louis, save
that its chess-board towers lack, in most cases, their coiffes, and all
vestiges have disappeared of the _charpente_ which formerly topped
them off.
[Illustration: _Chateau d'Angers_]
Beyond the rocky formation of the banks of the Loire, which crop out
below the juncture of the Maine and the Loire, below Angers, are
Savennieres and La Possoniere, whence come the most famous vintages of
Anjou, which, to the wines of these parts, are what Chateau Margaux and
Chateau Yquem are to the Bordelais, and the Clos Vougeot is to the
Bourguignons.
The peninsula formed by the Loire and the Maine at Angers is the richest
agricultural region in all France, the nurseries and the kitchen-gardens
having made the fortune of this little corner of Anjou.
Angers is the headquarters for nursery-garden stock for the open air, as
Orleans is for ornamental and woodland trees and shrubs.
The trade in living plants and shrubs has grown to very great
proportions since 1848, when an agent went out from here on behalf of
the leading house in the trade and visited America for the purpose of
searching out foreign plants and fruits which could be made to thrive on
French soil.
Both the soil and climate are very favourable for the cultivation of
many hitherto unknown fruits, the neighbourhood of the sea, which, not
far distant, is tempered by the Gulf Stream, having given to Anjou a
lukewarm humidity and a temperature of a remarkable equality.
Some of the nurseries of these parts are enormous establishments, the
Maison Andre Leroy, for example, covering an extent of some six hundred
acres. A catalogue of one of these establishments, located in the
suburbs of Angers, enumerates over four hundred species of pear-trees,
six hundred varieties of apple-trees, one hundred and fifty varieties of
plums, four hundred and seventy-five of grapes, fifteen hundred of
roses, and two hundred and nineteen of rhododendrons.
Each night, or as often as fifty railway wagons are loaded, trains are
despatched from the _gare_ at Angers for all parts. When the
_choux-fleurs_ are finished, then come the _petits pois_, and then the
_artichauts_ and other _legumes_ in favour with the Paris _bon-vivants_.
Near Angers is one of those Caesar's camps which were spread thickly up
and down Gaul and Britain alike. One reaches it by road from Angers,
and, until it dawns upon one that the vast triangle, one of whose
equilateral sides is formed by the Loire, another by the Maine, and the
third by a ridge of land stretching between the two, covers about
fourteen kilometres square, it seems much like any other neck or
peninsula of land lying between two rivers. One hundred thousand of the
Roman legion camped here at one time, which is not so very wonderful
until it is recalled that they lived for months on the resources of this
comparatively restricted area.
Before coming to Nantes, Ancenis and Oudon should claim the attention of
the traveller, though each is not much more than a typically interesting
small town of France, in spite of the memories of the past.
Ancenis has an ancient chateau, remodelled and added to in the
nineteenth century, which possesses some remarkably important
constructive details, the chief of which are a great tower-flanked
doorway and the _corps de logis_, each the work of an Angevin architect,
Jean de Lespine, in the sixteenth century. Within the walls of this
chateau Francois II., Duc de Bretagne, and Louis XI. signed one of the
treaties which finally led up to the union of the Duche de Bretagne with
the Crown of France.
Oudon possesses a fine example of a mediaeval donjon, though it has been
restored in our day.
One does not usually connect Brittany with the Loire except so far as
to recollect that Nantes was a former political and social capital. As a
matter of fact, however, a very considerable proportion of Brittany
belongs to the Loire country.
Anjou of the counts and kings and Bretagne of the dukes and duchesses
embrace the whole of the Loire valley below Saumur, although the
river-bed of the Loire formed no actual boundary. Anjou extended nearly
as far to the southward as it did to the north of the vine-clad banks,
and Bretagne, too, had possession of a vast tract south of Nantes, known
as the Pays de Retz, which bordered upon the Vendee of Poitou.
All the world knows, or should know, that Nantes and St. Nazaire form
one of the great ports of the world, not by any means so great as New
York, London, or Hamburg, nor yet as great as Antwerp, Bordeaux, or
Marseilles, but still a magnificent port which plays a most important
part with the affairs of France and the outside world.
Nantes, la Brette, is tranquil and solid, with the life of the laborious
bourgeois always in the foreground. It is of Bretagne, to which province
it anciently belonged, only so far as it forms the bridge between the
Vendee and the old duchy; literally between two opposing feudal lords
and masters, both of whom were hard to please.
The memoirs of this corner of the province of Bretagne of other days are
strong in such names as the Duchesse Anne, the monk Abelard, the
redoubtable Clisson, the infamous Gilles de Retz, the warrior Lanoue,
surnamed "Bras de Fer," and many others whose names are prominent in
history.
"_Ventre Saint Gris! les Ducs de Bretagne n'etaient pas de petits
compagnons!_" cried Henri Quatre, as he first gazed upon the Chateau de
Nantes. At that time, in 1598, this fortress was defended by seven
curtains, six towers, bastions and caponieres, all protected by a wide
and deep moat, into which poured the rising tide twice with each round
of the clock.
To-day the aspect of this chateau is no less formidable than of yore,
though it has been debased and the moat has disappeared to make room for
a roadway and the railroad.
It was in the chateau of Nantes, the same whose grim walls still
overlook the road by which one reaches the centre of the town from the
inconveniently placed station, that Mazarin had Henri de Gondi, Cardinal
de Retz and co-adjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, imprisoned in 1665,
because of his offensive partisanship. Fouquet, too, after his splendid
downfall, was thrown into the donjon here by Louis XIV.
De Gondi recounts in his "Memoires" how he took advantage of the
inattention of his guards and finally evaded them by letting himself
over the side of the Bastion de Mercoeur by means of a rope smuggled
into him by his friends. The feat does not look a very formidable one
to-day, but then, or in any day, it must have been somewhat of an
adventure for a portly churchman, and the wonder is that it was
performed successfully. At any rate it reads like a real adventure from
the pages of Dumas, who himself made a considerable use of Nantes and
its chateau in his historical romances.
Landais, the minister and favourite of Francois II. of Bretagne, was
arrested here in 1485, in the very chamber of the prince, who delivered
him up with the remark: "_Faites justice, mais souvenez-vous que vous
lui etes redevable de votre charge._"
There is no end of historical incident connected with Nantes's old
fortress-chateau of mediaeval times, and, in one capacity or another, it
has sheltered many names famous in history, from the Kings of France,
from Louis XII. onward, to Madame de Sevigne and the Duchesse de Berry.
Nantes's Place de la Bouffai (which to lovers of Dumas will already be
an old friend) was formerly the site of a chateau contemporary with that
which stands by the waterside. The Chateau de Bouffai was built in 990
by Conan, first Duc de Bretagne, and served as an official residence to
him and many of his successors.
In Nantes's great but imperfect and unfinished Cathedral of St. Pierre
one comes upon a relic that lives long in the memory of those who have
passed before it: the tomb of Francois II., Duc de Bretagne, and
Marguerite de Foix. The cathedral itself is no mean architectural work,
in spite of its imperfections, as one may judge from the following
inscription graven over the sculptured figure of St. Pierre, its patron:
"L'an mil quatre cent trente-quatre,
A my-avril sans moult rabattre:
An portail de cette eglise,
Fut la premiere pierre assise."
Within, the chief attraction is that masterwork of Michel Colombe, the
before-mentioned tomb, which ranks among the world's art-treasures. The
beauty of the emblematic figures which flank the tomb proper, the fine
chiselling of the recumbent effigies themselves, and the general
_ensemble_ is such that the work is bound to appeal, whatever may be
one's opinion of Renaissance sculpture in France. The tomb was brought
here from the old Eglise des Carmes, which had been pillaged and burned
in the Revolution.
The mausoleum was--in its old resting-place--opened in 1727, and a
small, heart-shaped, gold box was found, supposed to have contained the
heart of the Duchesse Anne. The coffer was surmounted by a royal crown
and emblazoned with the order of the Cordeliere, but within was found
nothing but a scapulary. On the circlet of the crown was written in
relief:
"Cueur de vertus orne
Dignement couronne."
And on the box beneath one read:
"En ce petit vaisseau, de fin or pur et munde,
Repose un plus grand cueur que oncque dame eut au monde.
Anne fut le nom d'elle, en France deux fois Royne
* * * * *
Et ceste parte terrestre en grand deuil nos demure.
IX. JANVIER M.V.XIII."
In one respect only has Nantes suffered through the march of time. Its
magnificent Quai de la Fosse has disappeared, a long facade which a
hundred or more years ago was bordered by the palatial dwellings of the
great ship-owners of the Nantes of a former generation. The whole,
immediately facing the river where formerly swung many ships at anchor,
has disappeared entirely to make way for the railway.
[Illustration: _ENVIRONS OF NANTES_]
* * * * *
The islands of the Loire opposite Nantes are an echo of the life of the
metropolis itself. The Ile Feydeau is monumental, the Ile Gloriette
hustling and nervous with "_affaires_," and Prairie-au-Duc busy with
industries of all sorts.
Coueron, below Nantes on the right bank, is sombre with gray walls
surrounding its numberless factories, and chimney-stacks belching forth
clouds of dense smoke. Behind are great walls of chalky-white rock
crowned with verdure. Nearly opposite is the little town of Le Pellerin
graciously seated on the river's bank and marking the lower limit of the
Loire Nantaise.
Another hill, belonging to the domain of Bois-Tillac and La Martiniere,
where was born Fouche, the future Duc d'Otranta, comes to view, and the
basin of the Loire enlarges into the estuary, and all at once one finds
himself in the true "Loire Maritime."
At Martiniere is the mouth of the Canal Maritime a la Loire, which, from
Paimboeuf to Le Pellerin, is used by all craft ascending the river to
Nantes, drawing more than four metres of water.
At the entrance of the Acheneau is the Canal de Buzay, which connects
that stream with the more ambitious Loire, and makes of the Lac de Grand
Lieu a public domain, instead of a private property as claimed by the
"marquis" who holds in terror all who would fish or shoot over its
waters. All this immediate region formerly belonged to the monks of the
ancient Abbey of Buzay, and it was they who originally cut the waterway
through to the Loire. About half-way in its length are the ruins of the
ancient monastery, clustered about the tower of its old church. It is a
most romantically sad monument, and for that very reason its grouping,
on the bank of the busy canal, suggests in a most impressive manner the
passing of all great works.
The prosperity of Nantes as a deep-sea port is of long standing, but
recent improvements have increased all this to a hitherto unthought-of
extent. Progress has been continuous, and now Nantes has become, like
Rouen, a great deep-water port, one of the important seaports of France,
the realization of a hope ever latent in the breast of the Nantais since
the days and disasters of the Edict and its revocation.
Below Nantes, in the actual "Loire Maritime," the aspect of all things
changes and the green and luxuriant banks give way to sand-dunes and
flat, marshy stretches, as salty as the sea itself. This gives rise to a
very considerable development of the salt industry which at Bourg de
Batz is the principal, if not the sole, means of livelihood.
St. Nazaire, the real deep-water port of Nantes, dates from the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it was known as Port Nazaire. It
is a progressive and up-to-date seaport of some thirty-five thousand
souls, but it has no appeal for the tourist unless he be a lover of
great smoky steamships and all the paraphernalia of longshore life.
Pornichet, a "_station de bains de mer tres frequentee_;" Batz, with its
salt-works; Le Croisic, with its curious waterside church, and the old
walled town of Guerande bring one to the mouth of the Loire. The rest is
the billowy western ocean whose ebb and flow brings fresh breezes and
tides to the great cities of the estuary and makes possible that
prosperity with which they are so amply endowed.