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.

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.

FISHING-BOATS, CONCARNEAU