pump and reflected upon my misery. I had resigned myself to water, when a woman carrying a sickle opened the door of one of the inns. Some friendly bird must have told her of my thirst and weariness perhaps the merry little quail that I heard as I came up from the plain crying "To-whit! To-whit!" That blessed auberge actually contained bottled beer. And the room was so cool that butter would not have melted in it. These southern houses have such thick stone walls that they have the double advantage of being warm in winter and delightfully cool in summer. I had some difficulty in resisting the temptation to stop the night at this inn, but I did resist it, and was again on the road to St. Affrique before the heat of the day had passed. Another toilsome trudge, during which I met an English threshing machine being dragged along by bullocks, and the familiar words upon it made me feel for a while quite at home. The apparition, however, gave me a shock, for the antique flail is still the instrument commonly used for threshing, in the southern provinces of France. At a village called Moulin, lying in a rich and beautiful valley, I met the Sorgues, one of the larger tributaries of the Tarn, and for the rest of my journey I had the companionship of a charming stream. Evening came on, and the fiery blue above me grew soft and rosy. Rosy, too, were the cornfields, where bands of men and women, fifteen or twenty together, were reaping gaily, for the heat of the day was gone, the freshness of the twilight had come, and the fragrance of the valley was unloosened. I had left the last group of reapers behind, and the silence of the dusk was broken only by the tree crickets, and the rapids of the little river, when a woman passed me on the road and murmured "Adicias!" (God be with you), "Adicias!" I replied, and then I was again alone. Presently there was a jangling of bells behind, and I was soon overtaken by three horses and a crowded diligence. The sound of the bells grew fainter, and fainter, and once more I was alone with the summer night. The stars began to shine, and the river was lost in the mystery of shadow, save where a sunken rock made the water gleam white, and awoke the peace with a cry of trouble. It was late when I reached St. Affrique, and I believe no tramp arrived at his bourne that night more weary than I, for I had been walking most of the day in the burning sun. But although I lay down like a jaded horse, I was too feverish to sleep. To make matters worse, there was a cock in the yard just underneath my window, and the fiendish creature considered it his duty to crow every two or three minutes after the stroke of midnight. How well did I then enter into the feelings of a man I knew who, under similar provocation, got up from his bed, and taking a carving knife from the kitchen, quietly and deftly cut off the cock's head before the astonished bird had time to protest. Having stopped the crowing and assured himself that it would not begin again, he went back to bed and slept the sleep of the innocent. I was out early the next morning, looking at the extraordinary astronomical dials of the parish church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls. All the straight lines, curves and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that their ignorance is hopeless. Such a display of science must be like wizard symbolism to the common people. The dials are exceedingly curious, and there are some really astonishing calculations, as, for instance, a table showing the "num ber of souls that have appeared before the Tribunal of God." Near a great sundial are these solemn words: "Sol et luna faciunt quæ precepta sunt eis; nos autem pergrimamur a Domino." The church itself is one of the most fantastically ugly structures imaginable. All possible tricks of style and taste appear to have been played upon it. It is a jumble of heavy Gothic and Italian, and the apse is twisted out of line with the nave, in which respect, however, it is like the Cathedral of Quimper. As I left the church a funeral procession approached, women carrying palls by the four corners a little in front of the coffin, according to the custom of the country when the dead person is of their own sex. When a man dies, members of his sex carry the palls. St. Affrique is a small town of about seven thousand inhabitants, lying in a warm valley and surrounded by high hills, the sides of which were once covered with luxuriant vineyards. These slopes, arid, barren, and sun-scorched, are perfectly suited to the cultivation of the vine, the fig, and the almond; but the elevation is still too great for the olive. As I toiled up the side of the valley in the direction of Millau, I noticed the Rocher de Caylus, a large reddish and somewhat fantastically shaped block of oolitic rock, perched on the hill above the vineyards. Here the lower formation was schistous, the upper calcareous. The sun was intensely hot, but there was the shade of walnut-trees, which I took advantage of, although it is said to be poisonous, like that of the oleander. When I reached the plateau there was no shade whatever, baneful or beneficent. If there was ever any forest here all vestige of it has disappeared. I was on the border of the Causse de Larzac, one of the highest, most extensive and savagely barren of the calcareous deserts which separate the rivers in this part of France. Not a drop of water save what may have been collected in tanks for the use of sheep, and the few human beings who eke out an existence there, is to be found upon them. Swept by freezing winds in winter and burnt by a torrid sun in summer, their climate is as harsh as the soil is ungenerous. But although I was sun-broiled upon this causse, I was interested at every step by the flowers that I found there. Dry, chaffy, or prickly plants, corresponding in their nature to the aridity and asperity of the land, were peculiarly at home upon the undulating stoniness. The most beautiful flower then blooming was that of the catananche, which has won its poetic French name, cupidon bleu, by the brilliant color of its blossom. Multitudes of yellow everlastings also decked the solitude. On reaching the highest ground the crests of the bare Cevennes were seen against the cloudless sky to the south. A little to the east, beyond the valley of the Cernon, which I intended to cross, were high hills or cliffs, treeless and sterile, with hard-cut angular sides, terminating upwards in vertical walls of naked stone. These were the buttresses of the Causse de Larzac. The lower sides of some of the hills were blue with lias marl, and wherever they were steep not a blade of grass grew. Having descended to the valley, I was soon climbing towards Roquefort by the flanks of those melancholy hills which seemed to express the hopelessness of nature after ages of effort to overcome some evil power. And yet the tinkling of innumerable sheep-bells told that even here men had found a way of earning their bread. I saw the flocks moving high above me where all was wastefulness and rockiness, and heard the voices of the shepherds. There were the Roquefort sheep whose milk, converted into cheese of the first quality, is sent into distant countries whose people little imagine that its constituents are drawn from a desert where there is little else but stones. I came in view of the village, clinging as it seemed to the steep at the base of a huge bastion of stark jurassic rock. Facing it was another barren hill, and in the valley beneath were mamelons of dark clay and stones partly conquered by the great broom and burning with its flame of gold. When I reached the village I felt that I had earned a rest. Cheese, which has been the fortune of Roquefort, has destroyed its picturesqueness. It has brought speculators there who have raised great, ugly, square buildings of dazzling whiteness in harsh contrast with the character and sombre tone of the old houses. Although the place is so small that it consists of only one street and a few alleys, the more ancient dwell. ings are remarkable for their height. It is surprising to see in a village lost among the sterile hills houses three stories high. The fact that there is only a ledge on which to build must be the explanation. What is most curious in the place is the cellars. Before the cheese became an important article of commerce these were natural caverns, such as are everywhere to be found in this calcareous formation; but now they are really cellars that have been excavated to such a depth in the rock that they are to be seen in as many as five stages, where long rows of cheeses are stacked one over the other. The virtue of these cellars from the cheese-making point of view is their dryness and their scarcely varying temperature of about 8° centigrade summer and winter. But the demand for Roquefort cheese has become so great that trickery now plays a part in the ripening process. The peasants have learnt that "time is money," and they have found that bread-crumbs mixed with the curd cause those green streaks of mouldiness, which denote that the cheese is fit for the market, to appear much more readily than was formerly the case when it was left to do the best it could for itself with the aid of a subterranean atmosphere. This is not exactly cheating; it is com mercial enterprise, the result of competi tion and other circumstances too strong for poor human nature. In cheese-making, bread-crumbs are found to be a cheap substitute for time, and it is said that those who have taken to beer-brewing in this region have found that box, which here is the commonest of shrubs, is a cheap substitute for hops. The notion ק. that brass pins are stuck into Roquefort | sunshine, then I met the Tarn again and Having remained at Roquefort long enough to see all that was needful, to lunch, and to be overcharged commercial enterprise is very infectious I turned my back upon it and scrambled down a stony path to the bottom of the valley where the Cernon now a mere thread of a stream curled and sparkled in the middle of its wide channel, the yellow flowers and pale green leaves of the horned poppy basking upon the_rocky banks. Following it down to the Tarn I came to the village of St. Rome de Cernon, where the houses of dark grey stone, built on a hillside, are overtopped by the round tower of a small medieval fortress which has been patched up and put to some modern use. I thought the people very ill-favored by nature here, but perhaps they are not more so than others in the district. The harshness of nature is strongly reflected in all faces. Having passed a man on the bank of the stream washing his linen presumably his own with bare arms, sinewy and hairy like a gorilla's, I was again in the open country; but instead of following donkey-paths and sheep-tracks I was upon the dusty highroad. Well, even a route nationale, however hot and dusty, so that it be not too straight, has its advantages, which are felt after you have been walking an uncertain number of miles over a very rough country, trusting to luck to lead you where you wished to go. The feeling that you may at length step out freely and not worry yourself with a map and compass is a kind of pleasure which, like all others, is only so by the force of contrast and the charm of variety. I knew that I could now tramp along this road without troubling myself about anything, and that I should reach Millau sooner or later. It was really very hot; ideal sunstroke weather, verging on 90° in the shade; but I had become hardened to it, and was as dry as a smoked herring. For miles I saw no human being and heard no sound of life except the shrilling of grasshoppers and the more strident song of the cicades in the trees. By and by houses showed themselves, and I came to the village of St. Georges beside the bright little Cernon, but surrounded by wasteful, desolate hills, one of which, shaped like a cone, reared its yellow, rocky summit far towards the blue solitude of the dazzling sky. I passed by little gardens where great hollyhocks flamed in the afternoon I stopped in Millau (sometimes spelt Milhau) more than a day in order to rest and to ramble-moderately. Although the town, with its sixteen thousand inhabitants, is the most populous in the department of the Aveyron, it is so remote from all large centres and currents of human movement that very little French is spoken there. And this French is about on a par with the English of the Sheffield grinders. In the better-class families an effort now is made to keep patois out of doors for the sake of the children; but there is scarcely a middle-aged native to whom it is not the mother tongue. The common dialect is not quite the same throughout Guienne and Languedoc; but the local variations are much less marked than one would expect, considering that the langue d'oc has been virtually abandoned as a literary vehicle for centuries. Curiously enough, the word oc (yes), which was once the most convenient sound to distinguish the dialect from that of the northern half of France, has fallen completely into disuse; so much so, that all the Languedocians whom I questioned on the subject did not know what it meant, until at length an educated one told me that the form was very old and had long died out. All these people can understand Spanish when spoken slowly. Many can catch your meaning when you speak to them in French, but reply in patois. I had grown accustomed, although not reconciled, to this manner of conversing with peasants, but I was surprised to find on entering a shop at Millau that neither the man nor his wife there could reply to me in French. This town lies in the bottom of a basin; some of the high hills, especially those on the east, showing savage escarpments with towering masses of yellow or reddish rock at the summits. The climate of the valley is delightful in winter, but sultry and enervating in summer. It is so protected from the winds that the mulberry flourishes there; and countless almondtrees rise above the vines on the burning hillsides. Millau presents a good deal of interest to the archæologist. Very noteworthy is the ancient market-place, where the first and upper stories project far over the paving and are supported by a colonnade. Some of the columns, with elaborately carved Romanesque capitals, date from the twelfth century, and look ready to fall into fragments. At one end of the square can manage to live by the sweat of his is an immense modern crucifix - a sure brow. Many of these peasant proprietors sign that the civic authorities do not yet can barely keep body and soul together; share the views of the municipal council- but when they lie down upon their lors of Paris in regard to religious em- wretched beds at night, they feel thankful blems. Protestants, however, are numer- that the roof that covers them, and the soil ous at Millau as well as at St. Affrique, that supports them, are their own. The both towns having been important centres wind may howl about the eaves, and the of Calvinism at the time of the Revocation snow may drift against the wall, but they of the Fdict of Nantes; and after the know that the one will calm down, and that forced emigration many of the inhabitants the other will melt, and that life will go on must have strongly sympathized with their as before-hard, back-breaking, grudging persecuted neighbors, the Camisards. even the dark bread, but secure and indeNevertheless the department of the Avey- pendent. Waiting to be hired by another ron, taken in its entirety, is now one of man almost like a beast of burden - what the most fervently Catholic in France. a trial is here for pride! Happily for the human race, pride, although it springs naturally in the breast of man, only becomes luxuriant with cultivation. The poor laborer does not feel it unless his instinctive sense of justice has been outraged. EDWARD HARRISON BARKER. The church is Romanesque with a marked Byzantine tendency. It has an elegant apse decorated in good taste; but the edifice having received various patchings and decorations at the time of the Renaissance, the uniformity of style has been spoilt. The most striking architectural feature of the town is a high Gothic belfry of octagonal form with a massive square tower for its base. In the Middle Ages the government of this town was vested in six consuls who received twenty gold florins a year as salary, and also a new robe of red and black cloth with a hood. In 1341 they furnished forty men-of-arms for the war against the English, but the place was given up to Chandos in 1362. The rising of 1369 delivered the burghers again from the British power, but for twenty-two years they were continually fighting with the English companies. The evening before I left Millau I strolled into the little square where the great crucifix stands. I found it densely crowded. Three or four hundred men were there, each wearing a blouse' and carrying a sickle with a bit of osier laid upon the sharp edge of the blade along its whole length, and firmly tied. All these harvesters were waiting to be hired for the following week. They belonged to a class much less numerous in France than in England the agricultural laborers who have no direct interest in the soil that they help to cultivate, and the crops that they help to gather in. I have often met them on the dusty roads, frequently walking. with bare feet, carrying the implements of their husbandry and a little bundle of clothes. It must be very hard to ask for work from farm to farm. I can enter fully into the attachment of the French peasant to his bit of land which, although it may yield him little more than his black bread, cannot be taken from him so long as he "DEATH WEEK" IN RURAL RUSSIA. "DEATH WEEK," the "Smartna Nedelya" of the Slavonic peoples, marks the end of winter in rural Russia. It is kept during the last seven days of March, and is a survival pure and simple of early paganism. In the old Slavonic mythology, as in the minds of the mass of untaught Russians nowadays, the idea of Death and Winter is closely associated; and the ceremonies proper to the "Death Week," from the sacrifice to the "Vodyanoi," or WaterSpirit, with which it begins, to the driv ing-out and drowning of Death, with which it terminates, are based upon the superstition that was formerly universal in northern Europe. That writers on Russia and the Russians have given no account of the "Death-Week" celebration, is due, no doubt, to the fact that it takes place at a time of year when travellers are rarely tempted to visit Russia, and is confined to rural districts out of the beaten track, which are unlikely to attract foreigners. When the ice begins to break on the water, winter is considered over in Russia; and the breaking of the ice is due the Russian peasants hold to the "Vodyanoi," or Water-Spirit, who has his abode in the rivers and streams. He has slept over the winter, they say, and awakes hungry and angry, with the first rays of the returning sun. He bursts the congealed covering of the water, sends the ice-floes | lage, headed by the "Lyalya," stopping at drifting, drives the fish from their haunts, certain dwellings settled upon beforehand. and causes the streams to overflow. In At the first of the houses where a halt is 2 the last week of March, therefore, before made, a cake prepared over night is the ice begins to break, the peasants in handed to the party. At the next, they rural Russia start the "Death-Week" cel-receive a basket containing as many eggs ebration by preparing a sacrifice for the as there are girls in the procession, and "Vodyanoi," so that he shall not be kept one over. At the third house they get a 2 waiting when he awakes from his winter measure of mixed grain. Preceded still sleep. They meet together in the village by the "Lyalya," they leave the village, where the celebration is to take place, and stopping, however, at the last house, subscribe a sum of money for the purchase where an egg is taken from the basketful of a young horse. The animal must not and thrown clear over the roof. The be a gift, but bought for money; it must party now make the round of the fields not be bargained for, and no one person belonging to the village, each one dipping must contribute more than another to the her hand into the grain-measure, and amount required. The horse is taken to strewing a few of the seeds over the a stable specially reserved for the gift to ground. This is supposed to ensure ferthe "Vodyanoi," and fed for three days tility in the coming year. When all the on bread and oil-cake. On the fourth day, fields have been traversed, the procession at midnight, the horse is taken from the returns to the spot whence a start was stall, and conducted to the nearest river made; the cake and eggs are divided, and or stream, the villagers following in a each girl returns to her home. The egg body. The mane is decorated with red and cake must not be eaten, but are preribbons, the head smeared with honey, the served as charms against all sorts of mislegs are tied together, and a couple of mill- fortune. The young women who have stones secured to the neck. Then a hole taken part in the procession can, if they is made in the ice, and the horse thrown are curious that way, ascertain on the into the water, a living sacrifice to the night of the "Lyalya" whether they are "Vodyanoi." Fisher-folk in the Archan- likely to marry in the course of the next gel district pour a quantity of fat into the twelve months, and if so, in which month. water instead of throwing in a horse; and They must procure an onion, and take off the millers of the Ukraine cast the horse's twelve layers, and put them in a row behead into the river, and not the living tween the piece of the "Lyalya" cake and animal. After appeasing the Water- the egg. Each layer of onion represents Spirit, the House-Spirit, the "Domovoi," a month, and if one of them be quite dry calls for a sacrifice. He awakes on the by the morning, it is a sign of marriage, night of March 25th, and will only wait and the order in which the piece stands three days for his offering. So on return- shows the month in which the marriage ing from the riverside, the villagers pre- will take place. pare a suitable gift for him. They take a fat black pig, kill it, and cut it into as many pieces as there are residents in the place. Each resident receives one piece, which he straightway buries under the doorstep at the entrance to his house. In some parts, it is said, the country folk bury a few eggs beneath the threshold of the dwelling to propitiate the "Domovoi." On the following day, the ceremony known as the "Lyalya " takes place. The "Lyalya" is not the Goddess of Spring, but a personification of the season. The ceremony of the day is known as the Lyalynik," and only young unmarried girls take part in it. They all meet in a field outside the village, and select one who is to be the "Lyalya." She is attired in a white robe, with a crown of green stuff on her head, and staff, decorated with green leaves, in her hands. Barefooted the girls then perambulate the vil All is now ready for the ceremony of driving out Death, from which the week derives its designation. Early in the morning the residents of the village, men, women, and children, meet in the marketplace. Some bring packages of rags and old clothes, others bundles of straw, long sticks, and cross-pieces. Out of these, three or four expert hands, accustomed to the work, manufacture a dummy figure resembling an old woman. The face is painted and made as hideous as possible. This is the figure of Death Death, ac cording to Slavonic mythology, being a woman. The dummy is perched aloft upon a long pole, which is given to a sturdy peasant, who is dressed out in what is left of the rags and tatters used in the construction of the figure. The men then arm themselves with whips and whistles, the women and children bring pots and pans and iron kettles-any utensils, in |