green pastures,
glimpses are caught through the trees of the red-tiled town.

Now that suitable accommodation is provided for stray visitors,
Hythe, with its clean beach, its parade that will presently join
hands with Sandgate, its excellent bathing, and its bracing air,
may look to take high rank among watering places suburban to
London. But there are greater charms even than these in the
immediate neighbourhood. With some knowledge of English watering
places, I solemnly declare that none is set in a country of such
beauty as is spread behind Hythe. Unlike the neighbourhood of
most watering places, the country immediately at the back of the
town is hilly and well wooded. Long shady roads lead past blooming
gardens or through rich farms, till they end in some sleepy village
or hamlet, the world forgetting, by the world forgot. In late July
the country is perfect in its loveliness. The fields and woods are
not so flowery as in May, though by way of compensation the gardens
are rich in roses. Still there are sufficient wild flowers to
gladden the eye wherever it turns. From the hedgerows big white
convolvulus stare with wonder-wide eyes, the honeysuckle is out,
the wild geranium blooms in the long grass, the blackberry bushes
are in full flower, and the poppies blaze forth in great clusters
at every turn of the road. The corn is only just beginning to turn
a faint yellow, but the haymakers are at work, and every breath of
the joyous wind carries the sweet scent of hay.

CHAPTER VIII.

OYSTERS AND ARCACHON.

If the name had not been appropriated elsewhere, Arcachon might
well be called the Salt Lake City. It lies on the south shore of
a basin sixty-eight miles in circumference, into which, through a
narrow opening, the Bay of Biscay rolls its illimitable waters.
Little more than thirty years ago the town was represented by half
a dozen huts inhabited by fishermen. It was a terribly lonely place,
with the smooth lake in front of it, the Atlantic thundering on the
dunes beyond, and in the rear the melancholy desert of sand known as
the Landes.

The Landes is peopled by a strange race, of whom the traveller
speeding along the railway to-day may catch occasional glimpses.
Early in the century the department was literally a sandy plain,
about as productive as Sahara, and in the summer time nearly as hot.
But folks must live, and they exist on the Landes, picking up a
scanty living, and occasionally dying for lack of