quantities of barrels. I asked what was in them.
Salt, they told me, for the herring-boats which are starting these days.
Nets, coils of ropes, big sails, baskets, boxes, odd bits of iron, some
anchors--one has rather to pick one's way. An automobile has been
standing there for three or four days. I asked if that was going to
Iceland on a trawler, but the man answered quite simply, "Oh, no,
Madame, what should we do with an automobile in a fishing-boat. It
belongs to the owner of one of the ships, and has been here en panne
waiting till he can have it repaired."

We went one evening to the Casino to see a "bal des matelottes." It was
a curious sight--a band playing on a raised stand--a broad space cleared
all round it and lots of people dancing. The great feature, of course,
was the matelottes. Their costumes were very effective--they all wore
short, very full skirts, different coloured jackets, short, with a belt,
very good stout shoes and stockings, and their white frilled caps. They
always danced together (very rarely with a man--it is not etiquette for
them to dance with any man when their husbands or lovers are at sea),
their hands on each other's shoulders. They dance perfectly well and
keep excellent time and, I suppose, enjoy themselves, but they look very
solemn going round and round until the music stops. Their feet and
ankles are usually small. I heard an explanation the other day of their
dark skins, clean cut features, and small feet. They are of Portuguese
origin. The first foreign sailors who came to France were Portuguese.
Many of them remained, married French girls, and that accounts for that
peculiar type in their descendants which is very different from the look
of the Frenchwoman in general. There are one or two villages in Brittany
where the women have the same colouring and features, and there also
Portuguese sailors had remained and married, and one still hears some
Portuguese names--Jose, Manuel--and among the women some Annunziatas,
Carmelas, etc. We had a house in Brittany one summer and our kitchen
maid was called Dolores.

CAP GRIS NEZ.

We made a lovely excursion one day to Cap Gris Nez--just at the end of a
wild bit of coast about twenty-five kilometres from Boulogne. The road
was enchanting on the top of the cliff all along the sea. We passed
through Vimereux, a small bathing-place four or five miles from
Boulogne, and one or two other villages, then went through a wild
desolate trac