ofs that slope down almost to ground level. The roaming
flocks, lying in the salt grass or making their way as they nuzzle
around the shepherd's red cape, don't disturb the landscape's regular
flow, dwarfed, as they are, by the endless space of blue horizons and
open sky. Just as a rough sea is still the sea, so a sense of solitude
and immensity emerges, heightened by the relentless mistral, which,
with its powerful breath, seems to flatten yet enlarge the landscape.
Everything bows down before it. The smallest shrubs bear the imprint of
its passage, and stay twisted and bent over southwards in an attitude
of perpetual flight....

II

THE SHACK.

The roof and walls consist of dried, yellowing, reeds. This is the
shack, which is to be our meeting place for the hunt. A not untypical
house of the Camargue, it has a single, vast, high room with no window,
getting its daylight through a glass door kept fully shuttered at
night. All along the huge, rendered, whitewashed walls, the gun-rack
waits for the rifles, the game bags, and the wading boots. At the back,
five or six bunks are placed round an actual boat mast which is stepped
into the soil and reaches the roof which it supports. During the night,
while the mistral is blowing and the house is creaking everywhere, the
distant sea seems nearer than it is, its sound carried by the
freshening wind, and gives us the impression of being in a boat's cabin.

In the afternoon, the shack is especially charming. Throughout our
beautiful, southern winter days, I enjoy being alone by the tall
mantelpiece, while several twigs of tamarisk smoke away in the hearth.
The howling mistral or tramontana makes the doors bang, the reeds
scream, and a range of noises that make the great, natural clamour all
around. The rays of the winter sun gather and are then scattered by the
fierce wind. Great shadows race around under a perfect blue sky. The
light comes in flashes, and the noise in crashes, and the flock's bells
are suddenly heard, then lost in the wind, only to emerge again under
the rattling door like a charming refrain.... Twilight, just before the
hunters come back, is the most exquisite time of day. By then the wind
has moderated. I go out for a moment; the great red sun, at peace at
last, goes down in flames, but without heat. Night falls and brushes
you with its damp, black wing as it passes over. Somewhere, at ground
level, there is a bang, a flash, as the red star of a rifle