drive was to St.
Pol de Leon, partly along the bank of the river, passing under the church
of Notre Dame-de-la-Salzette and the convent below of St. Francois. The
tall steeples of St. Pol are seen at a great distance, and looking behind
is the best view of the Mene-Bre, an insulated conical mountain, one of
the Mene-Arre chain, situated near the station of Belle-Isle-Begard. A
chain of mountains runs through the Cotes-du-Nord, and, at the western end
of the department, forks off into two branches which traverse the whole of
Finistere,--the Mene-Arre, or northern chain, and the Montagnes Noires, or
southern.

St. Pol looks like a town of the Middle Ages. "The holy city," as it is
called by the Leonnais, one of the four bishoprics(10) into which Brittany
was divided, comprising the modern districts of Morlaix and Brest. The
Pays de Leon is remarkable for the number of its religious monuments, its
fine churches, its bone-houses, calvaries, way-side crosses, and shrines.
Crosses are set up in every direction, and of every description, from the
plain unpretending simple cross of wood or stone, to the huge crosses
flaunting in green paint, with tears of gold--specimens of the taste of the
maire or priest of the district. No Breton passes the sacred symbol
without kneeling to salute it, and making the sign of the cross--evidence
that the piety of those who first raised them has not degenerated in their
posterity. The country is rich and varied. The Leonnais is tallest of all
the Breton race; his dress is generally black or blue, with a coloured
scarf round his waist, his hair is worn very long, and his broad-brimmed
hat has a silver buckle. He is grave, of a calm confiding faith, which
nothing can shake or alter, and of intense religious feeling. The church
is the place of meeting, where all his business is transacted, all his
aspirations centered. Throughout Brittany the priesthood are low and
ignorant. Like the Irish, the Breton farmer's great ambition is to make
his son a priest. In no part of France are they more uneducated than in
Brittany.

St. Pol is still and melancholy, the grass grows in the streets, the city
looks as if it had not awakened since its palmy days of the fourteenth
century. Its churches, calvaries, cemeteries, all silent as death--

"A deep, still pool in the ocean of life."

Its lively neighbour, Morlaix, offers a strange contrast: its inhabitants
may well say they are three hund