from an elevation had
seemed to her so charming, but into which it was necessary to penetrate
before the dangers and inextricable difficulties of it could be
understood. Round each field, and from time immemorial, the peasants
have piled mud walls, about six feet high, and prismatic in shape;
on the top of which grow chestnuts, oaks and beeches. The walls thus
planted are called hedges (Norman hedges) and the long branches of the
trees sweeping over the pathways arch them. Sunken between these
walls (made of a clay soil) the paths are like the covered ways of a
fortification, and where the granite rock, which in these regions comes
to the surface of the ground, does not make a sort of rugged natural
pavement, they become so impracticable that the smallest vehicles can
only be drawn over them by two pairs of oxen or Breton horses, which
are small but usually vigorous. These by-ways are so swampy that
foot-passengers have gradually by long usage made other paths beside
them on the hedge-banks which are called "rotes"; and these begin and
end with each division into fields. In order to cross from one field to
another it is necessary to climb the clay banks by means of steps which
are often very slippery after a rain.

Travellers have many other obstacles to encounter in these intricate
paths. Thus surrounded, each field is closed by what is called in the
West an _echalier_. That is a trunk or stout branch of a tree, one end
of which, being pierced, is fitted to an upright post which serves as a
pivot on which it turns. One end of the _echalier_ projects far enough
beyond the pivot to hold a weight, and this singular rustic gate, the
post of which rests in a hole made in the bank, is so easy to work that
a child can handle it. Sometimes the peasants economize the stone which
forms the weight by lengthening the trunk or branch beyond the pivot.
This method of enclosure varies with the genius of each proprietor.
Sometimes it consists of a single trunk or branch, both ends of which
are embedded in the bank. In other places it looks like a gate, and is
made of several slim branches placed at regular distances like the steps
of a ladder lying horizontally. The form turns, like the _echalier_, on
a pivot. These "hedges" and _echaliers_ give the region the appearance
of a huge chess-board, each field forming a square, perfectly isolated
from the rest, closed like a fortress and protected by ramparts. The
gate, which is very easy