CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
WANDERINGS ROUND ST VALERY.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
SOME ANIMAL ENEMIES OF MAN.
MY JOURNEY TO BRIGHTON.
THE PROPER THING.
INSTANCES OF LONGEVITY.
DREAMLAND—A SONNET.
No. 751.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1878.
WANDERINGS ROUND ST VALERY.
Should there be any one who wishes to spend afew weeks in a quiet French watering-place notfar from the English coast, let him try St Valery.Here he will not find the fashion and gaiety ofTrouville, requiring a dozen new costumes for hiswife in as many days, nor the picturesque sceneryof Biarritz and the Pyrenees. Yet the flat plainsof Picardy have their charms, and there is muchto interest the archæologist. This is the classicground of the troubadours. There are greatmemories of heroic deeds in the middle ages, andsome of the finest monuments of religious zeal.Rivers flow quietly through narrow valleys, plantedwith willows and poplars, often enlarging intosmall lakes, where the water-lily spreads its broadleaves and queenly flowers.
Wandering on the downs near the sea, thescenery is sad, but offers a grand and severe beautyof its own. Nothing is there to recall the presenceof man; it is a desert, with the eternal murmur ofthe ocean and the ever-changing aspects of theseason. Animals and birds abound in these solitudes;rabbits swarm in their burrows to such adegree that fourteen hundred have been takenfrom one spot at the same time. The fishing-hawkcomes to seek its food in the finny tribes that riseto the surface of the water; a species of wild-fowlintrudes into the rabbit’s burrow and there buildsher nest; the sea-gull deposits her eggs on the barerock; the curlew mingles her plaintive cry with theharsher note of the heron. In the cold days ofwinter the swan, the eider-duck, the wild-goose,driven from the northern seas by the ice, takerefuge on the sands left bare at low-water. Sometimes,during the prevalence of east wind, rareforeign birds are driven to the shores; and inthe marshes, lapwings, snipes, and water-fowlabound. Capital ground this, for the ornithologistand wild-fowler.
St Valery itself, situated on the river Sommeand occupying an important military position,suffered most cruelly in the wars of the middleages. Its old walls have seen the inhabitantsslaughtered and the fleets burned twenty times;English, Burgundians, and Spaniards have helpedto level it to the dust; yet the brave little townhas ris