TWO SUMMERS IN GUYENITE.* STANDING in Auvergne and looking south,
we may say roughly that the ground travelled over by Mr. Barker in his last book, Wanderings by Southern Waters, lies low down to our left, and the scene of his present book rather higher up to our right. In other words, one book deals with Eastern, the other with Western Aquitaine ; and all through the country described in both books, we follow in the steps of English conquerors of many centuries ago, the traditions of whose evil doings, however, are still handed down among a population that in many ways has stood still, — quite curiously still, when one thinks of France's claim to be the foremost among civilised nations. The study of these traces of English occupation is one of the many fresh and interesting features of Mr. Barker's books. From the valley of the Lot to that of the Dordogne he follows them, and ends with a vivid description, helped by the natural features of the scene, of Talbot's defeat and death at Castillon, which put an end to the English dominion in Southern France.
It is indeed not difficult to understand why the English should have clung obstinately to such a province as Aquitaine, —the name of Guyenne seems to have been given to this part of France later. This rich country with its southern climate not only "brings forth all the best fruits of the earth," but its rivers, moors, and forests have a wild beauty of their owr, unappreciated because so little known. It is impossible that Mr. Barker's descriptions should not rouse in some of his countrymen the longing to visit a country with such rivers• full of fish, each adventurous walking and boating, such lovely subjects for sketching, such almost untouched riches in the way of antiquities, middle-age or prehistoric, above- ground or underground. The primitive farming, the picturesque old customs and superstitions, the odd characters, the ways of the people, which date back at least a hundred years ; the wild flowers and birds to charm a naturalist ; the architecture of towns and churches, in which both French and English history may he said to be written ; all this together seems to make an unequalled hunting-ground. Yet we are not very much afraid that it will soon be spoilt and overrun by tourists, except by the right kind. It requires real enthusiasm to travel through a country in Mr. Barker's fashion, the only one for seeing such a country as this thoroughly, and learning to know it well. It requires courap, and endurance of an uncommon kind to walk through lonely forests where there are still plenty of wild-boars and snakee, if not wolves, to face wide tracts of stony moor alone in every kind of weather, with the mere chance of reaching a village with some wretched auberge where one may sleep. Neither-
• Tire Summers in Guyenne: a Chronicle of tko Waesido and Waterside. By Edward Harrhon Barker. With Map and Illtutrat:cni. London: Bentley aruk San. 1684.
is it every one who cares to venture in a canoe down such rapids as those of the Dronne. And even people who would enjoy all this in a summer holiday, would often think twice about spending their time in a tract of country where there is scarcely a decent hotel. We have good hopes, therefore, that the Correze, the valleys of the Vezere, the Isle, the Dronne, the wild wood-country of Perigord, and the " desert of the Double," are likely to be left to their own very original inhabitants and to Mr. Barker and the few like-minded travellers who may follow in his difficult but delightful foot- steps.
Two Summers in Guyenne contains, like the former book, the records of several short journeys ; for it seems to be
the author's habit to make his walking tours in the early summer and autumn, and to settle down in some attractive centre during the hottest months of the year. In this book, he first describes the gorge of the Upper Dordogne, which he entered from La Bourboule, and followed with difficulty through its precipitous and most beautiful ravines as far as Bort, striking off soon after this across the moors of the Correze into the Limousin country, the state of which, one may remark in passing, seems little improved since the days of Turgot. Rejoining the Dordogne at Argental, Mr. Barker made his way on to Beaulieu, and then by the Puy d'Issolu to Martel. From relics of Gauls and Romans at what is supposed to be Uxellodunum, he then passed on to the English traditions of Martel, where Henry, the eldest son of Henry II., died, and the English leopard is still to be seen in old carvings. The next journey leads us into Perigord, past the Chateau de la Motte-Fenelon, and the towns of Domme and Beynac. Here, still on the banks of the Dor- dogne, the author took up his summer quarters, and passed much time on and about the river. Among the many curious sights of the Dordogne is the annual descent of the Auvergnats on their barges laden with wood for making barrels, which they sell at Libourne.
But it would take too long to mention in detail the interest- ing and remote places that Mr. Barker describes in this book, such as Les Eyzies, in the valley of the Vezere, where relics of the Stone Age are to be found; or the wonderful Grotte de Miremont, in the forest of Perigord ; or the Roque de Tayac, a fortress in the solid limestone rock, where the English made themselves a terror to the country-side. These rock-dwellings in the Vezere Valley are among the strangest sights of Perigord, a district full of curious variety. Here too, but in the valley of the Isle, Mr. Barker found a summer retreat at a little chateau he does not name, twenty miles below Perigneux. There is nothing in his whole book more charming in its quiet attractiveness than the description of this French country-house with its towers, dove-cot, crowding trees and wild rambling garden, old fish-pond with croaking frogs, nightingales in the little wood, mowers in the meadow. It is a picture of French country-life in the South,—how tree, those only know who have seen something like it. After wandering over stony moors and shooting dangerous rapids, one rests there as the traveller himself did.
Now and then a living interest of another kind is added to the wanderings when the author finds himself at the original homes of men like BrantOme, Montaigne, or Montesquieu; his description of the Chateau de Montaigne is delightful. He comes across a real survival of earlier times in the Trappist Monastery at Echourgnac in the Double. One is glad to know that the Republic has not interfered with the self-sacrificing life and work of these monks, who, like the Carthusians in other parts, have proved a blessing to their neighbourhood, draining and cultivating the boggy soil, whose feverish exhalations formerly poisoned the air.
Thus down the valley of the Dronne, and touching the Lower Dordogne, and following the Garonne past Bordeaux till it and the Dordogne join and are lost in the Gironde that bears them to the sea, Mr. Barker carries out his plan of travel in Western Aquitaine. A map and an index are great additions to the value of the present volume, which is also in itself even pleasanter to read than the former ones. The adventures are told with more ease and spirit ; the traveller's own enjoyment of his rambling life is more plainly shown; he has perhaps more confidence in his power of pleasing and interesting his countrymen at home. His pictures of these unfamiliar scenes are drawn with a vividness that never flags ; his knowledge of history, human and natural, of archaeology and art, with a love of beauty that finds much to satisfy it, and a talent for hitting on the quaintest and most characteristic features of the people and scenes he finds himself among, are even more evident than before. It would be profitable to compare his book with those of other writers who pass through a country like France with one idea in their heads, and shape everything they see to fit that idea. The danger of such a generalising method is more and more borne in upon one's mind by the study of such a book as Two Summers in Guyenne. The variety in French life and opinion is as great as the natural features of France, and even greater still. In passing from village to village in the same district, Mr. Barker found it the fashion in one to be Republican, in another to be Royalist, in a third to be Bonapartist. In one hardly anybody went to church; another was "full of religion ;" the cure was opposed here, obeyed there. And the character of the peasants differed as much as their politics, one village being mild and affable, another truculent and uncivil. Whatever the explanation of all this may be—and it seems to lie considerably deeper than the surface—it certainly points a very strong moral on the subject of generalising.
Such a house-to-house study as this, made by an inde- pendent observer who walks through the country and sees its people as they are and talks with them on their own subjects, should be really valuable to every Englishman who cares to know his neighbours. And much more so because this traveller's object is not to prove political theories, but to see realities ; not only to enjoy unfamiliar scenery and historical associations, but to study his fellow-men.
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