Excepting that part of Sancerre which occupies the little plateau, the
streets are more or less steep, and the town is surrounded by slopes
known as the Great Ramparts, a name which shows that they are the
highroads of the place.

Outside the ramparts lies a belt of vineyards. Wine forms the chief
industry and the most important trade of the country, which yields
several vintages of high-class wine full of aroma, and so nearly
resembling the wines of Burgundy, that the vulgar palate is deceived.
So Sancerre finds in the wineshops of Paris the quick market
indispensable for liquor that will not keep for more than seven or
eight years. Below the town lie a few villages, Fontenoy and
Saint-Satur, almost suburbs, reminding us by their situation of the
smiling vineyards about Neuchatel in Switzerland.

The town still bears much of its ancient aspect; the streets are
narrow and paved with pebbles carted up from the Loire. Some old
houses are to be seen there. The citadel, a relic of military power
and feudal times, stood one of the most terrible sieges of our
religious wars, when French Calvinists far outdid the ferocious
Cameronians of Walter Scott's tales.

The town of Sancerre, rich in its greater past, but widowed now of its
military importance, is doomed to an even less glorious future, for
the course of trade lies on the right bank of the Loire. The sketch
here given shows that Sancerre will be left more and more lonely in
spite of the two bridges connecting it with Cosne.

Sancerre, the pride of the left bank, numbers three thousand five
hundred inhabitants at most, while at Cosne there are now more than