considered as on the wane.

Our hostess now brought out one local dainty after another--galettes,
or flat cakes of rye and oaten flour, peculiar in flavour, and said to
be extremely nutritious; cream, curds and whey, fresh butter, and wine
--and was quite distressed that we could not make a hearty afternoon
meal. Then the master came in, one of Nature's gentlemen, if ever any
existed--stalwart, sunburnt to the complexion of an Arab, with a frank,
manly, shrewd face. He wore sabots, and, like his wife, was
stockingless. Stockings are objected to by French country-folks in hot
weather, and it seems to me on good grounds. His clothes were clean,
neat, and appropriate, and all of the material that goes into the
weekly wash-tub. Like his wife, he was most willing to give me any
information, and a pleasant and instructive time I had of it.

My host leased his farm. He was a tenant farmer precisely as the name
is understood here, with this difference--he owned a little land as
well. He could not tell me the exact size of his occupation in
hectares; land here, as in the Lozere, being computed instead by heads
of cattle, one hectare and a half of pasture allowed for each cow. Some
notion of its extent may be gathered from the fact that he possessed
120 cows. Besides these 200 hectares of pasturage, the farm comprised
arable land, the whole making up a total of nearly 1,000 acres. Much
larger farms, he told me, were to be found in the Cantal. The notion of
France being cut up into tiny parcels of land amused him not a little.
The crops here consist of wheat, barley, maize, rye, oats, buckwheat,
clover--a little of everything.

'But this is a cheese-making country. We don't grow anything like corn
enough for ourselves in the Cantal,' he said. 'Large quantities are