[French Cave Dwellings near Saumur]

As we motored along the river bank beyond its low-lying sand marshes and line of small hills, we noticed tiny black wind-mills spreading out their arms to the breeze, and wreaths of smoke curling up from the cliffs. Here and there the lowering sun would light up a window pane in the cliff, as if to remind us that these hillsides are burrowed out by the workers in the vineyards who make their homes here as in Touraine and in the valley of Vendomois.

"It seems that we are again in the land of the troglodytes," said Walter. "Alfred de Vigny says these peasants 'in their love for so fair a home have not been willing to lose the least scrap of its soil, or the least grain of its sand.' I think myself that it is for more practical and economic reasons that they live underground."

These cliff dwellings continue for nearly eight miles around Saumur, and M. La Tour tells us that many of them go back to the days of the Roman occupation when they served the conquered tribes as a last retreat from the invader. Some one has said that every step to the southward takes us further back in the history of France. Chinon and Fontevrault are not far south of Tours and Blois, and yet we are far back in history to-day, living with the Angevin kings and with the cave-dwellers of Gaul.

Even the coiffes of the women are different here from those worn in other places on the Loire, and in a very distinct way we realize that we have left Touraine and are in Anjou.

In the fields the peasants were gathering in their stores for the winter; the women pass along the road constantly with their odd panniers upon their backs, full of treasures. Sometimes they are filled with fruit and vegetables and again it is only grass for the cattle or faggots for the fire. As we drew near Saumur, grapes filled the hottes to overflowing, for this is the land of the vine, one of the great grape-growing regions of France.

We are spinning along all too rapidly over these perfect roads, as we long to stop at so many places, especially at that tiny Venice on the Loire, a republic of fishermen and laborers established by King René when he was still in power. From its sole palace, the Château de l'Ile d'Or, René's daughter went forth to be the unhappy Margaret of Anjou, the Red Rose of the House of Lancaster, during the war of the succession which raged in England for so many years.

M. La Tour tells us there is much to see at Saumur, a very old Hôtel de Ville, a twelfth century church, and other ancient buildings. This city, once a favorite residence of Angevin princes and English kings, was in the reign of Henry IV, the headquarters of Protestantism, with DuPlessis-Mornay, the Pope of the Huguenots, as its governor. All that we had time to see, this afternoon, was the fortress château, which stands high up on the Quay de Limoges, overlooking the junction of the Loire and the Thouet. We were warned that if we stopped again we should not reach Angers until after dark, and so we sped along past many an historic landmark of interest.