"From the parts where the sun sets," they say of themselves; and if you ask an American Indian the same question he will tell you that he comes "from the parts where the sun rises." They are the ancient inhabitants, says M. de Baroncelli-Javon, of the lost Atlantis, which lay between the old world and the new.
The resemblances between the Gitanos and the Redskins are curious, not only in appearance and language but in many small details and habits. They use, for instance, exactly the same actions when they examine a horse's teeth. The author adds to the list of survivors of Atlantis the Basques, the Bretons and perhaps the Copts of Egypt, and finds resemblances in them too. My small ethnological knowledge prompts me to reject the Bretons, but the Basques have always been a puzzle, and seem to fit in with this theory. There is also a hint, in a footnote, of the inclusion of the Laps, Samoyeds, and Esquimaux, whom we might perhaps accept in place of the Celts.
But to continue. The Egyptians and the Gitanos—probably two branches of the same family—found themselves on either side of the Mediterranean. The Egyptians moved westwards to the Nile and the Red Sea, the Gitanos took up a roving life and were to be found everywhere along the coast, from the Gaudalquiver to the Var. They are thus not descendants, but brothers of the Egyptian race.
"Little by little arrive the Iberians, and then others and still others. The Gitano flies before the invader; he finds refuge nearer and nearer to the coast, following the last wild horses into the most lonely places, among the lagoons and the unhealthy marshes, uninhabitable by all except him, the aboriginal. There he erects his temples, in which he adores Fire and the Sun, like the Redskin and the Egyptian, where he buries his chiefs and his wise men, thus consecrating special places. And he is always moving on, with the wild horse, along the line of the sea. Centuries and centuries pass, Christianity shines forth, which founds the altars of its saints on those of the pagans, and it is not unscientific to think that the pilgrimage to the place of the Saintes-Maries existed long before Christianity, and honoured first the gods of the soil, then those of the Iberians and Ligurians, before it honoured our saints."
CHAPTER XIX
Saint-Gilles and Montmajour
This was to be the last full day's walk. I had to meet a friend at Avignon the next afternoon; then to Arles with no further time for walking; and then home.
There was a lot of ground to cover. The first stage, after going halfway to Arles by train, was an eight-mile walk across the plain to Saint-Gilles. The train started at six, and soon after seven I was on the road, on a fine still spring morning, and in company with an old peasant woman who was also going to Saint-Gilles, and had suggested in the train that we should walk together. I had not known quite how to refuse, but had thought that after a mile or so I might say that I was in a hurry, and push on from her. Provençal was her tongue, and French is not mine; the burden of a conversation lasting for two hours daunted me.