On the Quay at Concarneau.
There is a wide, open space in front of the Hôtel des Voyageurs, on the quay Ste. Croix—where, at a window overlooking the quay, the femme de chambre is putting the last touches to her toilet—but behind it are narrow, dirty streets, crowded cafés and estaminets, where the husbands of these white-capped women have disappeared for the day. The majority of the well-to-do inhabitants are en promenade under the trees, and nearly everyone is bent upon pleasure of some sort. Here is a party just starting for a boating excursion across the bay, singing a Breton air to the time of the rowers, which we can hear on the quay. The sketch gives the exact picture: the heavy fishing-boat built for rough weather and stormy seas; the rowers standing four abreast, the heavy oars plashing in the sunlight, the boat down at the stern with its holiday load; whilst the gamin of Concarneau sits on the edge of the quay, over the principal drain of the town, with a string to catch little fishes.
The sketch on the quay when the tide is out, with people waiting for the ferry-boat, gives the aspect looking seaward, on a quiet evening, as we drive away towards Pont-Aven.
To reach Pont-Aven, we ascend and descend some gently sloping hills, in an easterly direction, for about eight miles. On the left hand of the road, near the village of Trégunc; we pass one of the largest rocking stones in Brittany, a block of granite 12 feet long by 9 feet, poised upon a second slab half buried in the ground. Little children lie in wait for travellers, and move this stone, which is known far and wide as “La pierre aux maris trompés,” a stone by which husbands are said to test the fidelity of their wives. All the heath-covered land on the way to Pont-Aven is strewn with granite boulders; there is a celebrated dolmen, or “table stone,” in the neighbourhood, and, near at hand, at Rustéphan, are the picturesque remains of a fifteenth-century castle, which may be reached through a wood by leaving the road at the village of Nizon, two miles from Pont-Aven.
At a point where the river Aven—breaking through its narrow channel, dashing under bridges and turning numerous water-wheels—spreads out into a broad estuary, is the little port of Pont-Aven, built four miles from the sea. The majority of the houses are of granite, and sheltered under wooded hills; the water rushes past flour-mills and under bridges with perpetual noise, and a breeze stirs the poplar trees that line its banks on the calmest day. The widest part of the village is the Place, sketched (looking northwards) from the stone bridge which gives Pont-Aven its name. A small community of farmers, millers, fishermen and peasant-women, is its native population, supplemented in summer by a considerable foreign element.