I remember once, some years ago, in Belgium, my modest camera attracted so much attention that I speedily became the centre of an enormous crowd, which increased every minute in bulk, so that at last the street was blocked and all traffic suspended.
Bordeaux is a city of barrels. They are the first thing you see as you leave the station. They line the quay side: barrels yellow, barrels green, barrels blue. They meet you daily as you pass along the streets, whether they lie along the road, or whether they are being conveyed in one of the large, fenced-in carts, whose horses are covered with a faded "art-green" horse cloth, and who wear over the collar a curious black wool top-knot.
[CHAPTER VI]
Bordeaux has a fine quay side. Bridges, shipping, old buildings, spread of river, variety of local colour, all combine to give it this.
Of course to-day it has gained many modern aids to commerce, notably among these the steam tram with its toy trumpet; and what it has gained in these aids it has lost in picturesqueness. But still it has kept variety, that saving clause, in colour. About the streets you can see the reign of colour still in office. Cocked-hat officials, brilliantly red-coated; the labourers loading and unloading on the quay side in blue knickers, with lighter blue coat surmounting them; the stone masons in weather-beaten and weather-faded scarlet coats; costumes of soft grey-green, with sparkling glisten of silver buttons down the front; and everywhere in evidence the flat-topped, round cap, gathered in at its base.
[From Collection of Mr Gustavus A. Sieveking.
THE QUAY, BORDEAUX, 1842.
[Page 76.