THE STORM OF OCTOBER, 1859.
The storm, which of all storms, I had the best opportunity of observing, was that which swept in fury over the west of France, from the 24th of October 1859, to the 31st of the same month, the implacable and indefatigable storm, which, with but few and very short intervals, raged furiously for six days and six nights, and strewed our whole western coasts with wrecks. Both before and after that storm, the barometer indicated great disturbances, and the telegraphic communications were cut off by the breaking of the wires, or the magnetic falsifications. Very hot seasons had preceded this tempest, but it brought us a succession of very different weather; rainy, and cold. Even 1860, up to the very day on which I write these lines, is marked by heavy rain storms, and cold winds from the west, and south, which seem to bring us all the rains of the Atlantic, and of the great South Sea.
I watched this tempest from a spot so smiling and peaceful that tempest was the last thing that one would anticipate there. I speak of the little port of Saint George, near Royan, just at the entrance of the Gironde. I had passed an exceedingly quiet five months there, meditating what I should say on the subject which I had treated upon in 1859; that subject at once so serious and so delicate. The place and the book are alike filled with memories very agreeable to me. Could I have written that book in any other place? I know not; but one thing is quite certain: the wild perfume of that country; its aspect, at once staid and gentle, and the vivifying odors of its Brooms, that pungent and agreeable shrub of the Landes, had much to do with that book, and will ever be associated with it in my thought.
The people of the place are well matched with its aspect and its nature. No vulgarity, no coarseness, among them. The farming population are grave in manner, and moral in speech and conduct, and the seagoing population, consists, for the most part, of pilots, a little band of Protestants, escaped from persecution. All around, too, there is an honesty so primitive that locks and bolts are absolutely unknown there. Noise and violence are utterly out of the question among people who are modest and reserved, as seamen seldom are, and who have a quiet and retiring tact not always to be found among a far more pretentious and highly placed people. Though well known to and well respected by them, I yet enjoyed all the solitude which study and labor demanded. I was all the more interested in these people and their perils. Without speaking to them, I daily and hourly watched them in their heroic labors, and heartily wished them both safety and success. I was suspicious of the weather, and looking upon the dangerous channel, I often asked myself whether the sea, so long gentle and lovely, would not, sooner or later, show us quite another countenance.
This really dangerous place has nothing sad or threatening in its aspect. Every morning, from my window, I could watch the white sails, slightly ruddied by the morning beams, of quite a fleet of small coasters, that only waited for a wind to leave the little port. At this port, the Gironde is fully nine miles wide. With some of the solemnity of the great rivers of America, it combines the gaiety of Bourdeaux. Royan is a pleasure place, a bathing town which is resorted to by all Gascony. Its bay, and the adjoining one of St. George, are gratuitously regaled with the wild pranks of the porpoises, that boldly venture into the river, and into the very midst of the bathers, leaping, at once heavily and gracefully, six feet, and more, above the surface of the water. It would seem that they are profoundly convinced of the fact, that no one thereabout is addicted to fishing; that at that point of great daring and great labor, where from hour to hour all hands may be called upon to succor some imperilled vessel, folks will scarcely care to slay the poor Porpoise, for his oil.
To this gaiety of the waters, add the especially harmonious beauty of the two shores, as the abounding vineyards of Medoc look across to the varied culture of the fertile fields of Saintonge. The sky, here, has not the fixed, and sometimes rather monotonous beauty of the Mediterranean, but, on the contrary, is very changeable. From the mingling waters of sea and river, rise variegated mists, which cast back upon the watery mirror, strange gleamings of gorgeous coloring, rod, blue, deepest orange, and most delicately pale green. Fantastic shapes, "a moment seen, then gone for ever," "appearing only to depart, and seen only to be regretted," adorn the entrance to the Ocean with strange monuments of bold collonades, sublime bridges, and, occasionally, triumphal arches.
The two crescent-shaped shores of Royan and Saint Georges, with their fine sands afford to the most delicate feet a delightful promenade of which one does not easily grow tired, tempted, and regaled as we are by the perfume of the pines which so enliven the downs with their young verdure. The fine promontories which overlook these shores, and the sandy inland downs send near and far their healthful perfumes. That which predominates on the downs has a something of medicinal, a mingled odor, which seems to concentrate all the sun and the warmth of the sands. The inland heaths furnish the more pungent odors which stir the brain and cheer the heart; thyme, and wild thyme, and marjoram, and sage which our fathers held sacred for its many virtues, and peppermint, and, above all, the little wild violet, exhale a mingled odor surpassing all the spicy odors of the far East.
It seems to me that on these heaths the birds sing more beautifully than elsewhere. Never have I heard elsewhere such a lark as I listened to in July on the promontory of Vallière, as she rose higher and higher, her dark wings gilded and glinting in the rays of the fast setting sun. Her notes coming from a height of probably a thousand feet were as sweet as they must needs have been powerful. It was to her humble nest, to her upward gazing and listening nestlings that she evidently sang her "wood notes wild," her song at once so rustic and so sublime, in which one might fancy that she translated into harmony that glorious sunlight in which she hovered, and called to her nestlings—"Come up hither my little ones, come!"