Three times a day a steamer makes the journey to the little island town which is a favourite place of pilgrimage for the Nantais during the summer months. Once it was not even an island, but a peninsula, and not so very long ago either. The alluvial deposits of the Loire made it in the first place, and the sea, backing in from the north, made a strait which just barely separates it to-day from the mainland.
On this out-of-the-way little island there are still some remains of prehistoric monuments, the dolmen of Chiron-Tardiveau, the menhirs of Pinaizeaux and Pierre-Levée, and some others. In the speech of the inhabitants the isle is known as Noirmoutier, a contraction of "Nigrum Monasterium," a name derived from the monastery founded here in the seventh century by St. Philibert.
In the town is an old château, the ancient fortress-refuge of the Abbé of Her. It is a great square structure flanked at the angles with little towers, of which two are roofed, one uncovered, and the fourth surmounted by a heliograph for communicating with the Ile de Yeu and the Pointe de Chenoulin. The view from the heights of these château towers is fascinating beyond compare, particularly at sundown on a summer's evening, when the golden rays of the sinking sun burnish the coast of the Vendée and cast lingering shadows from the roof-tops and walls of the town below. To the northwest one sees the Ilot du Pilier, with its lighthouse and its tiny coast-guard fortress; to the north is clearly seen Pornic and the neighbouring coasts of the Pays de Retz and of Bouin with its encircling dikes,—all reminiscent of a little Holland. To the south is the narrow neck of Fromentin, the jagged Marguerites, which lift their fangs wholly above the surface of the sea only at low water, and the towering cliffs of the Ile de Yeu, which rise above the mists.
Just south of the Loire, between Nantes and Bourgneuf, is the Lac de Grand-Lieu, in connection with which one may hear a new rendering of an old legend. At one time, it is said, it was bordered by a city, whose inhabitants, for their vices, brought down the vengeance of heaven upon them, even though they cried out to the powers on high to avert the threatened flood which rose up out of the lake and overflowed the banks and swallowed the city and all evidences of its past. In this last lies the flaw in the legend; but, like the history of Sodom, of the Ville d'Ys in Bretagne, and of Ars in Dauphiné, tradition has kept it alive.
This wicked place of the Loire valley was called Herbauge or Herbadilla, and, from St. Philibert at the southern extremity of the lake, one looks out to-day on a considerable extent of shallow water, which is as murderous-looking and as uncanny as a swamp of the Everglades.
From the central basin flow two tiny rivers, the Ognon and the Boulogne, which are charming enough in their way, as also is the route by highroad from Nantes, but the gray monotonous lake, across which the wind whistles in a veritable tempest for more than six months of the year, is most depressing.
There are various hamlets, with some pretence
at advanced civilization about them, scattered around the borders of the lake, St. Leger, St. Mars, St. Aignan, St. Lumine, Bouaye, and La Chevrolière; but in the whole number you will not get a daily paper that is less than forty-eight hours old, and nothing but the most stale news of happenings in the outside world ever dribbles through. St. Philibert is the metropolis of these parts, and it has no competitors for the honour.
At the entrance of the Ognon is the little village of Passay, built at the foot of a low cliff which dominates all this part of the lake. It is a picturesque little village of low houses and red roofs, with a little sandy beach in the foreground, through which little rivulets of soft water trickle and go to make up the greater body.