Seated upon the western shore of the great Bay of Mont St. Michel is Cancale, whence come the oysters. The six thousand inhabitants of this quaintly rock-environed place have a physiognomy so distinctly their own as to mark them for a type. Feyen-Perrin and his brother have painted the Cancale people in a manner never to be forgotten by those who are familiar with their work.
Anciently Cancale was known as Cancaven, and is a survival among neighbouring settlements which have succumbed to the encroachments of the ocean.
In 1032, it became a dependency of the Abbey of Mont St. Michel. In 1758, it was pillaged by the English under the Duke of Marlborough, and the English fleet again bombarded it in 1779.
La Houle is the real port of Cancale, and the centre for the oyster industry. At low tide the boats of the fishers are drawn up on the yellow sands, there to remain until the return of the tide. At low tide all the village comes from the town above and repairs to the oyster-beds. The general outgoing, which seems to the stranger the emigration of the whole population, has been described by a Frenchman as: “Un défile, interminable, bruyant, cadencé, le bruit des pas coupé de paroles et de rires.”
This great outpouring continues until quite all the available help of the female persuasion has departed, leaving practically only the old and infirm to guard the houses and shops until the return of the tide.
Cancale is one of the most celebrated oyster-rearing districts of the world, but, if the tourist arrive there during the summer months which lack the “R,” he will eat not of them; the natives look upon it as downright crime even to think of serving them to you; the mussel will have to be your substitute. It is always in season, though it looks about as perishable in hot weather as the oyster, and probably is so. Tradition and superstition account for the upholding of many institutions in this world, and the oyster season appears to be one of them.
The celebrated Rocks of Cancale lie just below the town,—a black mass of rocks, about which the waves of the ocean fawn and growl like a parcel of wolves.
The Point of Grouin is simply an exaggeration of the same rocky formation as that of Cancale, and the same which unrolls itself all around the coast up to Cape Fréhel. To the west is the Bay of St. Malo, and to the east the Bay of Mont St. Michel.
Michelet wrote of this famous mount off the Breton coast as follows:
“The gigantic rock is an abbey, a cloister, a fortress, and a prison, with exquisite sublimity and true dignity. It rises like a titanic tower, rock upon rock, keep upon keep, and century upon century. Below the monks; higher the iron cage of Louis XI. (who, it seems, left these details rather numerously about his domain); higher yet the cell of Louis XIV.; higher yet the prison of to-day. All is in a whirlwind; Mont St. Michel is a very sepulchre of peace.”