Forts Minden, Ville Martin, and Penthièvre, Port Louis, Lorient, and Brest, and the Forts du Pilier, Le Palais, Lacroix, Cezon, and Château du Taureau, with St. Malo and Fort des Rimains, protect the whole Breton seashore in practically unassailable fashion, though there are still the sea fights at Ouessant, in 1778 and 1794, and The Hogue in 1692, to say nothing of the land engagements at Quiberon in 1795, to remember.
CHAPTER IV.
TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY
TOURISTS are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homœopathic excitements of the little horses in some popular watering-place.
It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests, which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say nothing of being amused and instructed, too.
The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as a province where “husbandry was no further advanced than among the Hurons,” as a writer of the eighteenth century said within twenty-four hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel. Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea takes its place.