Camaret
CHAPTER VII.
FINISTÈRE—NORTH
THE northernmost part of the peninsula of Finistère has not the abounding or varied interests of the south. Its monuments of other days are not so many or so remarkable, and the sterner conditions of life seem to have had a sobering effect upon manners and customs.
Brest and its wonderfully ample harbour has by no means the attractions of Vannes or of Nantes for the bird of passage, though its commercial and strategic value is great, and its history vivid and eventful. In spite of all this, there is little that is interesting to-day in its straight streets and rectangular blocks.
This fortified and exceedingly animated town owns to eighty odd thousand inhabitants, and is so pervaded by military and naval organization that there is very little local colour, very little atmosphere of the past hanging about it to-day. To find this, one has to go back to Faou, to Plougastel or Landerneau or Landivisiau, all within a radius of twenty kilometres or so.
The great bay of Brest is a swarming waterway, upon which the little excursion steamers, tugboats, great cruisers and battle-ships, torpedo-boats and torpedo-boat destroyers, and yet other craft built to catch torpedo-boat destroyers, are all apparently entangled inexplicably each in the wakes of all the others.