“O Imogen! I’ll speak to thee in silence.”
—“What should Cordelia do? Love and be silent.”
However this may be, the Landes are peopled, though thinly. Here and there at immense distances we come to a cottage. The men are shepherds, fishermen, or résiniers, as the turpentine-producers are called. Pliny, Dioscorides, and other ancient writers speak of the inhabitants as collecting the yellow amber thrown up by the sea, and trafficking in beeswax, resin, and pitch. The Phœnicians and Carthaginians initiated them into the mysteries of mining and forging. The Moors taught them the value of their cork-trees. They still keep bees that feed on the purple bells of the heather, and sell vast quantities of wax for the candles used in the churches of France—cierges, as they are called, from cire vierge—virgin wax, wrought by chaste bees, and alone fit for the sacred altars of Jesus and Mary.
Ausonius thus speaks of the pursuits of the people:
“Mercatus ne agitas leviore numismate captans,
Insanis quod mox pretiis gravis auctio vendat,
Albentisque sevi globulos et pinguia ceræ
Pondera, Naryciamque picem, scissamque papyrum
Fumantesque olidum paganica lumina tœdas.”