As we travel westward, the aspect of the land becomes suddenly changed; it is clouded over and rained upon, and is a sombre contrast to the former brightness. After the glare of the sun the senses are grateful for quiet tones; but the sight is strange, almost mournful. The district is only a few miles from busy towns and sea-ports, and on the main line of railway from Paris to Brest, but it is out of the world, and seems, under its cloudy aspect, farther than ever removed from civilisation; we pass substantial-looking farmhouses, but the dwellings of the peasants are generally hovels, with tumble-down mud walls and immovable windows; in their gardens are dungheaps and stagnant pools of water. We see women at work in the fields, girls tending cattle, and the men, generally, looking on.
The distance from Dinan to Lamballe by road is twenty-five miles, a slow and sleepy journey of about five hours by the direct route; a journey seldom taken by travellers since the completion of the railway westward. Everything we pass on the road looks comparatively untidy, rough, and poor, with the poverty of ignorance and neglect rather than of means, for the soil, as we approach Lamballe, is rich, and yields well. The country is really fruitful, but an acre of land is often divided into twenty different lots, in each of which there are separate crops of hemp, buckwheat, or potatoes, or they are filled with gorse for winter fodder for cattle. The hedges are made of mud-banks, gorse, and ferns, and the gates between them are formed of felled trees, the stem forming the upper bar, the roots being left as a counterpoise to lift the gate on its rough, wooden latch.
The rain ceases as we approach Lamballe; the air is fresh with the wind coming from the bay of St. Brieuc, and as the sky clears, we obtain, at intervals on the undulating road, views over finely wooded valleys, with high hedgerows, banked up and planted with elms and oaks. The chestnut trees, wet with the rain, are rich in colour, and the fields of buckwheat lighten the landscape again. Another turn in the road, and we are in evening light, there is open pasture land, and the cattle are winding home; at another, a farmer is meditating on his stock in the corner of a field. Thus we pass from one picture to another, quaint and idyllic, the last reminding us more of Troyon than of Rosa Bonheur.
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