than the brancard that is used in Paris for carrying the sick and wounded.  It was composed of two poles, with cross-pieces and a railing down the sides.  I ascertained that this piece of village carpentry was used within the memory of people still living for carrying the dead to the cemetery merely wrapped in their shrouds.  They were buried without coffins, not because wood was difficult to obtain, but because the four boards had not yet come into fashion at Saint-Cirq-la-Popie.  To bury a person in such a manner even there would nowadays cause great scandal, but sixty or seventy years ago it was considered folly to put good wood into a grave.  A homespun sheet was thought to be all that was needed to break the harshness of the falling clay.  And there are people who call this age that gives coffins even to the poorest dead utilitarian!

Among other curious things I saw in this ancient out-of-the-way burg were two mediaeval corn-measures forming part of a heap of stones in a street corner.  They had much the appearance of very primitive holy-water stoups, such as are to be seen in some rural churches, for they were blocks of stone rounded and hollowed out with the chisel.  Each of these measures, however, had a hole in the side near the bottom for the corn to run through, and irons to which a little flap-door was once affixed in front of this hole.  The commune treated these stones as rubbish until some accidental visitor offered 500 francs for them; now it clings to them tightly, hoping, no doubt, that the price will go up.  Prowling curiosity-hunters are destined to destroy much of the archaeological interest of these old towns.  They are doing to them what Lord Elgin did to the Parthenon.  Fantastic corbel-heads and other sculptured details disappear every year from the Gothic houses, and find their way into private museums.

As I was taking leave of the bellringer’s boy—­a lad of about fifteen—­he put his hand under his blouse and, pulling out a snuff-box, offered me a pinch.  I had met plenty of boys who chewed tobacco—­they abound along the coast of Brittany—­but never one who carried a snuff-box before.

The castle whose ruins are to be seen on the bluff above the church received Henry IV. as a guest after his memorable exploit at Cahors.

A man who was laying eel-lines across the Lot consented to take me to the other side in his boat, and there I struck the road to Cahors, which closely borders the river all along this valley.  In several places it is tunnelled through the rock, where the buttresses of the cliffs could not be conveniently shattered with dynamite.  All this has been the work of late years.  Previously the passage between the river and the rocks was about as bad as it could be.  The English fortified several of the caverns in the cliffs commanding the passage, to which the name of Le Defile des Anglais was consequently given.  Now the term is applied by the country people to the caves themselves, wherever these have been walled up for defence.