These Dwellings Are Large, Whitewashed, And Many-
Windowed, And Are Always Surrounded With Balconies.
The doors are reached
by flights of steps, in order that they may be above the level of the snow
in winter.
The rooms are clean, but large and desolate-looking, and are
generally ornamented with caricatures of the Virgin and uncouth
representations of miracles. The women dress in the French style, and wear
large straw hats out of doors, which were the source of constant
disappointments to me, for I always expected to see a young, if not a
pretty, face under a broad brim, and these females were remarkably ill-
favoured; their complexions hardened, wrinkled, and bronzed, from the
effects of hard toil, and the extremes of heat and cold. I heard the hum
of spinning-wheels from many of the houses, for these industrious women
spin their household linen, and the gray homespun in which the men are
clothed. The furniture is antique, and made of oak, and looks as if it had
been handed down from generation to generation. The men, largely assisted
by the females, cultivate small plots of ground, and totally disregard all
modern improvements. These French towns and villages improve but little.
Popery, that great antidote to social progress, is the creed universally
professed, and generally the only building of any pretensions is a large
Romish church with two lofty spires of polished tin. Education is not much
prized; the desires of the simple habitans are limited to the attainment
of a competence for life, and this their rudely-tilled farms supply them
with.
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