It Must Be An Ice Pit In Winter, And I Should Think It The
Last Spot On The Continent For
The summer to find; but when the summer
has at last found it, the old Sault-au-Matelot puts on
A vagabond air
of southern leisure and abandon, not to be matched anywhere out of
Italy. Looking from that jutting rock near Hope Gate, behind which the
defeated Americans took refuge from the fire of their enemies, the
vista is almost unique for a certain scenic squalor and gypsy luxury
of colour - sag-roofed barns and stables, and weak-backed, sunken-
chested workshops of every sort, lounge along in tumble-down
succession, and lean up against the cliff in every imaginable posture
of worthlessness and decrepitude, light wooden galleries cross to them
from the second stories of the houses which back upon the alley, and
over these galleries flutters from a labyrinth of clothes-lines a
variety of bright-coloured garments of all ages, sexes and conditions,
while the footway underneath abounds in gossiping women, smoking men,
idle poultry, cats, children, and large, indolent Newfoundland dogs."
- (A Chance Acquaintance, p, 175.)
Adventurous tourists who have risked themselves there in the sultry days
of July, have found themselves dazed at the sight of the wonders of the
place. Among other indigenous curiosities, they have there noticed what
might be taken for any number of aerial tents, improvised no doubt as
protection from the scorching rays of a meridian sun. Attached to ropes
stretched from one side of the public way to the other, was the family
linen, hung out to dry.
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