ariety to
the Nivernais. The Loire floods the flats at the foot of these slopes,
leaving a yellow alluvium that is extremely fertile, excepting in those
places where it has deluged them with sand and destroyed them forever,
by one of those terrible risings which are also incidental to the
Vistula--the Loire of the northern coast.

The hill on which the houses of Sancerre are grouped is so far from the
river that the little river-port of Saint-Thibault thrives on the life
of Sancerre. There wine is shipped and oak staves are landed, with all
the produce brought from the upper and lower Loire. At the period when
this story begins the suspension bridges at Cosne and at Saint-Thibault
were already built. Travelers from Paris to Sancerre by the
southern road were no longer ferried across the river from Cosne to
Saint-Thibault; and this of itself is enough to show that the great
cross-shuffle of 1830 was a thing of the past, for the House of Orleans
has always had a care for substantial improvements, though somewhat
after the fashion of a husband who makes his wife presents out of her
marriage portion.

Excepting that part of Sancerre which occupies the little plateau, the
streets are more or less steep, and the town is surrounded by slopes
known as the Great Ramparts, a name which shows that they are the
highroads of the place.

Outside the ramparts lies a belt of vineyards. Wine forms the chief
industry and the most important trade of the country, which yields
several vintages of high-class wine full of aroma, and so nearly
resembling the wines of Burgundy, that the vulgar palate is deceived. So
Sancerre finds in the wineshops of Paris the quick market indispensable
for liquor that will not keep for more than seven or eight years. Below
the town lie a few villages, Fontenoy and Saint-Satur, almost suburbs,
reminding us by their situation of the smiling vineyards about Neuchatel
in Switzerland.

The town still bears much of its ancient aspect; the streets are narrow
and paved with pebbles carted up from the Loire. Some old houses are to
be seen there. The citadel, a relic of military power and feudal times,
stood one of the most terrible sieges of our religious wars, when French
Calvinists far outdid the ferocious Cameronians of Walter Scott's tales.

The town of Sancerre, rich in its greater past, but widowed now of its
military importance, is doomed to an even less glorious future, for the
course of trade lies on the