and floored with fine white sand, in which is four feet
of tepid water where you can bathe without danger. You walk on, admiring
the cool little covers sheltered by great portals; roughly carved, it is
true, but majestic, like the Pitti palace, that other imitation of the
whims of Nature. Curious features are innumerable; nothing is lacking
that the wildest imagination could invent or desire.

There even exists a thing so rare on the rocky shores of ocean that this
may be the solitary instance of it,--a large bush of box. This bush, the
greatest curiosity of Croisic, where trees have never grown, is three
miles distant from the harbor, on the point of rocks that runs farthest
into the sea. On this granite promontory, which rises to a height that
neither the waves nor the spray can touch, even in the wildest weather,
and faces southerly, diluvian caprice has constructed a hollow basin,
which projects about four feet. Into this basin, or cleft, chance,
possibly man, has conveyed enough vegetable earth for the growth of a
box-plant, compact, well-nourished, and sown, no doubt, by birds. The
shape of the roots would indicate to a botanist an existence of at least
three hundred years. Above it the rock has been broken off abruptly. The
natural convulsion which did this, the traces of which are ineffaceably
written here, must have carried away the broken fragments of the granite
I know not where.

The sea rushes in, meeting no reefs, to the foot of this cliff, which
rises to a height of some four or five hundred feet; at its base lie
several scattered rocks, just reaching the surface at high water, and
describing a semi-circle. It requires some nerve and resolution to climb
to the summit of this little Gibraltar, the shape of which is nearly
round, and from which a sudden gust of wind might precipitate the rash
gazer into the sea, or, still more to be feared, upon the rocks.

This gigantic sentinel resembles the look-out towers of old castles,
from which the inhabitants could look the country over and foresee
attacks. Thence we see the clock towers and the arid fields of Croisic,
with the sandy dunes, which injure cultivation, and stretch as far as
Batz. A few old men declare that in days long past a fortress occupied
the spot. The sardine-fishers have given the rock, which can be seen
far out at sea, a name; but it is useless to write it here, its Breton
consonants being as difficult to pronounce as to remember.

Calyste