ing that went on have helped them
much--since, their respective castles being not more than five miles
asunder, each of them in ordinary times was pulled up short in his
ravaging at the end of two miles and a half. In brief, the business was
overcrowded in all its branches, and badly managed beside. The more that
I look into the history of that time the more am I convinced that
mediaevalism, either as an institution or as an investment, was not a
success.

Condrieu is a dead little town now. As a seat of thieving industry its
importance disappeared centuries ago; and its importance as a boating
town--whence were recruited a large proportion of the Rhone
boatmen--vanished in the dawn of the age of steam. They were good
fellows, those Condrieu boatmen, renowned for their bravery and their
honesty throughout the river's length. Because of their leather-seated
breeches they were nicknamed "Leather-tails"; but their more
sailor-like distinction was their tattooing: on the fore-arm a flaming
heart pierced with an arrow, symbol of their fidelity and love; on the
breast a cross and anchor, symbols of their faith and craft. From Roman
times downward until railways came, the heavy freighting of central
France has been done by boat upon the Rhone--in precisely the same
fashion that flat-boat freighting was carried on upon the Mississippi
and its tributaries--and three or four of the river towns were peopled
mainly by members of the boating guilds. Trinquetaille, the western
suburb of Arles, still shows signs of the nautical tastes of its
inhabitants in the queer sailor-like exterior and interior adornments of
its houses: most noticeable of which is the setting up on a house-top of
a good-sized boat full-rigged with mast and sails.

The survivors of the boating period nowadays are few. Five years ago I
used to see whenever I crossed to Trinquetaille a little group of old
boatmen sitting at the end of the bridge on a long bench that was their
especial property. They moved stiffly and slowly; their white heads were
bowed breastward; their voices were cracked with age. Yet they seemed
to be cheery together, as they basked in the hot sunshine--that warmed
only comfortably their lean old bodies--and talked of ancient victories
over sand-bars and rapids: and the while looked southward over the broad
Rhone water toward the sea. No doubt they held in scorn their few
successors--one where of old were a hundred--who navigate the Rhone of
t