umanach, about three miles
distant--a wonderful spot, huge round erratic blocks of pink granite flung
over land and sea in the wildest confusion. The whole coast is one sea of
boulders, a chaos of rocks of all sizes cover the soil in every direction,
and in many places there is no soil at all, and the loose masses rest on a
bare bed of rock, stretching, in unbroken extent, to a great distance. "A
wanderer," says Mr. Trollope, "amid this strange and silent scene might
fancy himself the only living thing in the midst of a world turned to
stone. In every possible variety of uncouth form and capricious, strange
positions, the endless masses were around us."

"All is rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone.""
LORD OF THE ISLES.

One rock, surrounded at high water by the tide, is a square block of red
granite of thirty to forty feet high, placed on the top of a still higher
mass, on which it rests upon a very small base. It is called the "Roche
Pendue," and serves as a landmark for the fishermen. We took a small boat
full of fish resembling codlings or small cod, called "lieu," and were
rowed by the fishermen through a sea of granite boulders to the opposite
side of the Tregastel estuary, to see the "pierre pendue," or
rocking-stone (Breton, _rouler_), the largest in Brittany. These stones
are so nicely poised that they can be moved with the slightest impulse by
any one knowing the exact point at which to touch them. They were used in
early times as proving-stones, and called "Pierres de verite."

"Firm as it seems,
Such is its strange and virtuous property,
It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch
Of him whose breast is pure; but to a traitor,
Though e'en a giant's prowess nerved his arm,
It stands as fixed as Snowdon." --MASON.

Or, as Sir Walter Scott alludes to them,--

"Some, chance-poised and balanced, lay
So that a stripling arm might sway
A mass no host could raise,
In nature's rage at random thrown,
Yet trembling like the Druid's Stone,
On its precarious base." --LORD OF THE ISLES.

The council of Nantes, in the seventh century, ordered the bishops to have
the rocking-stones destroyed. The coarse rose-coloured granite of this
coast resembles the Egyptian.

We rowed back to the little inn at Ploumanach, and had some eggs and a hot
langouste or rock-lobster. This kind is