to carry out a curious and somewhat barbarous
custom. It was considered by "those of old time" to be paying deference
to the dead to dig up their coffins after a certain number of years, and
to place the skulls and bones in the ossuary, arranging them on shelves
and labelling them in a British Museum style so that all might gaze upon
them as they went by. This custom is still kept up in some places; for,
as we have said, the Bretons are a slow moving people in the way of
progress, and cling to their habits and customs as tenaciously as the
Medes and Persians did to their laws. They are not ambitious, and what
sufficed for the sires a generation or two ago suffices for the sons
to-day.

But to us, the chief beauty of the town was its little port, with its
stone pier. The houses leading down to it are the quaintest in Roscoff,
of sixteenth century date, with many angles and gables. In one of them
lodged Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender, when he escaped after the
battle of Culloden, the quaintest and most interesting of all.

Looking back from the end of the jetty, it lies prominently before you,
together with the whole town, forming a group full of wonderful tone and
picturesque beauty. In the foreground are the vessels in the harbour,
with masts rising like a small forest, and flags gaily flying. The water
which plashes against the stone pier is the greenest, purest, most
translucent ever seen. It dazzled by its brilliancy and appeared to
"hold the light." Before us stretched the great Atlantic, to-day calm
and sleeping and reflecting the sun travelling homewards; but often
lashed to furious moods, which break madly over the pier, and send their
spray far over the houses. Few scenes in Brittany are more
characteristic and impressive than this little unknown town.

A narrow channel lies between Roscoff and L'Ile de Batz, which would
form a fine harbour of refuge if it were not for the strong currents for
ever running there. At high water the island is half submerged. It is
here that St. Pol first came from Cornwall, intending to live there the
remainder of his life; but, as we have seen, he was made Bishop of Leon,
and had to take up his abode in the larger town.

No tree of any height is to be seen here, but the tamarisk grows in
great abundance. All the men are sailors and pass their lives upon the
water, coming home merely to rest. The women cultivate the ground. The
church possesses, and preserves as its greates