The Daily Dispatch

LOFTY TRAVELLING.

[From the Railway World.]

It is difficult to imagine anything better adapted to produce a vivid and startling impression on the memory than the first sight of Morlaix, Brittany, as approached by rail. The city lies on both sides of a deep, narrow valley, and the railroad springs across the chasm on a magnificent viaduct three hundred feet high.

Entirely unprepared for anything of the sort, the traveller suddenly finds himself taking a bird's-eye view of a city of the middle ages. There it lies, three hundred feet below, almost as if it were in the days when Mary, Queen of Scots, passed through here on her way to Holyrood and the scaffold. The precipitous, winding, narrow, darksome streets, the peaked roofs, misshapen by time and studded with curious dormer windows, are still there as when she looked upon them centuries ago, when with brilliant pageant she and her cortege of knights and ladies swept through Morlaix with laughter and song.

Should it be a fete-day or a fair the sight is still more unique, for the square is then crowded with booths and peasants in various costumes, and is positively white with the starched caps of the women.

The city is divided by the river of Morlaix, an estuary up which ships come into the heart of the town. The banks of the river are faced with granite, and afford a fine promenade on each side. A smaller stream dashes roaring down the streets, bringing to the dirty lanes of the crowded town the music of the pure fountains whence it came.

At Morlaix one finds himself literally in a land of wooden shoes. Almost without exception they are worn by all; of various forms and sizes, colored or uncolored, to suit the whims or purse of the wearer, but always the sabot.