Throughout this part of France, large flocks of sheep are commonly seen in the vicinity of the sea, and, as the pastures are uninclosed, they are all regularly guarded by a shepherd and his black dog, whose activity cannot fail to be a subject of admiration. He is always on the alert and attentive to his business, skirting his flock to keep them from straggling, and that, apparently, without any directions from his master. In the night they are folded upon the ploughed land; and the shepherd lodges, like a Tartar in his _kibitka_, in a small cart roofed and fitted up with doors. Fécamp, like other towns in the neighborhood, is imbedded in a deep valley; and the road, on approaching it, threads through an opening between hills "stern and wild," a tract of "brown heath and shaggy wood," resembling many parts of Scotland. The town is long and straggling, the streets steep and crooked; its inhabitants, according to the official account of the population of France, amount to seven thousand, and the number of its houses is estimated at thirteen hundred, besides above a third of that quantity which are deserted, and more or less in ruins[29]. Fécamp appeared desolate and decaying to its visitors, but they recollected that its very desolation was a voucher of the antiquity from which it derives its interest. It claims an origin as high as the days of Cæsar, when it was called _Fisci Campus_, being the station where the tribute was collected. It is in vain, however, to expect concord amongst etymologists; and, of course, there are other right learned wights who protest against this derivation. They shake their heads and say, "no; you must trace the name, Fécamp, to _Fici Campus_;" and they strengthen their assertion by a sort of _argumentum ad ecclesiam_, maintaining that the _precious blood_, for which Fécamp was long celebrated, corroborates and confirms their tale. A chapel in the abbey church attests the sanctity of this relic. The legend states that Nicodemus, at the time of the entombment of our Saviour, collected in a phial the blood from his wounds, and bequeathed it to his nephew, Isaac; who afterwards, making a tour through Gaul, stopped in the Pays de Caux, and buried the phial at the root of a fig-tree[30].