It has been suggested, without proof, that Couëron represents the ancient town of Corbilo, mentioned by Strabo at the beginning of our era. Though unquestionably ancient, at the time of the Revolution it was a small and unimportant parish of poor but industrious farmers. It occupies rolling ground, but little raised above the Loire, to the east of Port Launay and nearly opposite Pellerin. As this commune was easily accessible by river-barge from Nantes, the revolutionists seem to have thought it worth watching, though Citizen Audubon found its people in a tranquil mood when he canvassed their district in behalf of the Central Committee in April, 1793. Couëron is still a farming community, but its population[116] has been considerably swelled in recent years by the development of a large industry for the treatment of lead; it is the shot tower and forest of chimneys of these great metallurgical works that arrest the eye of the traveler as he approaches Couëron by river at the present day. The town is also accessible by railroad, but the steamer journey from Nantes, which is made in less than an hour, is more attractive as well as more direct. In this section the Loire is flanked on either side by bottom lands, reduced in places to narrow strips, which are followed at intervals by elevations called, by courtesy, hills or buttes. To the west of Couëron, and especially at Pellerin, which stands high, these buttes come close to the river, which is eating them away. My visit to Couëron, which was made on a warm midsummer's day in 1913, served to correct certain previous impressions, but I found the old Audubon homestead in its essential aspects but little changed, considering that over a century had rolled by since the naturalist's visit which we have just described. After leaving Nantes at the Gare de la Bourse by one of those quaint little trains which still do service in the less traveled parts of France, we traversed the broad Quai with requisite deliberation, passing shops, warehouses and factories in long array. A slight swerve from the river soon brought us to Chatenay, now a part of the city; it is still some distance from that point before the real countryside is reached, and scenes familiar to southern Brittany are in a measure reproduced. There were the old farmhouses of rough stone, dear to every painter's heart, mellowed by age and lichens, and surrounded by great ricks of straw, for the harvest had been gathered and the stubble fields were brown. There also the farms were divided into small plats, marked by willows or ramparts of stone. On higher ground stood the windmills, characteristic of Brittany also,—stalwart towers of stone, with broad arms of latticed wood ever ready to take the sails.