La Teste itself is a picturesque little village, and larger than it looks at first sight. Each cottage has its own well, arched over. Up each frontage, lined with outside shutters, is trained the home vine, while little plantations of vines abound everywhere. The women travel by train with their heads loosely covered with shawls, when not wearing the stiff caps or hats, and it is very usual for them to carry, as a hold-all, a sort of little waistcoat buttoning over a parcel; a waistcoat embroidered with some device or other. Illustration: THE GIRONDE SHEPHERDS. [_Page 51._ Coming back to Arcachon, we met a typical old peasant woman, with two huge straw baskets--one white and one black, a big stick, and a black handkerchief tied over her head, and a most characteristic face, crumpled, seamed and lined with all the different hand-writings over it that the pencil of Fate had drawn during a long lifetime. When young, the peasant women of the Landes are not striking. The peculiar characteristics of the face are unvarying; you meet with them everywhere all about the Gironde and Bordeaux. The faces are sallow, low-browed, with dark hair and eyes. They are brisk-looking, but just escape being either pretty or noticeable. Most of the women, too, that we saw, were of small stature and insignificant looking. It is when they are old that the beauty to which they are heir, is developed. The women of the Landes are evening primroses: the striking quality of their faces comes out after the heyday of life is over. It seems that the face of the Gironde woman needs many seasons of sun and heat to bring out the sap of the character. The autumn tints are beautiful in faces, as in trees. Theirs is the beauty that Experience--that Teacher of the Thing-as-it-is--brings; and it is in the clash of the meeting of the peculiar personality with the experience from outside, that character springs to the birth. You see--if you can read it--their life, in the eyes of the dweller by the countryside. In a more civilised class one can but read too often, what has been put on with intention, as a mask. Civilisation and convention eliminate individuality, as far as possible, and they recommend dissimulation, and we, oftener than not, take their recommendation.