The day I first saw Gujan-Mestras there was a grey, lowering sky, and everything was dun-coloured. But the port was alive with activity, interest, and excitement. The huts, which face the bay, are built all on the same pattern--of one story, dark brown in colour, wooden-boarded, and roofed with rounded, light yellow tiles, which look in the distance like oyster shells. Over the doors of some are little inscriptions: over some a red cross is chalked, or a _fleur de lys_. The _parcheurs_ do not sleep here; they live in the village above, but these huts are simply for use while they are at work during the day. A road leads up from the station lined with these huts, and a long row of them faces the bay and skirts one side of it. Beside the water are many clumps of heather tied up at the stalks, which are for packing purposes: and there are also many wooden troughs, sieves, and trestles. The boats used for fishing are mostly long and narrow, black or green as to colour, and with pointed prows. Most of them had the letters "ARC," and a number painted on them: for instance, I noticed "ARC. 4S 47" upon one name-board. All the boats have regular, upright staves placed all along the inner sides, and are planked with the roughest of boarding. The first day I saw Gujan-Mestras, as I came up to the landing stage, the boats were all rounding the corner of the headland, which is crowned by the big crucifix, and crowding into the little harbour. As they swung rapidly round, down came the sails with a flop, and in a moment the gunwales bent low to the surface of the water. A moment later still, they grounded on the little beach, and were instantly surrounded by a great crowd of excited, jabbering _parcheurs_, gesticulating and arguing energetically. They seemed to be expecting some one who had failed to put in an appearance. The baskets were soon full of glistening, steely fish, their greenish, speckled backs in strong contrast to the grey, oval baskets in which they lay, heap upon heap. The women helped unlade the boats, and also in cleaning and sorting the fish. One woman whom I noticed, in an enormous overhanging, black sun-bonnet, slouched far over her face, her dress, made of some material like soft silk, tucked up and pinned behind her, went clattering along in her wooden sabots, wheeling the fish before her in a rough wheelbarrow. They shone literally with a dazzling centre of light. Then came slowly lumbering along the road, one of the typical waggons of the neighbourhood, which are disproportionately long for their breadth, with huge wheels; at either end two upright poles, and on each side a sort of fence of staves, yellow for choice.