Some years ago one could go from Angers to St. Nazaire by boat. It must have been a magnificent trip, extraordinarily calm and serene, amid an abundance of picturesque details; old châteaux and bridges in strong contrast to the prairies of Touraine and the Orléannais. One embarked at the foot of the stupendously towered château of King René, and for a _petite heure_ navigated the Maine in the midst of great _chalands_, fussy little _remorqueurs_ and _barques_ until La Pointe was reached, when the Loire was followed to Nantes and St. Nazaire. To-day this fine trip is denied one, the boats going only so far as La Pointe. Below Angers the Loire flows around and about a veritable archipelago of islands and islets, cultivated with all the luxuriance of a back-yard garden, and dotted with tiny hamlets of folk who are supremely happy and content with their lot. Some currents which run behind the islands are swift flowing and impetuous, while others are practically elongated lakes, as dead as those _lômes_ which in certain places flank the Saône and the Rhône. All these various branches are united as the Loire flows between the piers of the ungainly bridge of the Chemin-de-fer de Niort as it crosses the river at Chalonnes. Champtocé and Montjean follow, each with an individuality all its own. Here the commerce takes on an increased activity, thanks to the great national waterway known as the "Canal de Brest à Nantes." Here at the busy port of Montjean--which the Angevins still spell and pronounce _Montéjean_--the Loire takes on a breadth and grandeur similar to the great rivers in the western part of America. Montjean is dominated by a fine ogival church, with a battery of arcs-boutants which are a joy in themselves. On the other bank, lying back of a great plain, which stretches away from the river itself, is Champtocé, pleasantly situated on the flank of a hill and dominated by the ruins of a thirteenth-century château which belonged to the cruel Gilles de Retz, somewhat apocryphally known to history as "Barbe-bleu"--not the Bluebeard of the nursery tale, who was of Eastern origin, but a sort of Occidental successor who was equally cruel and bloodthirsty in his attitude toward his whilom wives. From this point on one comes within the sphere of influence of Nantes, and there is more or less of a suburban traffic on the railway, and the plodders cityward by road are more numerous than the mere vagabonds of the countryside. The peasant women whom one meets wear a curious bonnet, set on the head well to the fore, with wings at the side folded back quite like the pictures that one sees of the mediæval dames of these parts, a survival indeed of the middle ages.