We went one evening to the Casino to see a "bal des matelottes." It was a curious sight--a band playing on a raised stand--a broad space cleared all round it and lots of people dancing. The great feature, of course, was the matelottes. Their costumes were very effective--they all wore short, very full skirts, different coloured jackets, short, with a belt, very good stout shoes and stockings, and their white frilled caps. They always danced together (very rarely with a man--it is not etiquette for them to dance with any man when their husbands or lovers are at sea), their hands on each other's shoulders. They dance perfectly well and keep excellent time and, I suppose, enjoy themselves, but they look very solemn going round and round until the music stops. Their feet and ankles are usually small. I heard an explanation the other day of their dark skins, clean cut features, and small feet. They are of Portuguese origin. The first foreign sailors who came to France were Portuguese. Many of them remained, married French girls, and that accounts for that peculiar type in their descendants which is very different from the look of the Frenchwoman in general. There are one or two villages in Brittany where the women have the same colouring and features, and there also Portuguese sailors had remained and married, and one still hears some Portuguese names--José, Manuel--and among the women some Annunziatas, Carmelas, etc. We had a house in Brittany one summer and our kitchen maid was called Dolores. CAP GRIS NEZ. We made a lovely excursion one day to Cap Gris Nez--just at the end of a wild bit of coast about twenty-five kilomètres from Boulogne. The road was enchanting on the top of the cliff all along the sea. We passed through Vimereux, a small bathing-place four or five miles from Boulogne, and one or two other villages, then went through a wild desolate tract of sand-hills and plains and came upon the lighthouse, one of the most important of the coast--a very powerful light that all inward-bound boats are delighted to see. There are one or two villas near on the top of the cliff, then the road turns sharply down to the beach--a beautiful broad expanse of yellow sand, reaching very far out that day as it was dead low tide.