The great distance between north-western and south-eastern France may lead us to expect wide differences. The variety that exists in great nations is still more striking when we observe the trenchant differences that often divide populations which, geographically, are near neighbours. The Morvan is a district about fifty miles from north to south by thirty from east to west. It is not marked on the maps of France, but the reader will understand its situation when I tell him that it embraces portions of four departments: the Yonne to the north, the Côte d’Or to the east, the Nièvre to the west, and Saône-et-Loire to the south. In shape it resembles the Isle of Man, but it includes about five times as much territory. Autun is just outside of it to the south-east, and Avallon just inside it to the north. This district, or region, is marked by a peculiar physical character. It is a land of hills (not mountains), woods, and running streams, and the inhabitants, until their country was opened by good roads, were scarcely less a people apart than the Bretons. They have a language of their own, which, though akin to French, is not French, and the people are now for the most part able to speak French or Morvandeau at will (just as in the Highlands of Scotland they speak English or Gaelic), and their French is remarkably pure. [Sidenote: The Morvan Race.] [Sidenote: Material Civilisation.] [Sidenote: Cookery in Burgundy.] [Sidenote: Gardening.] Now, if you compare the people of the Morvan with those of the plain of Burgundy and the Saône, which is quite near, you find the most striking differences. First there is a difference of race and of physical constitution, the Morvan race being the smaller of the two, the women more frequently pretty and well made on their small scale, with a predominance of dark hair and eyes, and a rich rather than a fair complexion. Besides this, there is a great disparity in material civilisation. The art of cookery has been accounted one of the most effectual tests of human advancement; when the people are clever cooks they are usually, it is said, clever in other arts besides, and they set a value on civilised life generally, and will be at great pains to maintain it. Such an art as cookery may have nothing to do with the intellectual side of life, and the Muse may exist on a little oatmeal, though she generally does her work better on a more varied and more interesting diet; but cookery is of great economic importance, because a cooking people will appreciate all the alimentary gifts of Nature and master the arts that procure them, whilst the non-cooking races are negligent and careless providers. The French are reputed to be a cooking race, but the Morvan people scarcely understand cookery better than the Scottish Highlanders. Servants from the Morvan are often sharp and active, honest, willing, laborious, cheerful, contented, amiable, yet with all these fine qualities invariably unable to cook a dinner.