During the winter season these extensive heaths are converted by the prolonged rains into immense marshes, as the impermeable _alios_ within six inches of the surface prevents the absorption of moisture. The peasant is then obliged to shut himself up with his beasts in his low, damp cottage, with peat for his fuel, a pine torch for his candle, brackish water relieved by a dash of vinegar for drink, meagre broth, corn bread, and perhaps salt fish for his dinner. Whole generations are said to live under one roof in the Landes, so thoroughly are the people imbued with the patriarchal spirit. Woman has her rights here--at least in the house. The old _dauna_ (from _domina_, perhaps) rules the little kingdom with a high hand, including her sons and her sons’ wives down to the remotest generation, with undisputed sway. It is the very paradise of mothers-in-law. The _paterfamilias_ seldom interferes if his soup is ready at due time and she makes both ends meet at the end of the year, with a trifle over for a barrel of _pique-pout_ to be indulged in on extraordinary occasions. From La Teste to the valley of the Gave this old house-mother is queen of the hive, active, thrifty, keen of eye, and sharp of tongue. The slightest murmur is frozen into silence beneath the arctic ray of her Poyser-like glance. She is a hawk by day and an owl by night. She directs the spinning and weaving of the wool and flax, orders the meals, and superintends the wardrobe of the whole colony. The land is so poor that it is seldom divided among the children. The oldest heir becomes head of the family, and they all fare better by sharing in the general income. In unity there is safety--and economy. At every door is the clumsy machine for breaking the flax that is spun during the long winter evenings for the sail-makers of Bayonne or the weavers of Béarn, whose linen, if not equal to that of Flanders, is as good as that of Normandy. Before every house is also the huge oven where the bread is baked for general consumption. Flocks of geese paddle from pool to pool in the marshes, and wild ducks breed undisturbed in the fens. In the villages on the borders of the Landes you hear in the morning a sharp whistle that might serve for a locomotive. It is the swineherd summoning his charge, which issue in a gallop, two or three from each house, to seek their food in the moors. They all come back in the evening, and go to their own pens to get the bucket of bran that awaits them. Feeding thus in the wild, their meat acquires a peculiar flavor. Most of these animals go into the market. The hams of Bayonne have always been famous. We might say they are historic, for Strabo speaks of them. When the rainy season is at an end, these bogs and stagnant pools give out a deadly miasma in the burning sun, engendering fevers, dysentery, and the fatal pellagra. The system is rapidly undermined, and the peasant seldom attains to an advanced age. He marries at twenty and is old at forty.