I resumed my journey along the shore, and in the course of it, I had the opportunity to notice and study the dark zone of clouds which hemmed me in on every side, to the extent of, I should judge, not less than eight or ten leagues. On my left was Saintonge, expectant, dull, passive; on my right, Medoc, from which I was separated by the river, lay in a gloomy and misty stillness. Behind me, coming from the west and brooding over the Ocean, was a whole world of cloud and mist, but in my face, and opposing that world of cloud, blew the fresh land-breeze. Sweeping down the course of the Gironde, it seemed that the funereal pall that rose above the Ocean, might be repulsed and dispelled. Still uncertain, I looked behind me to the shoal of Cordovan, from which, pale, fantastic, weird, its tower rose like some spectre that said--"Woe, woe, woe!" I was not mistaken. I saw quite plainly that the land-breeze not only would be conquered, but that it would be compelled to become the help-mate of its seeming foe. That land-breeze blew quite low over the Gironde, swept away from before it all dwarfish obstacles, but still hovered beneath the high pitched and inky clouds that swept in from the Ocean, and formed for those clouds, as it were, a slippery inclined plane over which they would glide only the more easily and the more swiftly. In a brief space all was still from the landward, every breath died away beneath the thick grey mists; and, unopposed, the upper winds swept the ominous storm-clouds shoreward. When I reached the vineyards of Vallière, near St. George, hosts of people were busily at work, striving to improve the brief time during which they could hope to labor. The first heavy drops of rain came down, solid and smiting as so much molten lead, and in another instant, one was right glad to find a sheltering roof.