"Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, "I would rather reef topsails in a gale of wind than go up there, at any rate."
The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be used except with naked feet. The instrument with which he cut the tree was as sharp as a razor, and required long practice to acquire the knack of using it. I wondered that the gashing did not kill the trees, as some of the largest were marked with half-a-dozen cuts from the ground to the fork. Here and there, indeed, you found one which had succumbed to the process, rotted, and fallen; but the majority seemed in very good case, nevertheless.
"Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More than half the bark had certainly gone in these perpendicular stripes, and yet it looked strong and stately "That tree is more than a hundred years old; and that is not a bad age for either a man or a fir."
Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily towards the sea. The ground, thanks to the debris of the pines, was as slippery as ice, except where we plunged into fine hot sand, half way to the knees. Every now and then we crossed what I cannot describe better than by calling it a perfectly bald spot in the woods--a circular patch of pure white sand--in certain lights, you might have taken it for snow. All around were the black pines; but not a blade or a twig broke the drifted fineness of the bald white patch. You could find neither stone nor shell--nothing but subtle, powdery sand--every particle as minute and as uniform as those in an hour-glass.
"That," said my guide, when we came in view of the first of these singular little saharas--"that is a devil's garden."
"And what does he grow there?" I asked. The man lowered his voice: "It is in these spots of fine white sand that all the sorcerers and witches, and warlocks in France--ay, and I have heard, in the whole world--meet to sing, and dance, and frolic; and the devil sits in the middle. So, at least," he added, after a pause, and in a more sprightly tone--"so the peasants say."
"Well, I do not know. There's witches, for certain, in the Landes,--old women--but whether they come flying out here to dance round the devil or no--the peasants say so for certain--but I don't think I believe it."