Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country. M. F. Mansfield

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      Both above and below Touraine, at Montrichard, at Loches, and Beaugency, are still to be found scattering examples of feudal fortresses and donjons which are as representative of their class as are the best Norman structures of the same era, the great fortresses of Arques, Falaise, Domfront, and Les Andelys being usually accounted as the types which gave the stimulus to similar edifices elsewhere.

      In this same versatile region also, beginning perhaps with the Orléannais, are a vast number of religious monuments equally celebrated. For instance, the church of St. Benoit-sur-Loire is one of the most important Romanesque churches in all France, and the cathedral of St. Gatien, with its "bejewelled façade," at Tours, the twin-spired St. Maurice at Angers, and even the pompous, and not very good Gothic, edifice at Orléans (especially noteworthy because its crypt is an ancient work anterior to the Capetian dynasty) are all wonderfully interesting and imposing examples of mediæval ecclesiastical architecture.

      Three great tributaries enter the Loire below Tours, the Cher, the Indre, and the Vienne. The first has for its chief attractions the Renaissance châteaux St. Aignan and Chenonceaux, the Roman remains of Chabris, Thézée, and Larçay, the Romanesque churches of Selles and St. Aignan, and the feudal donjon of Montrichard. The Indre possesses the château of Azay-le-Rideau and the sombre fortresses of Montbazon and Loches; while the Vienne depends for its chief interest upon the galaxy of fortress-châteaux at Chinon.

      The Loire is a mighty river and is navigable for nearly nine hundred kilometres of its length, almost to Le Puy, or, to be exact, to the little town of Vorey in the Department of the Haute Loire.

      At Orléans, Blois, or Tours one hardly realizes this, much less at Nevers. The river appears to be a great, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough water in its bed to make a respectable current, leaving its beds and bars of sable and cailloux bare to the sky.

      The scarcity of water, except at occasional flood, is the principal and obvious reason for the absence of water-borne traffic, even though a paternal ministerial department of the government calls the river navigable.

      At the times of the grandes crues there are four metres or more registered on the big scale at the Pont d'Ancenis, while at other times it falls to less than a metre, and when it does there is a mere rivulet of water which trickles through the broad river-bottom at Chaumont, or Blois, or Orléans. Below Ancenis navigation is not so difficult, but the current is more strong.

      From Blois to Angers, on the right bank, extends a long dike which carries the roadway beside the river for a couple of hundred kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. The only thing usually seen on the bosom of the river, save an occasional fishing punt, is one of those great flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships, such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire pictures, for conditions of traffic on the river have not greatly changed.

      Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those one finds on the rivers of the east or north, or on the great canals, it is only about a quarter of the usual size; so, in spite of its great navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is to be considered more as a picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial proposition.

      Where the great canals join the river at Orléans, and from Chatillon to Roanne, the traffic increases, though more is carried by the canal-boats on the Canal Latéral than by the barges on the Loire.

      It is only on the Loire between Angers and Nantes that there is any semblance of river traffic such as one sees on most of the other great waterways of Europe. There is a considerable traffic, too, which descends the Maine, particularly from Angers downward, for Angers with its Italian skies is usually thought of, and really is to be considered, as a Loire town, though it is actually on the banks of the Maine some miles from the Loire itself.

      One thousand or more bateaux make the ascent to Angers from the Loire at La Pointe each year, all laden with a miscellaneous cargo of merchandise. The Sarthe and the Loir also bring a notable agricultural traffic to the greater Loire, and the smaller confluents, the Dive, the Thouet, the Authion, and the Layon, all go to swell the parent stream until, when it reaches Nantes, the Loire has at last taken on something of the aspect of a well-ordered and useful stream, characteristics which above Nantes are painfully lacking. Because of its lack of commerce the Loire is in a certain way the most noble, magnificent, and aristocratic river of France; and so, too, it is also in respect to its associations of the past.

      It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; it has not the burning activity of the Seine as it bears its thousands of boat-loads of produce and merchandise to and from the Paris market; СКАЧАТЬ