ing it in a pyramid on the bank-anything and everything that takes place on the water or along the embankments of the Seine suffices to interest a group of citizens, and causes them to halt and gaze. The parapet of one of the bridges seems literally black with people, all leaning over the rail, and watching with the most intense interest. Watching what? Simply a dog swimming in the river, and retrieving the stick that his master throws for him. A still larger and more respectfully attentive crowd will be drawn by the fascinating spectacle of a handsome poodle being clipped and washed world, for while they shave the dog's hind quarters, they yet leave bands and arabesques of wool that relieve the nudity, together with rings of wool around the legs, and coquettish tufts which give distinction to the tail. The dog-clipper, like the human hair-dresser, is an artist; he studies every subject that is intrusted to his care, and arranges the coiffure in each case according to the character of the poodle. To one he gives a modest and unobtrusive head, and cuts the hair about his nose so that the mustache remains as unworldly as that of an English country curate. To another he reserves by one of those artists whose stock in trade consists of a box, a pair of shears, and an inscription or sign such as the following: "Pascal, tondeur. Tond les chiens, coupe les chats et les oreilles. Va-t-en ville." Pascal and his rivals operate along the river at the points where the quays slope gently down into the water. They wash, soap, bathe, brush, and comb house-dogs in general; and they shear the poodles with an art and an inventive tastefulness that are without parallel in any country of the by a clever turn of the clippers one of those flaring and impertinent mustaches to which silly girls hang their hearts. All these niceties and finesses the pensive idler observes and notes; and he remarks, too, the disdainful way in which the poodle with the impertinent mustache holds out his paw after his toilet is finished, when the gentleman who accompanies him, evidently a flunky of very superior grade, clasps between the frills of the left fore leg a dainty gold bracelet bearing the name and the coronet of poodle's aristocratic mistress. This last detail of his toilet having been attended to, the poodle departs with the flunky, followed by the admiring eyes of the deeply impressed public; and in the afternoon he will be seen in the Bois de Boulogne accompanying his pretty mistress, Madame la Marquise de B., and surveying the fashionable world from the cushions of her elegant victoria. Another bathing scene that attracts the loungers is that of the horses. All along the quays, at intervals on both sides of the river, a space is marked out by means of great floating logs attached together and tied to the bank at the ends. Particularly in the late afternoon hours the draymen bring their horses and ride them into these baths until the water almost covers their backs. The horses from the cavalry barracks are also bathed in the same way, and what with the wonderful background of trees and monuments, the sunset effect, the long shadows, the glowing sky, and the glistening water, the scene is always one that delights the painter as well as the simple-minded idler, who submits unconsciously to the charm of the evening hour and to the joy of the moment. The Seine, like Paris itself, is universal; its variety is such that you can always find a bit that completes the dream towards which your soul is tending, just as in the street scenery of Paris you can find souvenirs or suggestions of all the provinces of France and of all the countries of Europe. What, for instance, can be more rural, more provincial, more full of the sentiment and poetry of declining day, than the landscape depicted in our illustration? The three figures sit ting on a log, the tired horses, the glistening, mysterious water, the floating wash-house with its chimney, the moored lighters, the bridge with the trees and buildings-surely all this is the portrait of some lazy country place where the days are long and where men are calm and patient. No. This is a bit of the Seine at Paris. It is the bathing-place for horses just above Notre Dame, and the bridge is the Pont Marie, which connects the Île Saint Louis with the Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville; in other words, it is a spot in the very heart of the capital. Not far from this Pont Marie is a delightfully picturesque spot, greatly appreciated for other reasons by the small boys of the quarter; this is the marché aux pommes, or apple market. The fruit comes chiefly from Normandy, and is brought in great lighters roofed over with boards and tarpaulin. These lighters are moored off the quay almost facing the Hôtel de Ville, where they remain in permanence all through the autumn and winter until there is no more fruit. The apple trade is busiest in the winter, of course, when the waters of the Seine frequently swell and overflow the banks, and then the floating market has to be connected with the shore by means of improvised bridges of broad planks with hand-rails, along which the stevedores run with baskets of fruit balanced on their shoulders. Such is the scene shown in our wintry sketch, where we see the apple market, the flooded quay, a smoking wash-house, and in the background the Palais de Justice, the Conciergerie with its pepper-box towers, and in the far background the majestic silhouette of the Louvre. Elsewhere along the quays we find here and there two or three boats moored in permanence like the fruitlighters, with the inscription "Marché au charbon, gros et détail." These lighters come chiefly from the timber country of the Morvan, and with its load below and above the water each one contains many thousands of bushels of charcoal, and becomes in itself, as the inscription says, a wholesale and retail charcoal market. The point on the river that seems attract to more than any other the respectful curiosity of the Parisians is the Port Saint Nicolas du Louvre. This is the true seaport of Paris. At this quay, nestling under the Pont du Carrousel and shaded by the fine trees that grow along the Quai des Tuileries, the sea-going ships cast anchor and discharge their cargo. The regular, direct service of the Burnett line of steamers between London and Paris starts from here, and also some steamers running between Paris, Brest, Nantes, and Bayonne. Thus "Paris port de mer" is already a reality, though of course in a modest way, and for ships of light draught only. Nevertheless, the Parisians, as they cross the bridge, always look to see what strange merchandise the English steamer has brought from beyond the seas, and few of them remember that hundreds of years ago Lutetia was the intermediary port through which the products of the East and the wines of Greece and Italy passed on their way from Marseilles to the great island of the Britons. THE APPLE MARKET. Of this ancient line of traffic by way of the Seine, the Saône, and the Rhone we are reminded by the numerous tug-boats and barges that we see plying on the river, BASSIN DE LA VILLETTE. with the names Havre, Paris, Lyon, printed on the prows and sterns. Besides the ordinary tug-boats, we notice strange iron hulks pierced with port-holes, and looking not unlike gunboats. In the hold of these hulks there is a steam engine, and on the flush deck six broad grooved pulleys or drums fixed in sets of three on two parallel axles, and moved by big cog-wheels worked directly by the engine. Now along the bed of the Seine from Rouen to Paris and from Paris to Montereau, and along the bed of the Yonne from Montereau to La Roche, there lies an iron chain with links about three inches long. Each of the tug-boats in question is attached to this chain, which is caught up by a pulley at one end of the deck, wound round each of the six pulleys in the middle, and passed back into the water over a pulley at the other end of the deck. The tug is round at both ends, and winds itself along backwards or forwards, pulling on the chain, and dragging a string of ten or fifteen huge barges. Of course these tugs cannot quit the chain without unmounting the machinery on their decks. When two trains meet, one going up stream and the other down, the tugs simply exchange trains and retrace their course, the one that was coming up going back with the down train, and the one that was coming down going up again with the up train. The chain is kept in position along the bed of the river merely by its own weight. The speed of these chain tugs is not great, but their dragging power is enormous. More rapid service is provided by screw tug-boats and by very long barges with paddle wheels in the stern. All these varieties of tugs and many descriptions of river and canal barges may be studied from the picturesque Pont de l'Estacade and along the Quai de la Rapée, where are the offices of various lines of inland navigation. And what informal offices they are! Mere wooden toy houses, with flowers growing on the roofs, and nasturtiums trained round the windows. Nevertheless, this is a busy part of the city. It is true that nobody seems to be in a great hurry. The employés work in a leisurely way, and find plenty of time to chat with the customs officers, who lounge about watchfully, clad in tasteful green uniforms. But still, business proceeds all the same. Carts are going to and fro from morning until night, the steamcranes swing round and rattle their chains, and merchandise is loaded and unloaded. The cargo is building - iron, plaster, cement, drain - pipes, tiles, crock ery, fire-wood, barrels of wine, sacks of flour, mineral-waters from Vals and Orezza. The return freight for the first-class boats is sugar and Parisian manufactured articles, and for the ordinary barges and canal-boats little except empty barrels, which they carry back to Burgundy to be refilled. At the end of the Quai de la Rapée is the entrance to the Canal Saint-Martin, which passes through a tunnel under the Place de la Bastille and under the Boulevard Richard Lenoir, and comes to light again in the Faubourg Saint-Martin, following the Quai de Valmy and the Quai de Jemmappes until it reaches the Bassin de la Villette, where are the great commercial docks of Paris, lined with endless warehouses and immense depots for grain and miscellaneous merchandise. The aspect of the great basin of La Villette is very interesting, and a certain strangeness is given to the view of the ensemble by the gigantic iron passerelle, or foot bridge, which has been thrown across it with a height of span that might have been useful had the docks been destined to receive full-rigged ships, but which seems pretentious considering that the river steamers have only short funnels, and the canal-boats boast merely a modest mast to carry their tow-line. How ever, we cannot complain. The great passerelle is decidedly picturesque, especially towards mid-day, when it is crossed by informal processions of laughing and joyous girls, who come out of the neigh boring workshops to lunch upon fried potatoes, and to give the chance lounger an idea of the type of feminine beauty that prevails in the faubourgs. and Les Vosges, there being a waterway from Paris to Strasburg and the Rhine by the Marne and the canal of the Marne, while by the river Oise and its three canals of Saint-Quentin, the Sambre, and the Ardennes we can reach the basin of the Scheldt and the Meuse, and bring slowly but cheaply to Paris the products of the coal-fields of Mons and Charleroi. As for Lyons, the centre of France, and Marseilles, the great port of the Mediterranean, they are placed in water communication with Paris by two routes. By one route we go up the Seine as far as Saint-Mammès, and then take the Canal du Loing, the Canal de Briare, the Canal latéral de la Loire, and the Canal du Centre, which leads into the Saône, by which we reach Lyons and the Rhône. By another route we go up the Yonne and gain the Saône by the Canal de Bourgogne, while by the Canal de l'Est we can push into Germany and Switzerland. Barges go to and fro from Paris along these routes, bringing various cargoes, but principally building materials, firewood, coal, gravel, sand, and wine. Towards Bercy the banks of the Seine are covered with thousands of barrels of wine; between Notre Dame and Auteuil the quays are occupied by enormous piles of fire-wood, mountains of sand and pebbles, heaps of rough millstone, or meulière, used for the foundations of Parisian buildings. Along the Canal Saint-Martin the quays are encumbered with huge blocks of building-stone, and between the barges and the warehouses there is a perpetual going to and fro of laborious men carrying on their shoulders bags of plaster of Paris and cement or baskets of coal, the former white as millers, the latter black as negroes. The Canal Saint-Martin is divided by a succession of locks, between which the boats are hauled by human strength and patience. Two or three men hitch themselves on to a rope, and with slow and short steps, pressing and straining doggedly between each one, Along the quays of the Seine, of the they pull and pull, and the heavy barge Canal Saint-Martin, and of the Bassin de follows sluggishly. Often the barge that la Villette we find merchandise that is is being towed along in this painful way brought literally from all parts of the is a microcosm in itself. Apart from the world to Paris by water. By means of cargo and the nautical accessories, you the Seine, Paris is in water communica- see in the stern a neat little house, where tion with Rouen and Havre, and conse- the bargee and his wife live. The wife is quently with the great ocean lines. On preparing the soup and peeling carrots the Quai de la Rapée we see steamers and and potatoes, while the children play on trains of barges that go to Nancy, Épinal, the roof with the dog. Suddenly from VOL. LXXXV.-No. 509.-73 |