It had long been my wish to explore these Landes, and at length an advertisement appearing in one of the papers that a diligence would go to La Teste one day in the Christmas week, I instantly caught at the idea, and my travelling companion, a M. de B----, and myself, engaged places in this conveyance under the idea of seeing the Landes at our ease. However, one of the party cried off the night before, and De B---- and myself set out without him armed with a partridge-pie and a pair of pistols. The diligence was crowded with a company consisting of two Jew brokers, three pointer dogs, an exciseman, and two sportsmen, together with guns and brandy bottles, and having been drawn slowly for about two leagues through roads that would be a disgrace to the Sandwich Islands, our conductor made us get out to lighten the carriage.
The wildness of a desert now began to reign around us. Vast tracts of sand and uncultivated moor; with large, pine forests, were the only objects visible, except when a cart, exactly like a hog-trough covered with a gipsy's tent, was drawn past us by two dun oxen, while the master, stretched at his full length with his head out at the front, goaded them on with a long stick; the whole giving a very Hottentotish appearance to the scene. It also sometimes happened that we distinguished, moving across the distant sky, an elevated being, who from his long thin shanks and shapeless body, you might have taken for a large ostrich or a gigantic crane, but would never have fancied to be a human creature, until near inspection let you into all the machinery of stilts and sheepskins. Just after passing one of the forests, I was surprised to hear the first notes of Corelli's hymn to the Virgin, whistled clear and shrill in the distance; but it soon varied into a wilder air, and the musician approached us with immense strides, lifting his stilts high over every obstacle, without ever ceasing to knit a pair of stockings which he held half-finished in his hand. We wondered at his coming so near, for the Landois generally avoid all strangers, but on entering into conversation with him, we found that he had served in the army, spoke tolerable French, and was more civilized altogether than the rest of his countrymen. However, after an absence of seven years, old habits had resumed their empire; he came back to his deserts, once more mounted his stilts, and went whistling about, knitting stockings and tending sheep; as contentedly as if he had never seen fairer countries or mixed in more busy scenes.