Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1881-05-04
The Isle of Jersey.

Inc dencate Italian beauty OF Jersey,
writes an enthusiastic correspondent, re-
quires the glory of cloudless sunshine to
let the traveller see it as it should be
seen. Grim old st. Malo, on the other
hand looks most like itself beneath the cold
gray sky of winter, amid bowling winds
and flashing waves. It is true that of
late years, and more especially since it's
connection with Paris by the opening of
the Rennes-St. Malo railway in 1864,
the stern old seaport has been consider
ably toned down. The narrow sitting
allies which once burrowed in the shad-
ow of the city wall, the gloomy IS coupe
gorge" courts whose hideous pictur-
esqueness might have tasked the word
painting of Dickens himself, exist no
longer. The march of progress has
swept away Victor Hugo's terrible "Ja-
cressarde," and even the street in which
it stood. The traveller may now look in
vain for the tumbledown shed described
in by the great master with such CHASTITY
vlvidness: "The eye might have dis
tinguished in it's shadow bodies, droop-
ing heads, forms stretched out lazily,
bundles of rags of both sexes, pro-
miscuous assemblage, strange and re-
Voting mass of life. On stormy night
the rain fell upon the feet, the whirling
snow settled on the bodies of those
wretched sleepers. A dismal meeting,
where misery and weakness, half-sobered
debauchery, WEAKNESS from long walk
ing to and fro, with evil thoughts, in
quest OF bread, pallor with closed eye
lids, remorse, envy, lay fostering in the
same miasma with faces that had the
look of death, and disheveled hair mixed
with the filth and sweepings of the
Streets
The narrow harbor-mouth through
which SurcoJf used to sail home from
his piratical expeditions in the east is
now protected by solid stone pier ter
r1inating in a neat lighthouse. The
broad belt of smooth water beyond which
the steep, narrow streets and tall, gaunt
houses of ST. Servan (the Brooklyn of
ST. Malo), pile themselves up against
the sky is now crossed by trolling
bridge" worked along a submarine
tramline, and looking very much like a
freight car on stills. Beyond the bold
rocky ridges between which the swift,
dark current of the Rance comes swir-
ling down to the sea, the little fishing
village of Dinard has grown up into
trim white town, Astounding in hotels,
overdressed young ladies, cockney tour
lists, whose forid faces and red whiskers
irresistibly suggest corned beef and
turnips, and all the other characteristics
OF fashionable wateringplace
But the huge gray walls once faced in
the teeth of the wind by tough old
Duguay Trouin still frown defiance upon
the restless sea that roars at their feet.
Still from the rocky headland which ST.
Servan thrusts out into the estuary of
the Rance stands gauntly up, in all it's
bare and desolate grimness, the famous
"Sollidor Tower" The bristling rocks
of the " evil passage, which repealed so
many hostile squadrons in former days,
still show their black, jagged fangs
through the smooth bright waters of the
bay; and from the craggy islet which
blazed warning of peril from England
more than century ago, the tomb of
Chateaubriand, the greatest of st.
Malos countless celebrities, watches over
his native town.