3-052-384 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A sportsman of the Landes (France), 1880. '...much of the "Landes" has been profitably reclaimed for cultivation and for useful habitation;...around the Lakes of Cazau, Biscarrosse, and Aureilhan...the sportsman will find an abundance of game, wild ducks and snipes, as well as hares and rabbits...The rustic people of the Landes...are notoriously accustomed to walk on stilts, by which means they are enabled to traverse the swamps and marshes, or to stride over dykes and creeks, and to command an extensive view, from their elevated footing, over the level plain where they pass their lonely days. Even since the aspect of the country has been greatly changed by modern improvement, they have not altogether laid aside the stilts, which are still found an expeditious aid to the performance of a long journey, independently of the common roads; and whenever the countryman takes his gun for "la chasse," intent on killing a fee brace of wildfowl or rabbits, he is apt to be mounted upon these queer artificial prolongations of the human leg. He also carries a long staff with an iron claw at the end of it, by which he can pick up the game he has won, and he is happy to avail himself...of the assistance of an intelligent dog'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.