. La Côte d'Émeraude. rt-ment of Digues et Marais. The Mare de St. Coulmanis continually shrinking, and is doubtless destined at nodistant date to disappear. After the rains that closethe winter in these parts, it expands into a little lakeof about twenty square miles, abounding in wild duckand other waterfowl, and navigated by the inhabitantsin flat-bottomed boats amid the tops of alders andwillows. At other times it affords scanty pasture,and rushes much used for thatching. In dry summersthe peaty soil easily takes fire, and smoulders for a longtime, emitting a nauseous fume ; the ignited so
. La Côte d'Émeraude. rt-ment of Digues et Marais. The Mare de St. Coulmanis continually shrinking, and is doubtless destined at nodistant date to disappear. After the rains that closethe winter in these parts, it expands into a little lakeof about twenty square miles, abounding in wild duckand other waterfowl, and navigated by the inhabitantsin flat-bottomed boats amid the tops of alders andwillows. At other times it affords scanty pasture,and rushes much used for thatching. In dry summersthe peaty soil easily takes fire, and smoulders for a longtime, emitting a nauseous fume ; the ignited soil isoften a yard in depth, and the fire creeps underground,causing accidents to man and beast. The pasture land,known as nata, and divided into the two beliardsor commons of Miniac and Plerguer, is the subjectof traditional rights and disputes. The owner of anyproperty bordering on it, be it only a corner of fieldor patch of garden, has the right of user, but noquestion of proprietorship or division has ever been 132. RUE DE L HORLOGE, DINAN Les Marais de Dol raised. These rights are enjoyed by some fiftyhomesteads, scattered among seven villages. TheState levies a small land tax, and there is also a tax forthe Digues et Marais. These are obviously earnedby public work done, and are cheerfully paid. Notso, the much heavier communal tax that, early lastcentury, was imposed on the borderers of Plerguer,and that is still looked on as a grievance. Theborderers of Miniac have always stoutly resisted anytrenching on their rights, and have been upheld bythe courts : by the Parliament of Brittany against thelords of Gouillon in 1661, and by the Prefecture ofIlle et Vilaine against their own commune in the railway came, it recognised these rights bypaying compensation, not to the communes but to theborderers. There is abundant evidence that the marshlandwas once forest, on which the sea encroached. Trunksof trees, which are said to be always working theirway slowly to the s
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