Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/309

Rh department of Yonne on the east. This latter district lies on the direct route over to Dijon and the Rhone Valley. Teutonic peoples have here penetrated toward the southeast, following the path of least resistance as always. Why, you will ask, is the Loiret about Orleans so much less Teutonic in type? The answer would appear were the country mapped in detail. The great forest of Orleans, a bit still being left at Fontainebleau, used to cover this little upland between the Seine and the Loire, east of Orleans. It was even until recently so thinly settled that it was known as the Gatinais, or wilderness. Its insular position is for this reason not at all strange. The Teutons have simply passed it by on either side. Those who did not go up the Seine and Yonne followed the course of the Loire. Here, then, is a parting of the ways down either side of Auvergne.

Another one of the best local examples illustrating this law that the Alpine stock is segregated in areas of isolation and of economic disfavor is offered by the Morvan. This "mauvais pays" is a peninsula of the Auvergne plateau, a little southwest of the city of Dijon. It is shown on our geographical map. It is a little bit of wild and rugged country, about forty miles long and half as wide, which rises abruptly out of the fertile plains of Burgundy. Its mountains, which rise three thousand feet, are heavily forested. The soil is sterile and largely volcanic in character; even the common grains are cultivated with difficulty. The limit of cultivation, even for potatoes or rye, is reached by tilling the soil one year in seven. This little region contains at the present time a population of about thirty-five thousand—less to-day than fifty years ago. Until the middle of the century there was not even a passable road through it. It affords, therefore, an exceedingly good illustration of the result of geographical isolation in minute detail. Its population is as strongly contrasted with that of the plains round about as is its topography. The people, untouched by foreign influence to a considerable extent, have intermarried, so that the blood has been kept quite pure. The region is socially interesting as one of the few places in all France where the