POITIERS TO THE PYRENEES
deux-Mers. For several miles we skirted a line of white houses, half villa, half château, set in well-kept gardens; then came vineyards, as exquisitely kept, and packed into every cranny of the rocky coteaux, save where here and there a little town broke the view of the river—chief among them Langoiron, with its fine fortress-ruin, and Cadillac enclosed in stout quadrangular walls.
The latter place has the interest of being one of those symmetrically designed towns which, toward the close of the Middle Ages, were founded throughout south-western France to draw "back to the land" a population depleted and demoralised by long years of warfare and barbarian invasion. These curious made-to-order towns—bastides, or villes neuves—were usually laid out on a rectilinear plan, with a town-hall forming the centre of an arcaded marketplace, to which four streets led from gateways in the four walls. Among the most characteristic examples are Aigues Mortes, which Saint Louis called into existence to provide himself with a Mediterranean port, and Cordes, near Gaillac, founded a little later by Count Raymond of
[ 101 ]
