Round each field, and from time immemorial, the
peasants have piled mud walls, about six feet high, and prismatic in
shape; on the top of which grow chestnuts, oaks and beeches. The walls
thus planted are called hedges (Norman hedges) and the long branches
of the trees sweeping over the pathways arch them. Sunken between
these walls (made of a clay soil) the paths are like the covered ways
of a fortification, and where the granite rock, which in these regions
comes to the surface of the ground, does not make a sort of rugged
natural pavement, they become so impracticable that the smallest
vehicles can only be drawn over them by two pairs of oxen or Breton
horses, which are small but usually vigorous. These by-ways are so
swampy that foot-passengers have gradually by long usage made other
paths beside them on the hedge-banks which are called "rotes"; and
these begin and end with each division into fields. In order to cross
from one field to another it is necessary to climb the clay banks by
means of steps which are often very slippery after a rain.
Travellers have many other obstacles to encounter in these intricate
paths. Thus surrounded, each field is closed by what is called in the
West an /echalier/. That is a trunk or stout branch of a tree, one end
of which, being pierced, is fitted to an upright post which serves as
a pivot on which it turns.
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