Right away down
below are the hoary old houses of the town, hemmed in by the fortified wall
that surrounds this side of the island. Then stretching away towards the
greeny-blue coast-line is the long line of digue or causeway on which one
may see a distant puff of white smoke, betokening the arrival of the early
train of the morning. The attaches of the rival hotels are already awaiting
the arrival of the early batch of sight-seers. All over the delicately
tinted sands there are constantly moving shadows from the light clouds
forming over the sea, and blowing freshly from the west there comes an
invigorating breeze.
Before even the museum can have a real interest for us, we must go back to
the early times when Mont St Michel was a bare rock; when it was not even
an island, and when the bay of Mont St Michel was covered by the forest of
Scissey.
It seems that the Romans raised a shrine to Jupiter on the rock, which soon
gave to it the name of Mons Jovis, afterwards to be contracted into
Mont-Jou. They had displaced some earlier Druidical or other
sun-worshippers who had carried on their rites at this lonely spot; but the
Roman innovation soon became a thing of the past and the Franks, after
their conversion to Christianity, built on the rock two oratories, one to
St Stephen and the other to St Symphorian.
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