Craste

See also: Crastes

A craste (of the Gascon crasta , resulting from the Latin Castrum ) indicates, in the Landes of Gascogne, a ditch of drainage, generally dug in sand, arranged to cleanse the wet Lande. Many is carried out during the 19th century. The term passed in the regional vocabulary running.

Presentation

Before the relative law with the cleansing and of setting in culture of the Moors of Gascogne of 1857, crastes are behind each Airial, in limit of the fields. Landais do of them thereafter one of the essential components of the drainage of the vast marshy extents composing their territory. Saint-Mercies quotes them in 1818 under their Gascon name:

“the means of curing these disadvantages (stagnant water) in such a prompt way of effective would be (…) to open many of these broad named ditches there “crastes” in the language of the country”.

After the law of the June 19th 1857, the companies of development of the Moors dig all of the crastes, like the agricultural and industrial Company of Arcachon, which opens 180 km of them. All do not go inevitably in the direction of the strongest slope of the ground, large the craste of Gujan-Mestras is thus traced of west in east.

The services departments of the Gironde on the whole create 2190 km of crastes in this department, leaves with the communes to be connected to it thereafter. It is thus this local but deployed technique with large scales, which allowed the development of the territory, allowing the culture of the Maritime pine, in the absence of more exotic cultures, in particular those of groundnuts, as considered one moment.

Sources

  • the invention of the Coast of Money , Jacques Fénié, Editions Junctions
  • Dictionary of the French Moor , Charles Daney, Editions Loubatières

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