THROUGH THE PYRENEES IN DECEMBER

By Stanley J. Weyman

January 1893

The English Illustrated Magazine

1892-1893

London

WE all, looking back on life, see small patches of the road picked out from the rest, and lying bright and white in the sunshine. They may be small—as nothing by the side of the long dreary stretches that intervene; but every foot of them, every tree in the hedgerow, nay, every burdock and thistle, stands out so clearly that to measure these tracks by the mere time which their passage occupied would be absurd. A few weeks I spent in the Pyrenees form such a patch in my memory; weeks of impressions so vivid that in comparison with them even the time spent in the plain of France before, and in Spanish wanderings later, seems now flat and commonplace. Life amid those giant forms, and in that mountain air, was as life on another level; and blue skies and dazzling snow, bright sunshine and clear distances fill all my pictures of it. I do not think of those weeks as spent in France or Spain, but “up there”—in a country with which London or Madrid have no earthly connection.

After this I may provoke a smile—nay, I shall be read no farther by the least hardy member of the Societe Ramonde—when I confess that I did not ascend Mont Perdu, or the Pic de Nethou, or even the Casque de Roland. And yet for all that there was something singular about my tour. For we spent the early part of the winter, which was an exceptionally fine one, in the mountains; and trod in December roads ordinarily blocked in November. We may boast that over one Col at least—that of Aas de Vielle—we were the last to pass, a stray guide excepted, in the autumn of 1885. We crossed that Col and the Col de Lorry between Urdos and Gabas on November 26^th; and the Cols de Tortes and de Saucede on the 30^th of the same month. We were in the Cirque de Gavarnie on December 4^th: on the 8^th passed the Col d’Aspin above Arreau; on the 11^th walked through the Portillon, from Bagneres de Luchon to Bosost and the Spanish head waters of the Garonne; and in a word enjoyed during the three weeks ending on the last date most glorious weather—days of sunshine and nights of frost at altitudes of from three to seven thousand feet. On December 12^th, the cold suddenly snatching at the day also, we retired in good order to Pau, and were content to make out another week in the lower Pyrenees about Mauleon and St. Jean Pied de Port.

All the valleys of the Pyrenees run into the mountain-wall at right angles, and so are, roughly speaking, parallel to one another. This and the fact that scarcely any of them go right through are the main features of the range. Impassable precipices are nearly always arranged in a semi-circular form at the heads of the valleys so as effectually to close them; and through all the length of the higher Pyrenees—say for a distance of 120 miles—there are but two carriage roads, at most, which pierce the barrier.

Consequently the explorer finds it easy to follow a valley into the heart of the mountains, but this done, he is at a loss how to proceed. He is in a cul-de-sac. Either he must retrace his steps, and if he would see more re-enter through the mouth of another glen, or he must boldly take to a mountain path and reach the next basin by a flank movement over the heights. Of course he chooses the lowest part of the ridge; and this neck-like depression is called a “Col.” The amphitheatre-like head of a valley is often a “Cirque.” And a “Gave” is the torrent which foams along the bottom of the ravine, frequently indulging in falls, which for height and volume are in Europe to be matched only in Norway.

We began our journey at Oloron, a small town at the mouth of the Vallee d’Aspe, the first opening of importance, counting from the west. Here nine o’clock on a fine morning saw us standing in the quaint old-fashioned square awaiting the coach which was to carry us some way into the hills. Among our companions were three Spaniards, who wore the muleteers’ costume—a broad-brimmed hat over a skull-cap or twisted handkerchief, a white shirt, a loose jacket of olive-green velveteen, and slashed knee-breeches of the same with points of red ribbon loosely tied so as to show much of the white drawers beneath; to end all, white stockings. Carts high-laden with wood from the hills stood about the square or on the bridge. The hundred rills, or mill-leets, which here feed the Gave sparkled in the sunshine; and we little though as we marked the roses still clustering about the cottages that this was to be the one wet day of our pilgrimage. But so it was. Our coach—it plies between Olonor and Canfranc in Spain—duly took us up, and set us down; and left to our own devices we lunched in the great kitchen of a tavern, which stood in a part of the defile so narrow that the frowning cliffs scarcely left room fro the road and river to pass. On coming out again we found a gentle shower falling. This presently increased to a steady rain, and later to a heavy downpour, while the walls of our narrow prison soon rose straight up to a roof of grey mist which sank lower each moment. Ah, how it rained! And how wet we were, and tired and mud-stained and bedraggled, when, as night fell, the fog lifted a little, and high up against the precipice on our left, five hundred feet above the road, we espied, grim and dark, with one sentinel on its walls, the fort of Urdos—a frontier post of France. It is a mere bracket, a nest, a balcony against the face of the cliff, with port-holes and passages and casemates cut in the solid rock. The only way up to it—or so I was told—is by a staircase. Two miles beyond the fort we came upon Urdos the village, where an amateur innkeeper took us in. To change and dine occupied but a short time; and this done, it was pleasant to sit by the fire in the kitchen, and watch our companions play with strange Spanish cards; or strive to make out what we could of the dialect, half Spanish, half French, which was talked about us.

The steep walls of our valley had so shut us in on this day that we had not so much as seen snow. There might not have been any within a hundred miles of us. Instead we had marveled at the luxuriance of the vegetation at heights rare in England, and compared the cliff-faces, clothed in rich shades of brown and purple and green, in ferns and box and a hundred clinging plants, with the bare precipices and stony screes that guard the fjelds of Norway. Consequently when we consulted our host as to the route over the mountains to Gabas in the next valley, and he spoke doubtfully of the depth of the snow, and the probability of the pass being blocked, we wondered. We suspected that he was making much of the difficulties, and rebelled against taking a guide.

One was taken, however. He came to call us at daybreak next morning, a stout fellow with a dark visage and a broken nose, cheery and good-tempered, and with a skin bottle at his side that held a truly marvelous quantity of wine. Eight o’clock saw the three of us climbing the steep path that wound up through the box-trees at the back of the inn; and so mounting higher and higher until the village and the little plots of land about it and the silver streak of torrent lay beneath us in the sunshine, no bigger than a child’s toys. Then the snowy cone of the Pic d’Aspe came into sight at the head of the Urdos valley, between us and the land of legend and romance, which our fancies peopled with a hundred Cids and a thousand Don Quixotes. Presently, on the other side of the valley, and so behind us, more snow heights and plains came into view; nor was it long before, steadily climbing, for the most part up the dry bed of a stream, we rose above the snow-line of these opposite heights, without ourselves coming to any, our flank of the hill enjoying the noon-day sun. By ten o’clock we thought we had done enough for the time; and were glad to fling ourselves down hot and breathless by a small stream, and take lunch and a pull at the guide’s bottle.

And then on again, taking care to avoid such outlying spurs of snow as we began to encounter. From time to time we saw something or other to rouse our flagging spirits. Now it would be an eagle soaring over us, now the tracks of a bear, or a pair of izards (the Pyrenean chamois) seen crossing a shoulder far away to the right. Forced at last to take to the snow, we advanced foot by foot, with no danger but much toil, towards the blue lunette, the bite where the sky ate into the ridge above us, which marked the first of the two passes we had to surmount—the Col de Lorry. We gained it, and cast one glance—only one, for we were hot and a freezing wind was blowing across the top—at the chaos of peaks and snow-fields we saw about us. Then we plunged downwards into a cup-like valley of virgin snow, where the blue dome above, the pure white round us seemed to unearthly beauty; relieved by no touch of other colour save the pale sea-green that lurked in our sunken foot prints, or gleamed more faintly in the ominous blocks of ice, which, as we neared the bottom, began to lie here and there, half buried by the snow.

Our guide, it was clear, did not like these blocks; for he presently turned aside from the short cut he was taking—right across the basin to the Col d’Aas de Vielle, which notched the farther rim; and slightly ascending again, began to skirt the hollow. This process was not made more pleasant by his hint that we must neither slip nor make a noise, for fear of an avalanche. He pointed out that the snow on which we were moving was very liable to slide; and showed the track by which the ice had fallen from parts of the mountain overtopping our basin. There was no need to caution us after this. We went as delicately as ever did Agag; and, no mischance befalling us, reached by great exertions the summit of the second pass—seven thousand feet above the sea.

A cutting wind, a world all white, at draught of wine—and we plunge downwards through snow up to the thigh. At the top we had caught but a partial view of the Pic de Midi d’Ossau, but a little lower, we halt and stand, amazed by its beauty. It directly faces our path. About twice the height of Ben Nevis, its nine thousand odd feet are no measure of the grace and boldness with which its slender double-headed shaft shoots up to meet the sunlight. For the last three thousand feet of its height it is a mere pillar, a column of purest white and noble shape, the very semblance in its slender outlines of some fair woman in a bridal veil. But viewed from a point still lower it gains majesty and terror. We, who were not mountaineers, quailed before its height, its dizzy precipices, and the fields of pitiless rocks from which its crest rises so superbly. We crouched on the slope facing it, and gazed, fascinated by the majestic presence which seemed to pervade all space round us—and so ate an egg apiece, and silently resumed our descent through the clogging snow.

From this we soon grew very anxious to escape. But the face of the mountain on which we now stood was the colder; and though we ploughed our way down with steady persistence, sometimes at a headlong pace, sometimes more cautiously, it seemed as if we should never reach firm ground again. An hour—two hours, passed. Still we were descending one behind the other, with aching limbs and joints almost dislocated by the continual jolting. Even when we reached a wood, we were not at large, for between the trees the snow lay in deep drifts, into which we fell and out of which we struggled, as best we could. But joy! At length the trees grew more thickly, the drifts were more rare. We struck a path, ran swiftly down it, crossed a kind of clearing and stepped on a rude bridge which spanned a torrent. We were at Bious Artigues, an hour’s walk only above Gabas. We had only to follow the rough cart-track which ran by the stream to reach home and dinner. And we did reach them a little after dark; and lost not a moment in calling for white wine and red, and the best dinner and the best beds and the softest chairs and a fire! For what did we not deserve in our own judgment—let the Societe Ramonde say what it pleases—who had crossed the Col d’Aas de Vielle on the last day but four of November?

And the next day? It is a joy to me even now to look back upon that next day spent at Gabas, with the consciousness of virtue upon us. Gabas is a small hamlet four thousand feet above the sea, at the head of the Vallee d’Ossau. It nestles under three great wooded bluffs of mountains, that rise so abruptly round it and so overhang it, as to darken the windows of its dozen houses. It is only by standing close to the panes, and throwing back one’s head, that any view of the sky can be got. Snow grizzles the brows of these bluffs, and behind and above them stretch unseen peaks and glaciers. Round the hill which immediately faces the valley and stops the road run two streams and two hill-paths. Down the western of these we had come the previous day. So now, armed with wine and bread and a cold chicken, we set out to explore the other. Passing through a gloomy defile bristling with pines and box trees, we emerged on a long green valley still narrow but dotted with sheep and ponies, and gay with sunshine. On our left a grassy slope led up to grey cliffs whose rounded summits severed with partially melted snow had all the appearance of the smooth white top of a wedding cake to compare great things with small ones. On our right the slope was thickly wooded; and above it rose the stupendous beauty of the Pic du Midi. The air was crisp, the rays of the sun fell warmly. At noon we lay on our backs in huge contentment, and ate and drank and gave the bones to the great dog which had come with us from the inn. Lazily we watched stray Spanish pedestrians pass on foot down the glen; smugglers or Carlists or what you will, who had come over by some obscure track. We looked at the hill-locked valley with its smiling pastoral scene, and then at the glittering heights that seemed to pierce the sky; and words failed us. The very power of enjoyment seemed unequal to its task. It was indeed a rare day! A day of lazy sauntering in the sun in a world which we had all to ourselves for there was no other stranger at Gabas; a day long, yet not long enough; and coming fitly to an end in a dark walk home under a night sky that minute by minute flashed and glimmered with showers of falling stars; which in that far-away upland valley it was impossible to suppose were otherwise than ordered and arranged for our sole pleasure and delight.

And the time had not been without its excitements. “If you see a bear, make a note of him for me,” the Tender-foot had asked me weeks before in England. And I had assented cheerfully; yet with a consciousness that if I should meet a bear, and have the use of my limbs, making a note of him would not be the first thing I should be at. Again a gentleman in Pau—it is wonderful how differently different people look at the same thing—had warned me not to go into the mountains so late in the year for fear of the bears. “And mind,” he said, “if you do meet one in a narrow path put down your coat or cap in the track and go to one side. He will play with the coat and will not follow you!”

Well, here in Gabas we heard of bears. We did more. We met a boy with a pony bringing down from the hills three dead sheep which had been killed by them the night before. And I add for the benefit of the Tender-foot the rumour prevalent in the Pyrenees, that there were at this time from fifty to seventy bears among the mountains. There were until a few years back over four hundred. But the Carlists in their last rising being shut up in the hills and pressed for food killed great numbers of them. For myself, I saw but one bear in the Pyrenees. He passed close to me, going down a hill; and looked at me savagely enough but did not attack me. And, indeed, a man who had an organ at his back was leading him with a long chain.

We left Gabas with regret, and walked to Eaux Chaudes, the well-known watering-place, a few miles below it in the Vallee d’Ossau. Of this I need only say that it is a straggling village built along the verge of the torrent at the narrowest part of the glen, in beautiful scenery and with fine gardens on the hill above it; that its hotels are very dear; and that perhaps more than any other place of the kind in the Pyrenees it is in favour with English people, who find in it a pleasant mean between the primitive rudeness of Gabas, and the gloomy splendour of Eaux Bonnes. A little way below it, the valley, just before it widens into the plain of Laruns, seems absolutely closed. The torrent escapes through a rift a hundred feet deep and half a score wide; and so churns and foams its way to freedom. But the road cannot follow it and has to make a giddy ascent along the face of the cliff, and pass through a singular opening half-gateway half-tunnel—when lo! The traveler has the little town of Laruns with its plain at his feet.

However, we merely took a cup of coffee in the town, and then passing into a lateral valley which points eastward, breasted the steep ascent to Eaux Bonnes. That town is one of the most characteristic of the Pyrenean bathing-places; sharing the distinction with Cauterets, and Bagneres de Luchon. I can easily explain what it is—and what they too are with a difference; a morsel of a great city with the gauds and tinsel and frippery of the city still upon it, set down in a crevice of the eternal hills. To make such a place, you must take a piece of Hyde Park Corner with a bit of Grosvenor Place and another bit of Piccadilly—all life size; throw in the Alexandra Hotel and Limmer’s and the Metropole, a French casino and a couple of bandstands. Let there be three or four score of houses in all; and all big ones except the cottages that lurk unseen below the banks of the torrent. And then let sheer wooded heights press in upon them, and overhang them, and above these let the snows of the Pic de Gers peep in grim smiling wonder—wonder what this queer human nest—a speck in the mountain wilderness—may be. Such is Eaux Bonnes; and such with differences are Luchon and Cauterets.

When we arrived the place seemed deserted. It was as a town of the dead. No one appeared in the streets, no sound save that of a church bell was to be heard. Most of the hotels, which can together lodge some thousands of visitors, were closed; all were empty. Numbers of windows were boarded up against the storms of winter. In a word it was not the season at Eaux Bonnes; and—stupendous thought!—we were the only visitors in this gloomy, gorgeous outwork of Paris. We were glad to find a decent hotel—its sole staff the manageress and a maid, both Spanish Basques—which would take us in.

We stayed there over Sunday, maturing our plans and hardening our hearts for a great feat. We would cross the Col de Tortes and the Col de Saucede to Argeles in the Vallee d’Azun without a guide. And accordingly on Monday morning we got away with lunch and our knapsacks before eight o’clock; and reached the Cantiniere or Road-makers’ Canteen at the foot of the saddle-shaped Col de Tortes without misadventure about nine. The hill-side leading up to the pass as pretty well covered with brushwood; but a perpendicular rock which rises above the Col furnished us with an excellent landmark. The rock is called the “Obisque,” possibly from “obispo,” the Spanish for bishop, because it resembles a mitre; or it may be only a corruption of “obelisque.” Be that as it may it did us good service; for although we passed through the usual mishaps of guideless men, though we lost our way in the underwood, and found ourselves in the track of falling stones—as a dozen prostrate trunks proved—though we emerged again and again on the wrong side of ravines and morasses and extricated ourselves as best we could, yet pressing on steadily we gained at length by its help the stretch of snow and ice immediately below the pass. From this point we went cautiously; but the snow proved firm and safe, and we reached the summit of the Col about twelve.

We thought that now our troubles were over. But beginning to descend we found the snow deep and soft. We sank into it to the thigh, and were soon so thoroughly engaged in the task of getting through it that we strayed too far to the left. When at length, still at a considerable altitude, we struck the road, it was at the wrong point and two miles short of the place where we should have joined it. But the road, we thought, was the road. We knew it passed over the Col de Saucede.

Yes, the road was the road, and our road too. But half a mile farther on it ran a mere cornice against the face of the cliff; and just there the snow had formed upon it level with the low wall on the precipice side, and twelve feet deep against the hill-side—slantwise if the reader understands. We dared not try to climb along this frozen slope, from which a single slip would precipitate us into the giddy depth a sheer thousand feet below us; and in an evil moment we crawled above it, and clinging to the hill-side, which is there too steep to retain the snow, tried to pass round the corner. Well, the fifteen minutes which followed were bad. WE failed to get round. We became crag fast with the gulf yawning for us as it seemed. A few moments of fear—then a struggle made with shaking limbs and shrinking eyes and we were safe again and down in the road from which we started. Down and safe, but still speechless and somewhat shaken, until a certain flask had been drained.

And then we began to see our predicament. We must either go back over the Col de Tortes to Eaux Bonnes, and make good speed too, or we should not be over the dangerous part of the climb before nightfall. Or, descending into the valley below us by a faint track which we had marked a short distance back, we must take our chance of regaining the road at some point beyond the obstacle; and so carry out our original plan. We chose the latter course and got down, and after a rough walk and a severe climb did regain the road and passed by it over the easy Col de Saucede. I remember that in the panorama of mountains—some golden in the evening sunlight where the snow had slipped from the rocks, some palely gleaming, some dark and huge and frowning—which was here exposed to us, one rose supreme in savage nakedness, if not in height. It showed a front so bare and sheer from base to summit, that only some Titanic storm which had bodily shorn away the nearer half could reasonably account for its appearance. Now our difficulties were really over. A good road, descending by those splendid zigzags which are scarcely known in England, enabled us to drop down about six o’clock into the village of Arrens. There we dined, with much thankfulness; and after dinner cheerily walked through the darkness to Argeles, seven miles distant.

At a village three or four miles south of Argeles, the main valley, now fully formed, throws out a branch to the right. This I call the Cauterets valley, that most melancholy of fashionable watering-places being at its head. The continuation of the valley, or the left-hand branch, whichever you prefer to call it, is longer and larger, and gradually leads the walker to Gavarnie, a kind of Pyrenean Chamouni. The Cauterets valley is the more thickly wooded, the more fertile, the more beautiful perhaps. That of Gavarnie, at any rate in its upper part above Luz and St. Sauveur, is on a larger scale, and more bold in outline; it is wild and cold and barren, but not beautiful.

We went to Cauterets first and found it a larger Eaux Bonnes, with the sad additions of an all-pervading smell of sulphur, and a dense fog which is a common visitor there. The town boasts the same great hotels, the same big houses, the same cramped promenade, the same windows darkened by impending mountains, the same air of being out of place where it is. But the hills about it are bigger, and it stands rather in a puncture than a crevice. It is a splendid place, but so somber; and the air about it was so close and oppressive during our visit that we longed to escape from it and our big hotel, in which of course we were the only guests. We were glad to climb, by means of the wood-cutters’ slides, a glen behind the baths, and breathe the freer air of the mountains. Here the snow lay thick among the trees, and its dazzling whiteness in contrast with the bright green of the pines and the blue of the sky made up a picture of rare brilliance. Reaching the Pont d’Espagne, a rustic bridge cast boldly over some fine falls, we turned to the left and presently gained the Lac de Gaube, a grey frozen lake, lying at the foot of the Vignemale glacier, and completely shut in by mountains. In the sunshine it was warm enough to lie on a cloak, and lunch and smoke and feast the eyes on the peaks above us, or discuss the fate of the unfortunate Englishman, Mr. Paterson, drowned here with his wife. But in the shade a hard frost prevailed, and the snow lay unmelted.

Many of the Pyrenean valleys are not only most rich in foliage and colour, but most confined and romantic just within the entrance. So now, proceeding to the main valley, which leads to Gavarnie, we find it at first picturesquely narrow. Presently it opens upon the charming little plain of Luz. Here all is soft green pasturage, watered by a thousand shimmering rills, and so intersected by lines of poplars which cross it in every direction, and through the day are reduplicated by as many rows of shadows, that the eye long retains an impression equally novel and pleasant. I call this oasis among the mountains the plain of Luz because that grim old town with its Templars’ church nestles in the corner to the east; but it might as fitly be dubbed “of St. Sauveur” in honour of the pretty watering-place, beloved by the Empress Eugenie, which fringes the river bank near the farther end. People pass between these two typical places by the Pont Napoleon, a very idyll of a bridge, so lightly and gracefully, in the midst of ivy and ferns and drooping trees, does it span the gorge in which the torrent flows. For this bridge and one or two in the neighbourhood which are manifest copies of it, and as many splendid roads, France has to thank the late Emperor, and does thank him. Hard by stands an obelisk—still I am glad to say uninjured—which years ago was raised in his honour by the gratitude of the province.

Hidden away among the cramped houses of Luz stands a great curiosity: its Templars’ church. Church and churchyard—the latter very small and dank and melancholy—are surrounded by an enceinte circular in shape, about fifteen feet high, and loopholed and battlemented. Two square towers, one above the gateway, surmount the building; and for centuries, it is said, guns were mounted on the roof of the church. The place was of use in over-awing the Albigenses and Huguenots; and even now a quantity of obsolete arms are stored there. Very, very old and out of date, it all seems; as old as our Temple Church in London, and in a mean squalid fashion not unlike it. Luz was once the head of a primitive republic, to which thirteen hamlets in the neighbourhood belonged; it is said that towards the end of last century the governor of Auch sent to demand the fiscal registers. They were forwarded to him, much to his astonishment, in the shape of two cartloads of tally-sticks. On a hill above the town are the remains of a castle, a round tower, and a square one joined by a curtain, which seen from a distance are imposing and arouse curiosity. Some tradition of English dominion hangs about this ruin.

At Gavarnie we found it cold. The little hamlet with its one inn stands just outside the chord of the semi-circular hollow—the vast quarry in the side of the Marbore, which is known as the Cirque de Gavarnie, and is probably more famous than any other of the Pyrenean lions. Viewed from the inn, this quarry—so tremendously is the eye deceived by the harmonious bigness of things—seems to be an ordinary hollow, possibly of human creation. It appears to be about a quarter of a mile distant, and its walls half that height perhaps. And the stranger thinks he will run across and glance at it while his dinner is being prepared. Let him do so. The walls are miles away and a mile high. To reach them he must trace the stream upwards for some distance, he must scale a wooded ascent, and go through a copse, and across a dusty plan, and then toil over innumerable mounds of snow. By the time he has done all this—if he have proved so obstinate—another man will have eaten his dinner; and even his bed will be in danger. But seriously, the illusion is a remarkable one. It clothes with interest a spectacle which is otherwise rather cold and dreary, and inspires less awe than he would expect who has pictured in fancy cliffs a mile high.

It is true that when we saw the Cirque, the thousand water-falls which in summer are so many threads on the scarred brow were invisible, or gleamed but dimly as huge icicles; true too that masses of snow thundered down from time to time portentously, and that the great brown walls were traced, where the snow lay on ledges, with dainty patterns in white, that in some degree satisfied our cravings for beauty. But big as the thing is, it lacks grace. Bulk and height are there. The shapeliness of outline which exalts those attributes is wanting. And so to me the Cirque of Gavarnie seems lifeless and unimpressive, not to be named in comparison with the Pic du Midi d’Ossau viewed from a point a little above Bious Artegues, or the aspect of the Vignemale from the Lac de Gaube.

This question of the impressiveness of various objects recalls to memory a great wooded bluff which we passed near Luz on the return journey. It was of vast size and height, rising up directly from the road, and sloping throughout, an unbroken face of hill, at the same angle; which angle was such that a man could just climb it and keep erect. In colour it was a mass of blurred browns; browns of every shade, from that which in the birch verges on purple to the pale yellow of dead bracken. Very far up near its summit we could distinguish, but at an infinite distance, the tiny outlines clean cut in that clear air, of a toy cottage or two, a toy wood-pile. Well, this hill, though immense in appearance, was probably not over 2,000 feet high; and by the side of the cliffs at Gavarnie a puny thing. But circumstances alter cases—and hills; and standing where it did it was a large matter to the eye. We turned from it with regret.

The next day, Sunday, we spent at Argeles, attending church, and being rewarded by a sight of the firemen’s fete, a business very like a club-walk in England. The mass was celebrated to the accompaniment of drums and discordant trumpets, while the tricolor flag was waved and dipped before the altar at the more solemn parts of the service. I remarked several species of head-coverings among the women who thronged and chattered about the uniforms, which their sweethearts and husbands sported with a pride and aplomb truly French. Some wore a black nun-like robe, which covered everything and had an effect almost ghastly. Others wore a small red mantle or hood, plain or bound with black; very pretty this. A white starched kerchief twisted round the forehead was also common enough, and as unbecoming as common. And finally there was the gay silk bandanna pushed coquettishly every day in the streets of Bordeaux or Marseilles.

On Monday we went by an early train to Lourdes, the place of miracles. From there to Bagneres de Bigorre, thence by the Col d’Aspin to Arreau, and so over the Col de Peyresourde to Bagneres de Luchon; these were the stages in an interesting three days’ walk. The whole distance was about sixty miles. At Loucrup on the first day we enjoyed from a comparatively low elevation an excellent view of the mountains in this part of the Pyrenees; and could fully understand the boldness of outline and soaring grace which makes them no mean rivals of the higher and more bulky Alps. At Loucrup also we discovered a survivor of the age of Rembrandt. He was a cobbler. His dress was of some dirty brown stuff, and he wore a great leather apron, copper rimmed spectacles, and a night-cap. His face was covered with black plaisters. He had lost one eye, and had a cast in the other, and it was certain that since Rembrandt took his portrait he had not washed himself. He was the landlord also of the village tavern, and in a murky interior, mainly filled by two great beds, cut for us from a huge sausage hanging to the rafters a few garlic-flavoured slices. These he handed down to us with his fingers. His wine was vile; but while we sat munching his bread, we had an opportunity of learning how the country people eat their meals. Two or three came in, and standing took a long draught from an earthen bowl. Containing cold bouilli; then each ate a hunch of bread, and another draught of soup completed the meal. I have taken food, and enjoyed it in many rougher places, but there was a horrible air of grimy comfort about that inn at Loucrup which effectually took away my appetite. The man too was surly, and had none of that modest distrust in the sufficiency of his provisions which has elsewhere forced me, out of a corresponding delicacy, to make a meal whether I would or no.

The latter part of the road to Bagneres de Bigorre is flat; the dust too was unpleasant. The town is the largest and finest in the mountains, but lacks the peculiar features of those I have described. The mountains stand away from it. It is on comparatively open ground. The houses have elbow-room. There are big squares and suburbs, and streets leading away into the country. It is not so evidently and ostentatiously a pleasure resort, and nothing else; people live there all the year round.

We found a corresponding change in the scenery about it. For instance, the valley between it and the Col d’Aspin is nowhere so narrow, so pretty or so well wooded as the more westerly ones which we had before visited. It is instead wide, verdant, pastoral, full of scattered houses and villages. The hills on each side are of a moderate height and bulky. A raised plateau on our left, which sloped towards us, was so thickly dotted with small farmsteads that it resembled a city terrace of semi-detached houses. There were no fences, which are not yet known in this part of the country; and everywhere people were watching their flocks to prevent them straying. In one place a woman was devoting herself to two goats, her neighbour to a single cow, while a boy not far off guarded three pigs. And in all parts groups of men and women were so thickly scattered—I counted five coteries lying about in the space of a six-acre field—that the appearance of things was very idyllic, and enabled one to comprehend better the loves of Theocritus.

After getting some lunch at a post-house at the foot of the ascent, we set to work upon the Col d’Aspin. Its summit is more than 6,000 feet above the sea, but an excellent road passes over it. We however tried a short cut in our wisdom, and lost our way in a wood of firs and yew-trees—in parts dark and somber, and in others opening out into sunny glades and drives like those in an English park. The afternoon was growing to evening when we at length freed ourselves and gained the top of the pass, on which a little snow was lying. Then we found ourselves at the head of a narrow valley with magnificent peaks and precipices, glowing in the rays of the setting sun, to the eastward; a steep descent before us; and Arreau at our feet. The road ran down in wonderful zig-zags, but we of course cut off the corners. Even so, though the town had seemed so near that we had thought to be in its streets in twenty minutes, a full hour and half elapsed, and night came on before we reached it. The clearness of the air, and abruptness of the descent were such that though the distance by the road from the top of the pass to the town is over eight miles, I should have fixed it at three.

Arreau is a mean, squalid place, and the entrance to it on the side of Bagneres de Bigorre is far from prepossessing. The houses wear an air of decay. Here and there, as we advanced, a light twinkled in the narrow streets, or was reflected in an unfenced stream; and by avoiding the latter, and taking advantage of every sumptuous of the Pyreanean bathing-places is a town of considerable size, full of handsome white buildings; with beautiful baths built of marble, and fine gardens. But when all is said and done, marble baths, save in the hottest of hot weather, are melancholy things. And Luchon in winter is as its baths. The scenery abut it however if of the most beautiful, the most picturesque; a chaos of glens and ravines, mountains and waterfalls.

We took one delightful walk over the Portillon to Bosost in Spain. Our road upwards lay all the way through woods of beech, oak, or fir, sparkling with snow-wreaths and icicles, or permitting charming peeps at the heights around. The Portillon is a natural gateway set in these woods. A great stone lies in a clearing; one side bears the initial E for Spain—in red paint; the other F for France. It is the land-mark between the two countries. We sat on it, and enjoyed the idea; and indeed it was delightful to find this boundary-mark not on a dusty highway but amid woods and hills. Passing on and downwards we came upon the custom-house, round which half-a-dozen men in a dark blue uniform, armed with carbines, were lounging. They let us pass unchallenged, and another hundred yards brought us to the brow which overlooks the Vallee d’Aran.

It lay at our feet, narrow and deep, and full of sunshine, which picked out brightly the white-washed houses and slate roofs of Bosost. Down the middle of the valley, brawling over stones, and flashing in the sun’s rays ran the Garonne; not so big as the Dee at Llangollen and more shallow, yet like it. We had last seen it a strong deep river at Toulouse; but its name carried us back in memory rather to the busy quays and broad yellow streams of Bordeaux.

Bosost is a distinctly Spanish hamlet. I have seen towns in the heart of Spain not one half so Spanish. The one street, a slough in wet weather, a dust-heap in dry, was un-paved, un-macadamized, un-scavenged. The doors and windows were of un-painted wood. The houses, themselves were heavy and substantial, with few windows. Often the ground-floor was a stable, and the living rooms—only to be reached through it—were above. Yet all the houses were insured. A great yew tree stood in the small square. The church by its side was old, massive and ugly without, dark and tawdry within. But at Bosost we learned one lesson. We begged a French-speaking native, apparently a poor man, to guide us to an inn where we could get some lunch. He complied readily; and on parting we offered him a trifle. He took off his hat and declined it. This was our first lesson in Spanish manners, and we did not forget it.

Day by day the weather had been growing colder. But at Luchon on the following morning the thermometer registered twelve degrees of frost. We took this as a hint to withdraw; and at once began our retreat to Pau, pausing only on the way to visit St. Bertrand de Comminges. It is an old town standing on an isolated rock. Reaching it from the plain by a staircase we were struck by its likeness to Avranches or Stirling. The old walls, the old gateways, the old houses—one bears a date about 1400—the old streets and wynds, the old church which was once a cathedral, all remain; though newer and, for a wonder, less clean suburbs are springing up round them. Inside the church is a fine oak choir of the reign of Francis I., in whose time all the churches in this part of France seem to have been restored. This old town was captured and lost and taken over and over again by the followers of Henry IV., in his wars with the League; and standing on the terrace before the church, with a beautiful panorama of mountains filling the southern view, one could picture in some degree the anxious watch the burghers of that day kept, and enter into their feelings, as night fell on one flag or the other.

End

Prepared by Donna Rudin