Pyrenees

“ The many attractive resorts which the Pyrenean region has will doubtless go the way of others elsewhere—if they are given time, but for the present this entire mountain region is possessed of much that will appeal to the less conventional traveller.
Of all the mountain ranges of Europe, the Pyrenees stand unique as to their regularity of configuration and strategic importance. They bind and bound Spain and France with a bony ligature which is indented like the edge of a saw. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. TOULOUSE. I. When, after a two months’ sojourn in the Pyrenees, you leave Luchon, and see the flat country near Martres, you are delighted and breathe freely: you were tired, without knowing it, of those eternal barriers that shut in the horizon; you needed space. You felt that the air and light were usurped by those monstrous protuberances, and that you were not in a land of men, but in a land of mountains. Unknown to yourself you longed for a real champaign, free and broad. ”

“ The stream of summer journeyings to Europe has swollen to a river; it has overflowed to the Arctic Ocean, to the Baltic, to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The Pyrenees—a garden not only, but a land of sterner scenery as well,—almost alone remain by our nation of travelers unvisited and unknown. ”

“ On every side appeared the majestic summits of the Pyrenees, some exhibiting tremendous crags of marble, whose appearance was changing every instant, as the varying lights fell upon their surface; others, still higher, displaying only snowy points, while their lower steeps were covered almost invariably with forests of pine, larch, and oak, that stretched down to the vale. This was one of the narrow valleys, that open from the Pyrenees into the country of Rousillon, and whose green pastures, and cultivated beauty, form a decided and wonderful contrast to the romantic grandeur that environs it. ”

“ To the lover of flowers the Pyrenees present greater attractions than even the Alps. They lie farther to the south, enjoy more sun, and exhibit a greater luxuriance of vegetation and more variety in species. We meet in the Pyrenees with all old Alpine friends and make fresh acquaintances—Nowhere does the Saxifraga longifolia or pyramidalis throw up such a jet-d'eau of blossom. ”

“ It is the last of our midsummer drive through, the Pyrenees. We realize it almost suddenly, and with regret. We seek to absorb and enjoy every minute as we drive down the long hills and on through the Vale of Campan in the evening light toward Bigorre. It is a chaotic, delightful array of memories that our minds are whirling over and over in their busy hoppers,—incidents and scenes, grains of legend, kernels of history, gleanings of quick, nearer life,—all the intermingled associations now sown for us over the region. ”

“ To the eastward lies a high country, furred with woods, broken with glens; a country exactly like Devon, through the heart of which, hidden in such a gorge as that of Dart or Taw, runs the swift stream of the Nive, draining the western Pyrenees. And beyond, to the south-east, in early spring, the Pyrenean snows gleam bright, white clouds above the clouds. As one turns southward, the mountains break down into brown heather-hills, like Scottish grouse moors. ”

“ Constantinople and Athens lie two thousand miles away, Naples and Granada nearly as far; all sought, even in summer, though quivering in the tropics' livid heat. We came round to our Pyrenees: it needs from Paris but nine hours to Bordeaux, with coigns of vantage between; in four hours from Bordeaux, you are by the waters of the Bay of Biscay, or in six, in the centre of the Pyrenees chain. ”

“ Over the Jura the French tongue has flowed up the Rhone to Sierre, above the Lake of Geneva, so the Spanish or Catalan has overleaped the Pyrenees in Roussillon, and the Basque tongue has those who speak it in both cis-Pyrenean and trans-Pyrenean Navarre. The Pyrenees are the upcurled lips of the huge limestone sea-bed, that at some vastly remote period was snapped from east to west, and through the fissure thus formed the granite was thrust, Lifting along with it the sedimentary rocks. ”

“ If I had never gone further into the Pyrenees than Tarbes I might have said that nothing can exceed the beauty of its neighbourhood. The charming plain that environs it—yet not altogether a plain—stretches to the foot of the mountains, rich in every production of the southern latitude, beautifully diversified with wood, and watered by the meanderings of the Adour and of several lesser streams. The celebrated Valley of Bagnères opens to the left, that of Lourdes to the right ”

“ In the distance, the blue Pyrenees look like a bank of clouds; the air that bathes them shapes them into aërial forms, vapory phantoms, the farthest of which vanish in the canescent horizon—dim contours, that might be taken for a fugitive sketch from the lightest of pencils. In the midst of the serrate chain the peak Midi d' Ossau lifts its abrupt cone; at this distance, forms are softened, colors are blended, the Pyrenees are only the graceful bordering of a smiling landscape and of the magnificent sky. There is nothing imposing about them nor severe ”

“ Lights twinkle out everywhere over the valley, as we roll on toward Bigorre; every village and hamlet we pass is aglow with colored lanterns and varied illuminations, and all the Pyrenees seem to be keeping high holiday. Stalwart songs are resounding from porches and through the windows of the local cafés when the carriages reach Ste. Marie; we respond with the notes of America, as we drive out from the village, and catch an answering cheer in return. Everyone is determinedly happy, but happy or not, they have always a good word for our country. ”

“ Two recent novels we eagerly buy, hearing that their scenes are laid in that vicinity; but each merely speaks, in easy omniscience, of the "distant chain of blue mountains," or of the "far-off snow-peaks outlined against the horizon," and the fiction proves hardly worth sifting for so little fact. Plainly the Pyrenees lack the voluminous literature of the Alps. Plainly we shall have, in part, to grope our way. The grooves of Anglo-Saxon travel are many and deep, lined increasingly with English speech and customs; but they have not yet been cut into these Spanish mountains. ”

“ Immediately below was a broad plain, or rather valley, with a little world of its own within its bosom--villages, and hamlets, and vineyards, and streams, rich in fertility, and lighted up with sunshine--all peaceful, and sweet, and gentle;--while directly behind the hill that bounded it on the other side, rose the vast line of the Pyrenees, in all nature's grandest and most magnificent forms. It is impossible to describe the effect that such mountain scenery produces--one gasps, as it were, to take it all in. ”

“ It is palpably colder, and yet we are far from the culminating point of the Pyrenean pass; straight saplings are not infrequent around, and here and there a lowly hut in a nook under some sheltering rock, both hut and rock hoary with snow, startles us with the reminder that human beings actually live here. The Basques, said Voltaire, are a people who sing and dance on the summit of the Pyrenees. Our ox-drivers do not sing, neither do our muleteers. This interminable glare is becoming very fatiguing to the eyes, and the higher we ascend the rarer are the refreshing little streaks of darker hue. ”

“ THE PYRENEES TO PROVENCE As one turns north-eastward from the Pyrenees the bright abundant landscape passes gradually into a flattish grey-and-drab country that has ceased to be Aquitaine and is yet not Provence. ”

“ A trip to the Pyrenees is not in the Grand Tour. It is not even in any southerly extension of the Grand Tour. A proposition to exploit them meets a dubious reception. Pictures arise of desolate gorges; of lonely roads and dangerous trails; of dismal roadside inns, where, when you halt for the night, a "repulsive-looking landlord receives the unhappy man, exchanges a look of ferocious intelligence with the driver,"—and the usual melodramatic midnight carnage probably ensues. The Pyrenees seem to echo the motto of their old counts, "Touches-y, si tu l'oses!" ”

“ When the trees disappear from a country it shows the thriftlessness of the inhabitants—"sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof"; with the axe and the firebrand they destroy in a day what it will take centuries to replace.
Two non-French races occupy the extremities of the chain and the lowlands at its feet. In the Basses Pyrénées are the Basques, in Pyrénées Orientales are the Catalonians, speaking a dialect of the Spanish of Barcelona. ”

“ Beginning at Eaux Bonnes, and running in the main parallel with the central crest, it rears itself serpent-like over four of these great intervening barriers, attaining and crossing in turn the broad valleys between them, connecting northward with the stations, southward with the springs. This immense band, sinuous and unbroken, uplifting itself to the snow, plunging again from snow to the maize-fields, stretches along the central Pyrenees a full hundred miles. Four days' journey away lies its distant end at Luchon. The hostile mountains shower it with earth and stones. ”

“ That which is the spoiling of this country is the extravagance of the admiration expressed for it. Since the time of Ramond no one who speaks of the Pyrenees can describe a site without declaring it to be incomparable. If they have judged it incomparable, it is because they have seen nothing with which to compare it. ”

“ THE Pyrenees, before expiring in the cliffs of Cerbère, that drop abruptly into the Mediterranean, make a supreme effort and rise in the Canigou, which, though not one of the first-class heights, is certainly one of the finest. A certain bashfulness prevails among the giants. ”

“ The numerous sources which spring beside the torrent of Bergons, the freshness and solitude of these charming retreats, the rich shade of the thick chesnuts, which in summer form delicious groves—all is obscured by the miserable state of the inhabitants: diseases of the most loathsome kind prevail for ever in this smiling valley: Crétins abound, those unhappy beings supposed to be the descendants of the Alains, a part of whom established themselves in the Pyrenees and the Valais. ”

“ A bald peak in the midst of the rest, and darker than they, stands out in an aureole of flame. All at once, [226] between two serrate points, like a dazzling arrow, streams the first ray of the sun.
II.
Beyond Pau stretches a smiling country, golden with harvests, amongst which the Gave winds its blue folds between white and pebbly beaches. On the right, far away in a veil of luminous mist, the Pyrenees lift their jagged tops, and the naked points of their black rocks. Their flanks, furrowed by the torrents of winter, are deeply scored and, as it were, turned up with an iron rake. ”

“ The chain to the west wears a different aspect from that in the east. The Basque mountains are clothed with trees, pines and birch, walnut and chestnut, and above them are turf and heather. But the eastern extremity is white and barren. This is due to the fact that the Western Pyrenees catch and condense the vapours from the Atlantic, whereas the Oriental Pyrenees do not draw to them heavy and continuous rains. The boundary between the regions and climates is Mont Carlitte. In the Western Pyrenees the snow line lies far lower than in the east. ”

“ The Pyrenees form a chain of nearly three hundred miles long, and upwards of fifty broad—a province of mountains, intersected by valleys of romantic beauty and exuberant fertility. But the Alps, from their position between the two most brilliant nations of the Continent—France and Italy—and from the extraordinary series of memorable events of which they have been the theatre, since the earliest periods of European history, are the most celebrated range of mountains in the world. ”

“ CAUTERETS (3254 ft.) —A town situated in the gorge of the same name in the Hautes-Pyrénées, seven miles distant from Pierrefitte, the terminus of the line from Lourdes. It is said to be the most rich in mineral waters of any resort in the Pyrenees. From its position in a hollow, surrounded by lofty and beautiful mountains, it is frequently visited with a good deal of rain, and the climate is subject to severe changes in temperature, especially in spring, when the mornings and nights are cold. ”

“ From the windows of the rooms allotted to us, we beheld the whole of the long chain of the magnificent Pyrenees, from the Pic de Bigorre to the giant du Midi, and the countless peaks beyond. Our first impression was almost wild delight at the prospect of [441] living long in a spot with these splendid objects always before our eyes, in uninterrupted grandeur; with a glowing sun always shining, sheltered from the north wind by the high promenade at the back of the house ”

“ The greatest of all, and in truth the greatest in the Pyrenees, is the ascension of the Pic de Nethou (11,170 ft.) , the highest of the range, and its two great buttresses, the Pics Maladetta (10,867 ft.) and Milieu (11,044 ft) . None but experienced mountaineers, with the most experienced guides, attempt this ascent, which is attended with much danger; but there are many other delightful trips in the vicinity, including a visit to the Spanish village of Bosost; up the Aran valley to Viella; a drive to the picturesquely-placed St. Béat, or to the old Roman town of St. Bertrand de Comminges. ”

“ The first pause I made was on a bold projection, skirting the forest of Haboura on one side, and on the other hanging over the beautiful valley of Campan. Beneath me lay the town of Bagnères, and, far as the eye could reach, extended the plain of Bigorre, with the clear waters of the Adour marking their track like a silver thread. On the slope of a neighbouring mountain the wild-pigeon hunters were spreading their nets; for the Chasse aux Palombes is nowhere so successfully followed as in this part of the Pyrenees. It is a simple sport; but highly productive to those engaged in it. ”