rainbow never ceased to lend its help to throw a charm over everything. Still the scenery itself is unmistakeable.

There is no change except in the natural variety and succession of views, until the huge mass of building that towers over. Nantes comes into view; but from this point the bustle and life of a great town begin to alter the style of the scenery. Here too we begin to see on both sides the peculiar and always picturesque Breton costumes-the women with their high head-dresses, and the men in their old-fashioned coats and waistcoats; and soon the streets of the town come into view, and we are landed a few yards from a bridge over a little stream, which passes along a street (and not a very wide one) for a short distance and opens into the Loire. One is not a little astonished to find that this poor stream, which looks marvellously like a ditch, and is at best but a narrow canal, is all that remains of the Erdre whose beauty we have been admiring. In point of fact the waters of the little river are kept back, and made to serve the purpose of a reservoir connected with a canal. Above Nort and below the first lock at Nantes it is nothing; between these points it is a noble and beautiful sheet of water, rich in all that can please the eye and gratify the taste of the traveller who has a love of the picturesque.

10

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

THE MINERAL BASINS AND LIMESTONE PLATEAU OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AVEYRON IN CENTRAL FRANCE.

COMPARATIVELY few travellers, whether in search of the picturesque or influenced by other reasons, follow the road from Clermont by the Cantal and Aurillac, and so across the department of the Aveyron towards Montauban and Toulouse. Fewer still, unless impelled by special reasons, would think of stopping short at the towns of Figeac or Villefranche, diverging into the valleys of the Lot and its tributaries, and visiting the iron-works, coal-mines, or mineral springs of Decazeville, Aubin, or Cransac. Very few also of the thousands and tens of thousands who traverse France to reach the Mediterranean, are at all aware that they are leaving on one side, at no great distance, some of the most remarkable deposits of coal, ironstone and limestone, and some of the most interesting groups of metalliferous veins that exist in any part of Europe.

Such, however, is undoubtedly the case. Aveyron contains as a department an amount of mineral wealth almost inconceivable in its magnitude, and the valuable minerals exist under circumstances extremely favourable for development, so soon as the iron way shall have been constructed to open a road for their conveyance, and enable them to be distributed over the country in every direction at small cost. The Great Central railway of France now in course of construction will answer this great purpose, so that within a few years the first results may be anticipated, and France may commence to lay open her stores of coal and iron, and perhaps of lead and copper, and thus come into competition on no unfavourable terms with Belgium, and even England, in respect of these important elements of advance in wealth and civilization.

It has long been known that several small deposits of coal, generally of rather poor quality, exist, and are worked in various parts of the South of France. The position of these coal-fields and the quality of the coal are for the most part such that they

have hitherto possessed little value, hardly competing with the produce of foreign mines at the different ports, even those nearest the place where the coal is worked, and in spite of heavy protective duties. In most cases the coal has not been worked without great expense, and has not admitted of either rapid or complete abstraction. Beds and veins of iron ore, although numerous, and in some cases very extensive, rich, and of great thickness, have not been found near enough to the coal-fields to allow of profitable working without high protective duties, almost excluding the possibility of foreign competition on a large scale. The general result has been an unreasonably high price of iron, and a corresponding difficulty in applying the metal in numerous cases where its use was otherwise desirable.

The bringing into operation a very extensive and valuable coal-field, with large supplies of good iron ore of various qualities within a moderate distance, was of itself a very important step, and would have justified great efforts. The construction of a line of railway connecting this district with the chief manufacturing towns and ports in the South of France, both on the Atlantic and Mediterranean seaboard, was the way to ensure the most complete success on the largest possible scale.

The large operations recently commenced in reference to the coal-field of Aubin, and the iron ores of Mondaluzac and its neighbourhood, and the laying open of these districts by the Great Central railway, will in a few years create new and gigantic interests in this part of the department of Aveyron, and it may be interesting to give some account of a district destined in all probability to be the centre of profitable mining and of metallurgical processes far more extensive than are at present carried on in France.

§ 1. COAL AND IRON.

The position of the coal-fields of France in the southern departments is extremely curious. They form a very numerous group, and are often really detached, being distributed on and around the wide sea of crystalline rock, of which the granite and extinct volcanos of Clermont, Cantal, and the Puy de Dome are the centres, and from which spring the Loire and its numerous tributary streams, and the Dordogne and other main feeders of

the Garonne. The Rhone from Lyons and the Saône from Chalons completely cut off this tract by an almost straight line; but neither of these rivers takes away any of its drainage, except a portion removed by small streams rising only a few miles from their embouchure. The district is thus geographically isolated, and belongs in drainage to the Atlantic system, the courses of the Saône and Rhone marking the direction, and almost the actual line of watershed.

The number of coal-fields, or places where coal can be worked, within and immediately around this area is extremely great, and is probably not yet fully known. It includes the basins of St. Etienne, of Alais and St. Germain, of St. Gervais and another near Beziers, several around Rodez, Aubin and Decazeville, Autun, Blanzy and Creuzot, and Brassac, besides many others. Although widely separated, there can be little doubt that these really belong to one group, deposited under circumstances not very dissimilar, and for the most part on irregular floors of granite and gneissic boulders, being associated and interstratified with conglomerates of the coarsest kind.

Of all these coal-fields, the one that appears most likely to admit of rapid development, and profitable working on a large scale, is that of Aubin, partly from the condition, position and quality of the coal, and partly from the fact, that immediately around, within a circle of twenty miles, there are found stores of iron ore, practically inexhaustible, and obtainable at the smallest possible cost.

The commencement of the Aubin basin (which ranges south and south-east, gradually widening in that direction) is about twenty-five English miles south of Aurillac, at a point where secondary rocks, chiefly calcareous, project across from the east, covering the gneiss to a great thickness, and meet a corresponding spur of oolite from the west. It is thus not only isolated in the crystalline rock, as is the case with most of the other basins named, but is almost surrounded and greatly covered up by deposits of the secondary period, which contain the valuable supplies of ironstone rendering the district so important.

Running southwards from Aubin, parallel to the escarpment of the oolites, and at no great distance, is a ridge of granite, at whose contact with the stratified rocks are numerous metalliferous veins of great promise; and as this is crossed by the valley of

the Aveyron, a river of some importance, the country is remarkably favourable for mining purposes.

The Aubin coal basin is chiefly worked at the southern extremity of the bell-shaped area which it occupies, and is there covered up by jurassic rocks. The coal seams repose on and are associated with pale shales, grey grits, and conglomerates composed of large and very unequal blocks of rolled rock, and seem to occupy an irregular trough. The boulders include masses of granite more than a cubic yard in contents, and innumerable blocks of smaller size. The dip of the beds is extremely variable near the edge of the basin, commencing at an angle of 70°, where thin beds of coal are seen with sandstones. The pitch gradually diminishes as we pass into the basin, and alters in direction, showing considerable local movements.

The valley in which the town of Aubin is built is small and narrow. It traverses the coal basin, and is drained by a small tributary of the Lot. There are already extensive iron-works and some other manufactories in various parts of the valley and adjacent country, and more must shortly rise.

The coal-seams now worked near Aubin crop out on the sides of the hill facing the south. On the opposite side of the valley is a good section of the lower beds underlying the coal, which include some building-stones and a fire-clay of tolerable quality. Towards the upper end of the valley at Cransac is a village and some mineral springs of considerable importance. These latter are not at present very accessible, as the roads are only recently constructed and the accommodation is very poor.

The dimensions of the portion of the basin exposed, and in which the coal crops out at the surface, are about twelve miles in extreme length, with a breadth varying from one to five miles. The Aubin concession alone includes 1800 acres or thereabouts, and that of Decazeville is not less extensive.

There are eight or ten distinct seams of workable thickness cropping out in the Aubin valley, on the hill-side facing the south, and all these contain coal sufficiently good to justify extensive operations. The average total thickness of the beds is not less than 124 yards, as measured on the crop, and all this extent can be reached without sinkings. The roof of the different seams is generally a grit of tolerable hardness, and standing well without timbering. The floor is also generally of the same