'wild heavy rocks and mountains to the west rose in deep masses against the sky, no longer separated into detached portions, but all confounded in profound shadow, and airy, uncertain obscurity. Language is all emptiness, and fails before anything great or strong. Reader, I must take you to the Valley d'Ossau, and set you where I stood, and win the sun to shine upon it, as then he shone, before I can make you comprehend its loveliness. We soon lost sight of it. After going on for a short time among some English-looking hedge lanes, we again came out upon the edge of the hill; the road passing along the brink of a steep descent, at the bottom of which ran the river roaring among the rocks. At one part, we found the people engaged in banking up the road, which was not upon the surest foundation possible, and which, having apparently a strong dislike to an elevated situation, was rather inclined to slip down into a more humble station in the valley below. The way taken, or rather the method in which they were proceeding to prop up the road, was somewhat curious. About twenty men and women were employed, some in digging earth for the embankment, others in carrying it to the spot. The machinery of a wheelbarrow never seemed to have entered their imagination, but as soon as a shovelful of earth was dug out, the women took it on their heads, in a small wooden trough, not at all unlike a butcher's tray, only not so large, and thus carried it at a slow pace to its destination, talking all the way; so that upon a fair calculation each woman could fill up about a cubic yard per diem. It was not long now before we reached the Eaux Bonnes, a little town consisting of about a dozen large white houses, thrust into a gorge of the mountains. They are generally divided into small bedrooms, and fitted alone for lodging the greatest possible number of the strangers who come to drink the waters. In fact, it looks as if a bit of Hastings, or Tunbridge Wells, and that a bad bit too, had been exported to the Pyrenees. The well is highly sulphurous, tasting most disagreeably of bad eggs; but it is supposed to have the most extraordinary effect in the cure of consumptive complaints, and thus, either for fashion or health, there are a great many people who come to drink of its waters. The morning after our arrival, I wandered down to a cascade in the valley. I have seen much grander waterfalls, but rarely one more beautiful. By my eye, I should guess the height to be about forty feet. The scenery round is richly wooded, rocky, and picturesque, and the body of water considerable; but the principal effect is produced by the stream, after having fallen eight or ten feet, striking a projecting piece of a crag, and rising back again in foam and spray, almost to the same height as that from which it fell. It then again descends, rushing down over the rock, with a roar which is heard for a great distance. At particular times, the sun, finding a way for his beams across the woody screen that hides it from above, shines upon the foaming mist that always rises from the water, and arches it with a sunbow. But I am not sure that it is not more beautiful without, in the calm simplicity of the white stream, the dark rocks, and hanging wood. C3 THE EAUX CHAUDES. On every nerve The deadly winter seizes, shuts up ev'ry sense, And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, THOMSON. BLOOD horses do not suit precipices, I am very well aware of that; but the two beasts which they brought forth to carry us to the Eaux Chaudes were so tremendously irregular in appearance, so like the mountains they were destined to climb, that when I got across the ridge of my unfortunate hack, I could have fancied myself astride upon the Pic du Midi. However, they did very well, much better, in all probability, than better beasts would have done, and thus they went away, jogging on, lashing themselves with their tails, and kicking most unmercifully to get rid of the flies, but always with a kind of solemn gravity, which showed them well accustomed to it all, and neither at all inclined to discompose themselves or their riders. As we went on, returning on the path we had passed the day before, we saw all the world in the fields getting in the harvest, trotting up and down the mountains with their bare feet, and as gay as the larks that were singing over their heads. To bring home the hay, they gather it into large linen cloths, forming packages very like feather beds; these they roll down the hills as far as they can When they cannot do so, they carry them, as they carry everything all through the mountains, on their heads; and difficult as the manœuvre may seem, we saw more than once a girl stoop down to drink at a well, satisfy her thirst, and rise again, without ever removing the immense load of hay she carried on her head. We were soon again in the beautiful Valley d'Ossau, passed through Laruns, and following the road which I have said we saw going towards Spain, we entered a deep ravine, or pass in the mountains, where five men might dispute the passage with a world. There is not more room than for three horses abreast, and the rocks around rise high, bare, and inaccessible. At the end-of the pass, the river which we had lost appeared pouring out into a deep hollow covered with rocks, trees, and underwood, the ravine widened into a narrow valley, varying from two to six hundred yards wide, while stupendous mountains rose on every side and shut out the world. Here some pious soul has hollowed out a little chapel in the rock, where the traveller may turn in to pray; and there could scarcely be a spot more solemn. In these passes, too, the storms of the winter months are most tremendous, with hurricanes and whirlwinds of snow so dreadful, that it is a common saying, “ Here let not the father expect his son, nor the son expect his father." I have been told that this proverb originated in the story of a youth who had gone to hunt the izzard in the valley of Heas, when one of these storms occurred. His father, alarmed for his safety, went out to seek him. The young man arrived with his game, but finding his father absent on his account, returned to look for and bring him back. It would appear that the son had found his parent almost overpowered by the storm, and, being strong and vigorous, had taken him in his arms to carry him home, for they were afterward found lying together buried in the snow. After keeping for some way along the steep which overhangs the river to the right hand, we crossed a little bridge called Le Pont Creusé, and passed under the rocks to the left. It now becomes a country of cataracts, for every quarter of a mile a stream comes bursting over the top of the mountains, and descends from fall to fall for six or eight hundred feet. A very picturesque figure presented itself in our way; it was that of a Spanish smuggler, with his large sombrero, netted hair, and loaded niule; and I could not help remarking in his countenance a kind of wild independence which I had not seen among the French mountaineers. God knows how he came by it, whether from his race or his country, or the continual habit of encountering and conquering dangers and difficulties in his illicit traffic; but there was something fine and grand, though bad, in the expression, not only of his face, but figure. Soon after passing him we arrived at the Eaux Chaudes, which consists simply of two ranges of houses built between the river and the mountain. The style of the place is exactly like that of the Eaux Bonnes, but it possesses several different springs, although the general nature of the waters appeared to me much the same as those of the former fountains. 1 Near the Eaux Chaudes is a mountain, called La Montagne de la Grotte, from a famous cavern situated near its summit, whose extent cannot exactly be ascertained, on account of a stream which impedes the passage at about three hundred yards from the en trance. At the village we made an agreement with a guide to conduct us to the grotto. He was a shrewd, intelligent fellow, and spoke tolerable French, a thing rather rare in that part of the country; but he had acquired also a very excellent notion of the method of cheating travellers, together with a true French estimation of English purses and gullibility. Let me here remark, that the inhabitants of the Pyrenees, as far as I have seen, have little of the simplicity of mountaineers. The season for drinking the mineral waters bringing a great influx of strangers to spots at other times almost deserted, has taught the people of the country to gain as much as they can, and make hay while the sun shines, by cheating ali the travellers within their reach to the utmost, so that whoever is obliged to employ them had better make their bargain beforehand. Our guide having furnished himself with the necessary candles, &c., we proceeded along the valley, and crossed a bridge called Le Pont d'Enfer. I know not why, but in all mountainous countries they seem fond of attributing some of their bridges to the devil. In Wales, in the Alps, in the Pyrenees, one half of them derive their names from that black personage, who, I should suppose, had something_more serious to think about than building bridges. That which we now passed over had nothing very diabolical in its construction; and having again crossed the stream, our guide pointed out to us the grotto with a stream pouring down from it into the valley. It seemed a kind of garret window in the mountain, which itself was little less perpendicular than the side of a house. We were told, however, that we might ascend on horseback, and on putting it to the proof, found that which had appeared impracticable not only possible, but easy, rendered so by means of a zigzag path, which conducted by easy stages to the very mouth |