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THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LIMESTONE AND CHALK PLATEAUX OF ANCIENT AOUITAINE

By S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.

AUTHOR OK "THE TRAGEDY OF THE CAESARS " " MEHALAH ' "STRANGE SURVIVALS" ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY S. HUTTON AND F. D. BEDFORD

In Two Volumes Vol. I

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.

LONDON

1894

MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

v/, I

PREFACE

At an epoch when everyone travels, a book descriptive of travels, especially in so accessible a portion of Europe as South Central France, is out of place. The time for such books, recording passing impressions, has passed away for ever.

The work now offered to the reader is accordingly nothing of this kind. It is a book of preparation for intending tourists, that they may be able to understand what they see, and see what otherwise they would pass unnoticed.

Moreover, I wish to draw attention to a portion of Europe, no part of which, I believe, Italy and Greece excepted, is so rich to extravagance in objects of interest, and in scenes of extraordinary picturesqueness ; a portion of Europe, moreover, which should arrest the attention of English people especially, as for three hundred years it belonged to the English crown.

This portion of France, which was only accounted a portion of France at a comparatively late period, lies in a penumbra. It has been singularly neglected by French- men, as well as by Englishmen. In the beautiful chapter that opens the second volume of his History, of France,

coocon

vi PREFACE

Michelct reviews the soil of France, and describes its

provinces. Singularly enough, — and yet characteristically enough of the general neglect, — he ignores Perigord, Quercy, the Gevaudan, and hardly touches on the Rouergue. All other portions he knew and described graphically; all the south central portion he knew of only by hearsay.

Historical writers and archaeologists have not worked to any considerable extent on the history and antiquities of this portion of ancient Aquitaine.1 The history of the English occupation remains unwritten.

A friend of mine, who, by my advice, went over some of the ground I knew so well, returned to England with a sense of bewilderment ; he had seen so much, seen things so extraordinary, that he was in the position of the eunuch of Candace : " How can I understand, except some man should guide me ? "

This was precisely my condition when I first visited the limestone and chalk district of South Central Erance ; and when I came to work out the several questions that rose, I found that this could not be done without much labour, as there was no handbook at all which would help one.

There is an old familiar story of one's childhood, called " Eyes and No-eyes." Two boys of the same age were sent out a walk by their tutor. On their return they were asked what they had seen. One answered, " Nothing at all." But the other had a long list of objects of interest that had arrested his attention and occupied his observation.

The difference in the boys did not necessarily spring from difference of mental power, but from the fact that

1 With the exception of the archaeology of the palaeolithic men on the V^zere.

PREFACE vii

one had been shown what he should look out for and notice, and the other had received no such preparation.

The late Robert Houdin trained himself to observe in the following way. He walked past a shop window, then went home and wrote down what was displayed in the window. At first he could write very little, but by daily repeating this experiment he so quickened his faculties of seeing and discriminating, that a walk past a shop front sufficed at last to enable him to write down immediately after an accurate account of all that was therein displayed.

Now the ordinary traveller no doubt picks up a certain fund of health and enjoyment when he takes his holiday abroad ; but he does not acquire very much information. What he observes, he observes inaccurately, and puts down to causes that are occasionally incorrect. His pleasure is multiplied a hundredfold if he goes abroad prepared to understand things that his eyes rest upon. He returns not only with a fund of health, but also of valuable observation.

There always will be some who travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say " The land is barren " ; but there will also always be some to whom the barrenness of the land presents a problem which they will seek to work out.

Most travellers to the South of France take the line to the Riviera, by the Rhone valley, or to the Pyrenees by Bordeaux, and so miss wholly that part of Southern France which lies in the fork. That it is an extremely interesting country, and abounds in scenes of really remarkable beauty and picturesqueness, I venture to assert. It is a country unhacked by ordinary tourists, and it is one which presents an inexhaustible store of interest- ing things. It is not merely a most delightful land, but it is one that is eminently educative.

viii PREFACE

A visitor to a country or district needs some know- ledge of its history, or he cannot enjoy all he sees. The South-Centre of France has its own history, and I believe that without some knowledge of this, a visitor is not properly equipped to appreciate it. For this reason I have given a rapid sketch of the story of the land that has so interested me, and that I love so well.

One portion of the history of this land I have passed over without a word, and this is the story of the Camissards. It is a story especially sad, and it is one, perhaps the one, that is easily accessible to the reader. There are plenty of books on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the Dragonnades. I have therefore omitted this chapter.

I have, however, added a short life of Joachim Murat, as a typical Caussenard, — a man of whom the Causses of Quercy have reason to be proud, and whose family still live in the native home of the race.

With regard to other portions of history, and of matters prehistoric, I write not for the learned, but for the unlearned. When first I went with M. Massenat to Les Eyzies, I knew nothing of, and cared very little for, the reindeer hunters. But the deposits there laid hold of me, not I of them, and I had no rest till I had acquired a sufficient knowledge of the matter to be able to under- stand what I saw. So also with regard to the rock dwell- ings and the " castles in the air." They puzzled me, and I worked at the history of the English domination, hoping therein to find the explanation of these puzzling habitations.

With the rude stone monuments I had been acquainted from boyhood, and I have two volumes of plans and drawings of dolmens made by me in several of the departments of the West in 1851.

PREFACE ix

I have not the space, nor have I the knowledge, to write exhaustively, or even learnedly, on any of these subjects. Besides, that is not my object. What I wanted for myself was to have a rough knowledge of the outlines, which I might fill in later, for my own private edification. And this is all I pretend to give to my readers, and it is all that an intending visitor to the district will require to have.

Finally, here is a bit of country practically unexplored abounding in beautiful scenery, in picturesque castles, in quaint churches, in historic reminiscences, in relics of prehistoric ages, in interesting geologic formations, and in mountain flowers, that can be reached in twenty-one hours. If you leave London by the night mail at 8.15 P.M., you are in Paris at 6 A.M. You cross to the Orleans station, start at 7.40, and are at Brive or Perigueux or Rodez in time for dinner in the evening. And as guide buy one of Joanne's admirable blue-backed one-franc geographies of the department you are in, and you will want nothing further.

In the Appendix I give the titles of works that can be referred to for fuller information on matters treated by me in a cursory manner.

CONTE NTS

VOL. 1 CHAPTER I

LES GAUSSES

The Margeride — Impervious Rocks — The Pervious Rocks of the Causses — The Extent of the Causses — Their Character — A Recent Discovery — Geologic Structure — Subterranean Rivers — The Causses not seen by Travellers — The Causses of Lozere — The Causses of Quercy — The Three Stages — The Chalk Platform of Perigord — Furrowed Rocks — The Ravines — The Pot-holes — Disappearance of Rivers — Denudation of the Causses — The Function of Forests — The Cirques as Winter Quarters — Cabrerets — Salles-la-Source — Beynac

CHAPTER II

THE UNDERGROUND WORLD

M. Martel the Columbus of the Underworld — Resemblance between the Structure of the Natural Caves in the Causses and the Catacombs of Rome — Padirac — Descent of Padirac by M. Martel — Other Gulfs on the Causse de Gramat — The GoufFre de Reveillon — The Roque de Corn — Bedes — La Vitarelle — The Formation of Gulfs — Suicides in the Avens — The Igues — Gulfs in Ardeche — Vigne-close — Cave of Dar- gilan in Lozere — Bramabiau — Similar Caves everywhere in Dolomitic and Jurassic Limestone ......

CHAPTER III

LA CROIZATE

Caves used as Refuges in the Reign of Terror — To Priests— M. Arnal — To the Baron de Montesquieu — The Cave of La

CONTENTS

PAGE

Crouzate — Descent by Mr. Young and M. Pons— Tin Cum for Lowering- — The Last Abyss — The Twelve Skeletons Malpial — Black Pottery — The Cave at Reilhac . . -35

CHAPTER IV

THE CAUSSENARDS

The Iberian Race— Customs remaining— The Maybush -The Fougasse — The PaiUade — An Iron Cage for Scolds -Marriage Customs — Folk-Songs and Melodies — Small Holdings — The Social Hierarchy : in England ; destroyed in France — Sub- division of Properties in the Limousin — What becomes of the ruined Peasants? — The old Count of Beaumanoir — " Mieux sera" ............ 64

CHAPTER V

THE CANON OF THE TARN

The Rivers of the Causses flow through Ravines — The Ravine of the Tarn — The Causse from Mende to Ste. Enemie — Ispagnac — Quezac — Castelbouc — Its Oven — Prades — Ste. Enemie — The Descent of the Canon — St. Chely — La Caze — Montesquieu — The Detroit — Cirque des Baumes — Caverns — Le Pas de Soucy — Legend — Les Vignes — Les Roziers — Montpellier-le- Vieux — The Jonte — St. Gervais — Meyrueis — Castle Roquedols — Huguenots .......... 79

CHAPTER VI

THE FIREHILLS OF CRANSAC

Coal Formation — Cransac — The People of the District — Courtesy — Combustion of the Pyrites — Scene of Fire — Saline Deposits — As described in the beginning of the Century . . . 103

CHAPTER VII

ROQUEFORT CHEESE

The Scanty Herbage of the Causse — The Sheep of the Causse — Ewes' Milk Cheese — The Caussenard Shepherd — Wolves — The Bete du GeVaudan — Its Depredations — Hunt after it — Roquefort Cheese — Its Manufacture — Roquefort Cellars — Glove-making .......... 1 1

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER VIII

TRUFFLES AND TRUFFLE-HUNTERS

PAGE

The Story of the Talon Family— The Truffle and the Oak— The Truffle a Parasite — Formation of a Nursery — When the Truffle is Ripe — The Pig as Truffle-Hunter — Dog's Employed — The Growth of the Tuber — The Preservation of the Truffle — Commerce in Truffles — Cahors — Its Market — Italian Truffles — Fattening- of Geese for paid de foie gras . . . . xz\

CHAPTER IX

THE REINDEER HUNTERS

The Vezere at Les Eyzies — The Chalk Cliffs — Consequences of the Formation — Preservation of Relics of the Past — The End of the Glacial Age — Axes of the St. Acheul Type — The Fauna at this Period — Formation of Historic and Prehistoric Strata — Fall of Blocks — The Method of Excavation — La Laugerie Haute — Condition of Primeval Man — Skins for Clothing, how prepared — The Mousterian Age — That of Solutre — That of La Madeleine — Poisoned Arrows — New Form of Flint Tools — Saws — Artistic Productions — Shelters on the Ct^le- — Ex- travagant Depreciation of Primeval Man — The Cannstadt Type of Head — The Crushed Man, and the Mentone Men — — Esquimaux Burials — Religion of the Primitive Man — List of Stations near Les Eyzies ........ 141

CHAPTER X

THE DOLMEN-BUILDERS

The End of the Glacial Age — Change of Climate — The Arrival of the Neolithic Men — The Primeval Dark Race Turanian — The rude Stone Monuments of the Neolithic Men — Found in Central Asia — in India — in Arabia — in Africa — The Western Migration of the Dolmen-builders — The Khasias give us the Clue to in- terpret these Remains — Lines of Stones — Menhirs — Cromlechs — Dolmens — The Contents of Dolmens — The Neolithic Weapons — Trepanning — Openings in Dolmens — The Dolmen-builders conquered by the Gauls, who were armed with Steel Weapons — Habitations of the Living — Vielchastel — The Subterranean Refuges — Orvar-Odd'sSaga — The Dolmen-builders a Turanian race — The great Characteristic of this Stock, Ancestor-worship — Some Branches of this Race attained high Civilisation — Peculiarities of its Customs — Polyandria — Bride-hunting — The Couvade — Its Significance — The Wearing of Mourning — Its

m\ ( ONTENTS

HACK

Original Meaning -Goddess of the Dead The Stone Ax<

Turanians in Chaldca in Italy Tin- Masques a mixed race — Traces of Turanian Words Summary of the Ethnology of

Caul 17/5

CHAPTER XI

THE MEN OF IRON

The Theory of the Bronze Age preceding (hat of Iron only true to a certain Degree -The General Prevalence of Iron Ore— -The Early date at which it was discovered — Mrou/.e an Amalgam Preceded by a Copper Age — The Production of Tin — The Suc- cession of Races- -The Ligurian -Two Iron Cultures — Pre- historic Furnaces in the Jura — Gaulish Tumuli — The Character of the Caul — Difficulty of Combination — The Gaulish Dress The Gaulish tongue — Druidism a Survival of Turanian Scha- nanism — Dread inspired by a Conquered Race — The Gaulish Druids — Their Means of Divination — Human Sacrifices — Per- sistence of Folk Usages — Singular Usages at Mrive and in Quercy — Prehistoric Pottery — Its Beginnings — Neolithic Vessels — Gaulish Pottery . . . . . . . .213

CHAPTER XII

ROCK DWELLINGS

Troglodytes in France — Still exist — Grioteaux — La Laugerie Basse — La Roque St. Christophe — Pottery of the Early Iron .Age — La Roche de Tayac — Stable — L'Eglise de Guillem — Commar- ques — Cazelles — Blood-basins — Church of St. Fronto — Grottes de Lamoroux — How Sandstone Caves were kept Dry — St. Antoine, near Brive — Cave Dwellings at Chastenet — at Lau- niont — at Cosnac — Church of St. Emilion — Church at Codon — Inhabited Caves at Pougnadoire — The Caves of Corn — In the Gulf of Reveillon — Intermittent Use of Cave Dwellings — The Clusseaux — Clusseau de la Croux de Boby — Le Trou Bourrou — Le Peuch Ste. Sure — Rock Castles destroyed by Fire — La Rute — Method of Excavation — The Castle of La Roque Gageac — Autoire — These Cave Dwellings similar to those in Colorado, in Syria, and Egvpt — The Probable History of the Rock Dwellings ........ 231

CHAPTER XIII

LE PUY D'lSSOLU

The Story of Uxellodunum — Le Puy d'Issolu — A Gaulish Oppidum ■ — The Nature of an Oppidum — Investment of Uxellodunum —

CONTENTS

r \ i . i-

Tapping1 the Spring — The Discovery of Caesar's .Mine Other Camps in Quercy — Vitrified Forts — Those in Creuse The Origin and Date of these Glass Castles — Burning of Walls in Hissarlik — Vitrified Tombs ....... 265

CHAPTER XIV

DUKE WAIFRE

Aquitania Its earl}' Dukes — Saracen invasions — Duke Eudes and Charles Mattel — Pepin and Duke Hunald — Abdication, of Hunald in favour of Waifre — Contest with Pepin — Rock Castles in which he took refuge — Continuation of the contest — Brengues — Attempt to enter his last hiding-place — Defeat of Waifre — He escapes into Perigord — is murdered — The Pears of Waifre — His tomb at Limoges ......

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS

VO L. I

The Causse de Sauveterre

The Stalagmites in Dargilan .

The Provinces of the South Centre of F

Map of the Central Causses .

A Limestone Pinnacle on the Jonte .

Geological Section

Geological Map of the Causses

Section from the Rhone Valley to the

Bay of Biscay Weathering of a Chalk Cliff . La Laugerie Basse A Limestone Canon on the Ardeche

Padirac ....

The Lateral Passage, Padirac Lac des Gours

The Narrows, Padirac

Sketch Map of the Causse de Gramat

Descending a Pot-hole

La Vitarelle .

Descent of an Az 'en .

Below

In Bramabiau

Plan and Section of La Crouzate

Crane in La Crouzate

Stritch Hutfoii . Frontispiece

S. Vuillier (Club Alpin)

ranee .... 4

8 S. Vuillier (Club Alpin)

F. D. Bedford .

F. Schrader (Club Alpin)

1 F. Boudier (Le Tour du

\ Monde) Taylor (Le Tour du Monde) A. Storn (Le Tour du Monde)

fC. Boudier (Le Tour du

\ Monde)

S. Baring-Gould

do. S. Vuillier (Club Alpin)

do.

do. After M. Martel

G. Young

3l 33

37 39 40 41 43 45 5i 55 59

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS

A i laussenard

Chaos at the Pas de Soucy .

The Oven, dstelbouc

Chateau at Ste. Enemie

Pougnadoire ....

Exit of the Detroit, Tarn

Descent of the Puits du T ,ac .

Le Pas de Soucy

Montpellier'-le-Vieux .

Do. St. Gervais .... Firehills of Cransac . Church at Cransac Roquefort Cheese-store Hut on Wheels Roquefort Cheese-girl Peasants hunting Truffles

The Bridge, Cahors .

The Devil on the Bridge, Cahors

A Street in Cahors

La Laugerie Haute .

Les Eyzies ....

The engraver has made a small mistake in the reproduction of this drawing. He has carried the tower to the foot of the rock, beside the road. Actually it rests on the ledge, and the rock rises from the level of the valley to the ledge on which the castle is con- structed.

(S. Baring-Gould (from Good t Words) . . .147

Interior, La Laugerie Basse . . do. (from The Graphic) 148

Flint Tools .... do. (from Good Words) 153

Fig. 1. Moustier spear-head, dark flint. Fig. 2. ,, scraper. ,,

(Observe that both are convex on one side only. ) Fig. 3. Solutre spear-head, much finer work, semi-transparent,

convex on both sides. Fig. 4. Solutre scraper, worked round the blunt end, with a long tongue to fit into a bone or wood handle.

I S. Baring-Gould (from Good \ Words) . . .155

Figs. 1-6. Portions, more or less perfect. Fig. 7. Engraving of a human arm.

G. Young		"5
S. Vuillier (Club Alpin)		78
Stritch Hutton		83
do.		85
F. D. Bedford .		89
S. Vuillier (dab Alpin)		92
do.		94
Stritch Hutton		96
do.		98
do.		99
do.		101
S. Baring-Gould		<°3
Stritch Hutton		108
do.		no
S. Baring-Gould		1 12
Stritch Hutton		121
From The Graphic		131
j S. Baring- Gould (from	The
\ Graphic)		136
do. do-		'37
Jo. do.		'39
do. (from Good Words)	r42
do.		'43

La Laugerie Basse

Spear-heads, etc., of Bone and Ivory

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Flint Saws, Knives, etc. , of Madeleine t .s'. Baring-Gould (from Good

Period .... 1 Words) . . 156

Figs. 1-4. Saws.

Figs. 5-8. Flint needle-like pieces, perhaps employed for picking the

snails (Hit of their shells.

Fig. 9. A borer.

Fig. 10. A tine Hint spear-head.

Figs, ti, 12. Scrapers.

Figs. 13-15. Knives of flint.

(All these are from the author's own collection.)

Hone Arrows or Spear-heads with 1

i. Baring-Gould . . 157

Poison-hollows, as fitted in shafts I

These are drawn from examples in the collection of M. Elie Massenat. The handles and binding are of course modern.

I S. Baring-Gould (from Good Hone and 1- lint I ools . .

\ Words) . . .158

Figs. 1, 2, 4. Bone harpoons from the author's collection. Fig. 3. Hone harpoon in the Museum at Xarbonne.

(In this and the preceding numbers, the sharp end was for

fixing in the shaft. The piercing end is worn or broken off.)

Figs. 5, 6. Ivory needles. In Fig. 6 the eye has been broken and

a fresh eye made. Fig. 7. Yellow flint knife.

Fig. 8. Borer, with scraping hollows on both sides for the manu- facture of ivory needles. From the collection of M. Ph. 1 .alande.

fS. Baring-Gould (from Good Engraved Bones, La Laugerie Hasse ;

\ Words) . . -159

Fig. 1. A horse's head, engraved full-size in Massenat, l.es Stations

de V Age J// Renne, pi. xxxii. fig. 1. Fig. 2. Head of a wild goat. Ibid. fig. 2.

Fig. 3. Head of a male Bouquetin on one side of a reindeer bone. Fig. 4. Head of a female on the other side of the same bone. Ibid.

pi. xxxiii. fig. 3. Kngraved Hones from La Laugerie fS. Baring-Gould (from Good

Hasse .... I Words) . . . t6o

Fig. 1. An ass, the ears exaggerated, on a piece of reindeer bone.

Ibid. pi. xiv. tig. 3. Fig. 2. A reindeer. Ibid. pi. xxiv. tig. 3. Pig. 3. A reindeer.

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS

Engraved Bones from La Laugerie ( .S'. Baring-Gould (from Good Basse \ Words) . . . r6i

Fig. i. The Urocks-hunter. Ibid. pi. xi. figs. 1-3.

(On the opposite side of the same bone is an ox, well carved.)

Fig. 2. A so-called Baton de Comman dement, La Madeleine. From the Christy and Lartet collection, in the British Museum. The large-headed horses are now represented by Ice- landic ponies.

I S. Baring-Gould (from Good Engraved Hones . . .

I Words) . . .162

Fig. r. Reindeer from La Laugerie Basse. Engraved full size in Massenat, op. cit. pi. xxiv. fig. 1.

Fig. 2. Horses from La Laugerie Hasse, collection (G. Mart}) from Cartailhac, La Frame Prikistorique, fig. 35.

l-'ig. 3. The well-known and often - reproduced reindeer from Thaeyngen.

Ivory and Bone Carvings from La 1 S. Baring-Gould (from Good

Laugerie Basse . . .■ \ Words) . . . 165

Fig. 1. Head of a bear(?) in reindeer bone. Massenat, pi. i. fig. 1.

Fig. 2. Squirrel in seated position; a hole through the mouth allowed the figure to be suspended. The brush was originally turned up the back, which bears indications where it has been broken off. Massenat, pi. iii. fig. 1.

Fig. 3. A bat ; hole for suspension. This is carved out of a bone

of a bird. Massenat, pi. i. fig. 4. Fig. 4. Elephant's head, from the Museum at Perigueux. Fig. 5. Portion of a reindeer. Massenat, pi. xxii. fig. 4. Fig. 6. Forepart of an ox. Les Eyzies. In the St. Germain

Museum.

The Cannstadt Man and the Hunter ~»

, , J-.S. Baring-Gould . . 166

of the Vezere . J

The head of the former restored from the form of skull.

The head of the latter enlarged and slightly touched-up from the

representation of the Urocks-hunter, p. 161. M. Massenat most kindly gave me a cast of this famous relic in his

collection.

fFrom Cartailhac, La France Esquimaux Huts . . < .

I Prthistorique

169

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS

Engravings on Bon Fig

Fig.

Fi

rS. Baring-Gould (from Good

\ Words) i. Head of buffalo, and figures of natives apparently in skin garments. From the Christy and Lartet collection, in the British Museum. I made my sketch from the cast in the Museum at Perigueux.

2. Rude sketch of an animal by a child. Massenat, pi. xvii. tig. 2.

3. Figure, possibly intended as a fetish. Massenat, pi. xxii.

ng- 3- Fig. 4. Goat's head. La Laugerie Basse. Fig. 5. Horse's ,, do.

M. Elie Massenat most kindly and patiently suffered me to go through his collection, and to compare the drawings made for his work, referred to above, with the originals. I am convinced that the representations are as exact as could possibly be made.

Menhirs, Valley of the Kora

Khasia Monuments . Menhir, Dartmoor

,, Grealou Death-boards, Bohmer-wald Dolmen at Grammont Plan of the Grammont Dolmen

Dolmen at Laramiere

, , at Gabaudet Neolithic Flint Arrow and Lance

Heads Trepanned Skull

Dolmen in the Caucasus

,, ,, Crimea

Beehive Watch-huts . Neolithic Goddess of Death . Diagram of Successive Civilisations Grioteaux

Le Peuch, first rock habitation East Gate, La Koque St. Christophe Stable, Le Rocher de Tayac L'Eglise de Guillem . Gazelles

j From Atkinson's Upper am	I
\ Lower A moor		t-77
From Cartailhac		180
Photograph, R. H. Worth	184
.S'. Baring-Gould		185
do.		186
From Cartailhac		188
do.		189
(S. Baring- Gould	(fron	1
y Strange Survivals		190
do.		191
e ^ iTrom Cartailhac		193
do.		194
do.		195
After Cartailhac		196
do.		197
S. Baring-Gould		199
After Cartailhac		208
.S'. Baring-Gould		226
/•'. D. Bedford		230
do.		233
e do.		235
do.		237
do.		240
do.		242

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS

Face of Chalk Cliff, Cazelles	S. Baring-Gould		v v.i: 243
Les ( irottes de Lamouroux .	/■: D. Bedford		244
Rock Mangers	After Ph. Lalande,	Matiriaux	=45
Plan of Les Crottcs de Lamouroux	/■'. />. Bedford		246
Do. do. do.	do.		248
Rock Pigeonry	After I'll. Lalande,	Matiriau \	249
Inhabited Cave on the Tarn .	Stritch Ilutton		252
Rock Dwelling (the third), Le Peucl	F. D. Bedford		2SS
Le Trou Bourrou	do.		-'57
La Roque Gageac	do.		259
Malpas, a Rock Castle on the Vezen	do.		278
,, the Gate	do.		286
Rock-refuge on the Vers	S. Baring-Gould		288
Brengues .	Stritch Hutton		292

1 have to express my gratitude to the editors of TJie Graphic and Good Words for kindly allowing me the use of illustrations that accompanied some articles written by me for their periodicals. Also to Messrs. Hurst and Blacket for the use of an illustration from Atkinson's Amoor, to Mr. R. H. Worth for kind loan of an illustra- tion from a photograph, to Messrs. Hachette for use of blocks from Le Tour du Monde, illustrative of M. Martel's descent into Padirac, and M. Ch. Delagrave for others from the Club Alpin, employed in illustration of M. Martel's Le Cevennes,

STALAGMITES IN DARGILAN.

THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

CHAPTER I

LES CAUSSES

The Margeride — Impervious Rocks — The Pervious Rocks of the Gausses — The Extent of the Causses — Their Character — A Recent Discovery— Geologic Structure — Subterranean Rivers — The Causses not seen by Travellers — The Causses of Lozere — The Causses of Quercy — The Three Stages — The Chalk Platform of Perigord — Furrowed Rocks — The Ravines — The Pot-holes- -Disappearance of Rivers — Denudation of the Causses — The Function of Forests — The Cirques as Winter Quarters — Cabrerets — Salles-la-Source — Beynac.

The traveller from Clermont to Beziers and Narbonne, after having crossed that spider-thread viaduct of Garabit, ascends to a granite plateau of lakes and pools, of oozing springs and running streams. The pastures are per- petually grassy, in May starred with narcissus. They are roamed over by dun-coloured oxen, and in summer are cropped by tens of thousands of lean sheep, driven to these ever green pastures from the parched plains of Provence.

The granite is very ancient and decomposed. The

4 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

soil consists of crumbled clvan, overlain with a little peat. Nevertheless, owing to the abundance of water, this moun- tain plateau laughs with verdure. The reason why it is not a torrid waste, but a garden and lawn, is that the sub- jacent rock is impervious. All the rain that falls on the heights lodges there, the turf absorbs, the gravel retains it, and both yield up the moisture leisurely in springs. When the soil has drunk in all that it can imbibe, what

THE PROVINCES OF THE SOUTH CENTRE OF I KA\< I..

remains lies on the surface in pools. This is the case, not only with this emerald Alp, the Margeride, but with its western continuation, the Monts d'Aubrac.1 Here one of the lakes, that of St. Andeol, has been from time im- memorial held so sacred that coins have been cast into its dark waters as oblations, first to one deity, then to another, and finally to a saint, so that if drained it would yield up a numismatic treasure in regular series from the beginning.

1 These are of basalt as well as granite.

LES CAUSSES 5

The train, after having crossed the granitic Alp, swings clown the ravine of the brawling Crueize, and presently pulls up to draw breath and take in water at Marvejols.

Here on the left is seen, standing above the town, a solitary peak of dry salmon-coloured rock, on which grow no shrubs, nor does it sustain any grass, — a fang of bald rock rising out of gums of equally naked rubble. This is the northern sentinel of the Causses. It is called Le True, and is over 3000 feet high.

The Causses consist of a barren region, which I propose to describe. This region, as its name implies, is of limestone (calx), and it is barren because the lime rock is — what granite is not — pervious.

The rains that fall on the mountain heights are drunk in at once ; not a drop runs over the lips of the causse. It is far too thirsty to spill any. Every particle is sucked in, and disappears at once. The drops thus absorbed run together, not, as elsewhere, on the surface, but within, in articulate threads of water, then rills, lastly rivers, in the bowels of the great plateau.

I said one day to a peasant, " Truly you live on a fossil sponge."

" Pardon," was his ready reply ; " on a stone sieve. A sponge absorbs water and retains it ; a sieve lets all through and remains dry."

The Causses are veritable deserts : in winter a Siberia ; in summer a Sahara ; and this bleached, ghastly waste lies in, and occupies a large surface of, beautiful, smiling, luxuriant France. The Causses extend over a consider- able area ; they lean against the western flanks of the Cevennes, and extend south within sight of the blue Gulf of Lyons, and to the west within a hundred miles of

6 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

the grey, windlashed Bay of Biscay. They cover a large portion of the departments of Lot, Lozere, Aveyron, Gard, and Ilerault, and rise from 2400 feet to 3000 feet above the sea.

" If the causse is too low," says Onesime Reclus, "then the dwellers thereon are troubled with overmuch sun ; if too high, then with overmuch snow. Always and every- where where grow a few miserable trees, they are twisted out of shape by the wind. In place of lakes the causse exhibits morasses only, in place of rivers, ravines. The rocky pastures are browsed over by sheep and lambs with fine wool ; the rubbly fields grow a sparse crop of barley, oats, potatoes, rarely wheat ; where the altitude is incon- siderable, vines scramble. The soil, red or white, dies into the rocks, and is pierced by them. On all sides are seen accumulations of stones laboriously collected through long centuries for the clearing of the soil and the enclosure of the fields. Here they are piled up to form dry walls, there amassed in heaps, almost hillocks, like vidette stations, or those mountains of testimony to which every passer-by contributes a stone, in reprobation of a murder, in remembrance of a victim. In place of verdure are seen a few scattered box bushes, a few rare pines and oaks, some shrubs, the last survivors of the ancient forest that once enveloped these heights. Numerous dolmens scattered over the plains recall races long disappeared. The Caussenard alone can love the causse, but every citizen of the world can admire the gorges of mighty depth that cleave it, and the precipices that form the walls of this gigantic acropolis.

" In descending, by goat-paths, from the plateau by the precipices that edge them, one is suddenly trans- ported from parched wastes to pleasant pastures, from vast

LES CAUSSES 7

horizons vague in outline, and utterly sad in complexion, to joyous nooks of blended heaven and earth. Above, on that stone table, are wind, cold, nakedness, poverty, moroseness, hideousness, — a void, for few villages are found aloft ; below, orchard land, warmth, gaiety, abund- ance. The startling contrast between some of the canons and their causses forms one of the most phenomenal beauties of beautiful France."

Such water as can be retained on the plateaux is collected in reservoirs ; it is the drainage of roofs, of paved courts, the leakage of farmyards. They are replenished by every thunderstorm that bursts over the waste, and the water is retained by a lining of clay. The wells are mere reservoirs of surface water. They are roofed over, and resemble the beehive huts of the primeval men. At Les Baux, in Provence, where the Jura limestone forms the range of Les Alpines, a hill slope has been paved for the very purpose of shedding the rain that falls on it into the tanks from which the villagers and their cattle drink. The colour, odour, taste of this water, are sickening. It swarms with life of the lowest forms. It is possible to be a teetotaller in the ravines, not with impunity on the plateaux.

Precisely the same formation of limestone is found in the Jura, the Rauhe Alb, the Franconian Switzerland, the Carinthian Karst, and the moors of Penigent and Ingleborough, but the extent is not so great, nor are the peculiar phenomena so marked elsewhere as in the Causses.

In a lecture delivered at the International Fxposition at Paris in 1889, M. Martel said:—

" This region of the Causses is a veritable novelty, and the most part of my audience has probably never before

8 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

heard them named. It is, in fact, only since 1 879 that geographers have paid them any attention. Up to that date they were, if not totally, yet to a very large extent, unknown, and were certainly misunderstood. However

M0^c^SDAu

improbable this statement may seem, it is a fact, although this region is situated in the very centre of France.

" Now, thanks to the initiative of the French Alpine Club, the poor cantons of Ouercy, of the Gevaudan, of the Rouergue, of Larzac, etc., imperatively call for attention ; and in spite of fashion they are beginning to attract tourists by the hundreds to visit magnificent scenery, yesterday

LES CAUSSES 9

unknown, to-morrow bound to become famous, — the gorges of the Tarn and of its affluents, of the Herault and of the Vis ; the rock-labyrinths of Montpellier- le-Vieux, of Rajol, etc.; the subterranean cascades of Kramabiau, the cave of Dargilan, etc.

" These cantons compose the curious country of the Gausses, the calcareous plateaux. Here we find extra- ordinary valleys, as profound as they are wide, between precipices that measure 1 500 feet in vertical height. The rocks are purple and the waters pellucid. There are more forests of rock-needles than of pines, and these natural obelisks have been hewn and sculptured by ancient deluges into astounding forms. Finally, one has to travel in boat on the tortuous rivers where the ravines are so contracted that no space is afforded for a road.

" But this is not all ; the landscape is viewed under the gleaming sun of the South, is seen without effort ; but this is the least original feature of the country. Look behind it all, into the bowels of the earth, and there you see a revelation of its greatest marvels. Far from the blue sky, these wonderful sights lay hidden in darkness, seen by few, explored incompletely, caves with immense stalactites, stretching for many miles into untraced subterranean rivers, unmapped underground lakes, walls clothed in the glittering veil of crystallisation, quite as beautiful as the more famous grottoes of Carinthia, — a hidden, sombre world, which at the gleam of the magnesium wire is trans- formed into a fairy palace, fantastic to visit, fascinating to discover.

" In a word, the whole of this country, so long despised, now stands forth as one pre-eminent in its natural marvels, and in its scientific, especially its prehistoric, curiosities."

No visitor to the Causses can understand what he

A LIMESTONE PINNACLE ON THE JONTE.

LES CAUSSES u

sees without having grasped their geological structure. Geology is thought to be a tedious and dry stud)-, yet what study is without its pons asinorum, on one side of which only the imbecile and the vulgar halt and are content. " Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not under- stand." Whack! away with them to Monte Carlo; Les Causses is not for such as these.

In the region of Les Causses geology is made easy to beginners. Kind Mother Nature opens wide her story- book full of pictures, and shows us what will interest us, in the simplest manner, in the way most easy to grasp.

geologic: section.

First of all, there arc the eruptive rocks, granite and granulite ; these come out in the Margeride, the Monts d'Aubrac, and the Aigoual.

Above the granite lies the schist. This is micaceous, and of the richest Indian red hue. It may be seen up- lifted by the granite on the way from Florae to Meyrueis.

Above the schist lie the Silurian or Devonian beds, red sandstones, with basins of coal in them. These we come upon in the train from Rodez to Brive ; but they have been removed from the top of the schist in the causse district of Lozere.

Above the red sandstone is the lias ; in Lozere it lies directly upon the schist. The lias is at once detected by its horizontal beds, much fractured, of a calcareous nature, of a nasty dust colour, intermingled with layers of clay, bluish or black or yellow.

i2 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

Above the lias, capping all, is the Dolomitic limestone, with a vertical cleavage.

Let us shake hands— we are over the bridge.

Now, immediately, we see one of the consequences of what we have acquired.

It is obvious that when water falls on the Dolomitic cap, it soaks in, and runs through the vertical clefts till it reaches the lias, where it encounters a formation that has horizontal beds, and some of those beds impervious. What happens ? What would you do if you fell down a chimney ? Would you not crawl out at the grate as soon as you reached the hearth-stone ? The rain-water does the same ; it bursts forth at the sides of the mountains in full- formed rivers. Where you see these, you know at once what is the explanation of their coming tumbling out of these orifices, laughing, bubbling, sparkling, full of music and brightness.

One of the most singular of these rivers is the L'Ouysse, formed of the drainage of the plateau of Gramat. It has two sources, very near each other, and constitutes a letter Y- Each source is so full, that a coal barge might be punted up the stream to its origin. The two streams Unite within half a mile of their sources, and then run, a full, deep river, swarming with fish, for a distance of a couple of miles, till it falls over a wear into the Alzou, by a mill ; and it is certainly, for its size, the shortest river in France, and indeed in Europe, excepting only those which drain the southern slopes of the Icelandic Vatna Yokull.

The sources of the L'Ouysse are not boisterous in ebullition, but dark, profound pools. It is otherwise with Bramabiau, and ten thousand other springs. At Padirac a subterranean river can be followed in a boat for two miles.

LES CAL'SSES

'3

Some of these sources are intermittent. At Autoire one day I saw women washing linen in a copious torrent, much affected by them, because warm. Next day I passed the bed dryshod ; not a drop was running. At Baladou are two perverse sources that take it in turn to spout.

GEOLOGN AI. MAP OB THE < AUSSES.

\i/g.\uPI>ltCHAlK	"	| BASS a
EUBD UA5
I....J-I inomric IWWOM
A Causse	Central d'Avej
B		de Sauveterre.
c	,	Mejean.
D E		Noir. de Begon.
F		, , Larzac.
G		,, Blandas.
H		,, Campestre.

I Causse de ( rramat.

J ,, .. Martel.

K ,, ,, Cahors. L ,, ,. Limogne. M ,. ,. Lalbenque. N Plateau de Negronde . O ,, d'Excideuil.

The Dolomitic limestone is held to be coral rock built up under water by the industrious insect that is at present forming reefs and islands in the Pacific. At the time when these tremendous masses were composed, the lias lay at the bottom of a warm, shallow sea. and on its banks the

i4 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

coral worm worked. Gradually the bottom of the sea sank, and as it sank, so gradually did the insect build upwards towards the light and warmth. .After a lapse of ages the whole was upheaved, and the coral reefs were thrown hicih into the air to form mountains. Thus were created the Marmolatta in South Tyrol, and the Madeler Gabel in the Algai Alps, and the Causses of South Central France. As the construction was vertical, the structure is vertical ; and as the coral insects twisted and turned about sponges, masses of seaweed, and avoided cold cur- rents, the whole mass of rock abounds in hollows, in which water accumulates, and in passages through which rivers run.

The great stream of tourists or travellers follows the line of the Rhone to the Riviera, or that by Bordeaux to the Pyrenees, and all this district to which I wish to draw attention lies between these lines. Then, again, such as run to Toulouse from Brive, or to Beziers from Clermont, or from Figeac to Mont Sempron-Libos, do not perceive the desolation because the lines follow the rivers;1 and in the valleys there is alluvial soil that is cultivated and is rich. In the department of Lozere alone these bald plateaux occupy 310,000 acres. In Aveyron, the Causse of Larzac extends over 1 20 square kilometres, or 75 square miles. In the department of Lot, the ancient Ouercy, the Causses occupy the greater portion of its surface.

The Causses are actually arranged in three steps or stages. The lowest is that nearest the Atlantic, and is of chalk, with a layer of lias above it in places. This is D in the diagram. The second is the stage of Quercy (C),

1 That from Brive to Figeac does climb the Causse de Gramat, how- ever, so does that from Souillac to Cahors.

LES CAUSSES 15

that attains an altitude of 1000 feet. This stage is more sterile than the lower platform of Dordogne. The third (B) abuts on the Cevennes, and is the highest of all. It attains an altitude of between 3300 and 4000 feet. To the east of the Cevennes the Jurassic limestone plateaux reappear (A) in Gard and Ardeche. The highest terrace is the most sterile and most arctic in winter.

SECTION FROM Tin: RHONE VALLEY TO THE BAY OF BISCAY.

The lowest terrace of all, that of Berigord, is of the lower chalk with flints in it ; not friable like the chalk of Dover, but compact and hard, and distinguishable from limestone only by its fossils, and by the flints embedded in it. The chalk Causses extend not only through the greater portion of Dordogne, but also into Tarn-et-Garonne, where the highest elevation attained is 900 feet. " The soil," says Joanne, "presents in general only stony plateaux, dry, barren, monotonous, with vines struggling from between stones, soils red and yellow, miserable coppice hardly clothing the nakedness of the hillsides. But though the plateaux are so desolate and sterile, the valleys are delightful, and often very fertile."

It is singular that the feldspathic clay or kaoline, the wash of the granite chains to the north and north-east, should lie, here in traces, there in pockets, on the surface of the equally white chalk, and that in sufficient quantities to be worth extracting for the porcelain factories.

A feature of great interest, as we shall presently see, is the horizontal lie of the chalk beds, and their variations in texture. After the deposition of a layer of peculiar hard-

i6

THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

ness, another ensued of a different quality, and this was again succeeded by the precipitation of a specially hard deposit. Consequently the face of a cliff reveals parallel strata, some soft, others hard. When the whole formation was elevated, it was split by upheaval, and sections were exposed to the action of the weather. Addison, in one of the papers in the Spectator, tells of a young school-miss who ate all the chalk that came in her way. Nature is that same chalk -eater. She is for ever nibbling at the tender beds that intervene between those which are hard. The consequence is, that the faces of the chalk cliffs in Perigord are furrowed horizontally with cavities at several elevations, running their whole length. It is just as though some giant had applied a parallel ruler to them, and had gone over them with a cheese-scoop, scraping horizontal lines one above another in their scarps.

Naturally enough, man in all ages has utilised these hollows. They are provided with a solid floor and a hard, dry roof, and the rock that lies between is so soft, that he can burrow into it at his pleasure. As the weather goes on gnawing inwards, it leaves so much projecting roof, that at last this, being unsupported, breaks away, falls down, and forms a mass of ruin at the foot.

A distinctive feature of the limestone Causses is the series of profound gorges through which the rivers flow. The course of the Lot is one full of noble scenery. Near its cradle it passes under the frowning Causses of Sauve- terre ; then it cleaves the limestones of the Rouergue, and afterwards winds and writhes like a serpent through the

WEATHERING OF A CHAI.K CLIFF.

LES CAUSSES

17

Causses of Quercy. Everywhere, at every stage, it affords surprises ; the scenery is sublime and quaint. On both

LA LAUGEKIE BASSE.

sides the cliffs are encrusted with castles and domestic habitations built half into the crags. Churches and towns

2

18 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

stand on the tops of the cliffs, and look down on the boats that glance by. In its sinuosities it washes overhanging scars, without leaving soil at their feet on which to plant a foot, whereas an alluvial meadow, rich and rank, is on the farther bank ; then, suddenly, the capricious river turns to the opposite side, and treats it as it had the first; conse- quently, a road was only to be carried up the Lot valley by means of tunnels and bridges.

The statelier Dordogne, after leaving the granite chasms between Roquebrou and Gaignac, — chasms which nobody thinks of visiting, because ignored by the guide- books,— sweeps past the mediaeval citadel of Castlenau le Bretenoux, and traverses a green plain bristling with poplars, between the Causse of Gramat and that of Martel. It passes under Taillefer's rock -castle at Gluges, and then ripples through a valley teeming with objects of interest. It sweeps under the rock of Fenelon, crowned by the restored castle of the great orator-archbishop, then gurgles below the tremendous Rock of Codon, 600 feet high, that overhangs. It is said in the country that the unlikely will happen what time as the Rock of Codon falls. On October 25, 1854, a great portion of this pro- jecting beak was precipitated into the Dordogne ; — it was the day of Balaclava. That same day the College of St. Joseph at Sarlat went out for a picnic, and the boys spread their tablecloth and consumed their meal beneath the shadow of the mighty rock. Five minutes after they had left, the mass fell, and carried away the road, and blocked the river. Further down is the marvellous town of La Roque, plastered against the face of a cliff, and Domme, occupying the plateau at the top of one wholly insulated.

The Dourdou passes through fine ravines, and receives the Sorgues, a fantastic, partly subterranean river. The

LES CAUSSES 19

Aveyron sweeps through magnificent gorges, seen in glimpses only by the passengers in the train from Paris to Toulouse, which overleaps the tortuous river eighteen times. The Viaur, which falls into it, cleaves its way through a valley which is one of the marvels of France. Its medium width is 48 ft. ; it is simply a chasm.

The canon of the Tarn is fast acquiring an European celebrity. There is nothing comparable to it except in America and Asia. But the visitors who flock thither to descend from Ste. Enemie to Peyreleau, disembark there, and think they have seen all, and do not thread the tortuous gorges in which it is strangled when it enters the department which is called after it, gorges which extend to the fall of Sabo.

The Vis, the Jonte, the Herault, the Ardeche also run through clefts of great beauty and savagery.

These chasms are the arteries, but the veins of water that feed them are mainly subterranean. But let us leave the valleys and reascend the plateaux. A notice- able feature to anyone crossing the upland plains is the number of saucer-like depressions in the surface. Into these basins the scanty soil, of the colour of ground coffee, has been washed, and these hollows are invariably converted into circular or oval fields that are laboriously tilled. Their origin is this. Beneath the surface existed at one time a vacuum, a cave ; the upper crust has fallen in, and has left this pock-mark in the skin of the causse. But in certain cases the cavern has been so large in diameter, and so profound, that the crust has sunk bodily to a great depth, forming huge circular openings like lunar craters.

In some places, where the rock happens not to be porous, a stream flows along the surface till it reaches

A LIMESTONE CANON ON THE ARDECHE

LES CAUSSES 21

;i crack or a gulf, down which it immediately precipitates itself, and is lost. Where it emerges nobody knows.

Thus, on the Causse of Gramat two rivers, the Thy- mines and the Theminette, after a brief course drop out of sight. The Jonte dives underground below Meyrueis and re-emerges, after a short subterranean run. Near Rocamadour, a stream leaps down an abyss called the Maiden's Spring. The same occurs in the Grotte de Revillon. The sketch map of the district of Gramat on p. 39 will give an idea of the abundance of these holes in the ground.

These pot-holes, which vary in dimensions from that of a large-sized well to that of a volcanic crater, are locally called avens, cloups, tindouls, and igucs. I shall devote a couple of chapters to them, and now pass on to other points of interest connected with the Causses.

Before the Revolution they were covered with trees. The enormous number of dolmens, i.e. prehistoric stone tombs, that still remain — and these are but a small fraction of those which formerly existed — testify that at a remote period these Causses must have maintained a considerable population. But the well-built farmhouses, with their pigeonries like towers, the extensive outbuildings, dating all from the Renaissance, tell the same tale, that the prosperity and population of the Causses were far greater formerly than they are at present. Moreover, again and again have I come upon the remains of walls and accumulations of stones collected from the ground for agricultural purposes, testifying to former cultivation, where now grow only a few juniper or box bushes. Wild vines also ramble at will where, beyond the recollection of present villagers, vineyards once existed ; and now that phylloxera has destroyed the vines of the modern

22 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

peasant, he goes in search of cuttings from those that exist in the wilderness, where, five or six generations ago, thriving farmers collected and crushed their grapes.

The impoverishment of the entire limestone district is due to the ruthless denudation which followed on the Revolution.

The seigneurial forests were cut down and, as sheep were allowed to roam at liberty over the plains once well wooded, every seedling oak was cropped, and no young growth suffered to take the place of what had fallen.

Let us see what is the work of a tree and its function in the economy of nature, and thus we shall be able to measure the disaster that ensues on its destruction.

If any one will examine a section of soil and rock where exposed, he will observe, first of all, and upper- most, the humus, the ordinary mould, mostly composed of decayed vegetable matter. Below this is a friable combination of soil and stone, interpenetrated by roots ; and below that again is the rock which has in it fractures. These fractures, great and small, are searched out and filled by the finest root-fibres. The tree root thus penetrates the natural joints of the rock, and breaks it up. It splits the rock into bits, and then, grasping these fragments, crushes them to grit. Thus it is continuously engaged in deepen- ing the soil and reducing the rock. It does more. It throws down its leaves every year, and by their decay makes mould out of the rock the fibres have chewed. Moreover, the acid given out by the leaves exercises a powerful effect on the limestone, which it attacks and corrodes.

Thus, on a plateau like the causse, when well-wooded, there goes on a steady decomposition of the rock and accumulation of soil. But this is not all. The multi-

LES GAUSSES 23

tudinous fibres of the root hold the soil together, and

the protection of the trees enables myriads of most varied shrubs and herbs to grow on the ground, and all to com- bine with their delicate lacings of rootlet to keep the soil in place. A thunderstorm bursts over the mountain plain, its force is broken by the roof of leaves, and the water that falls through is entangled, divided, absorbed, and cannot form destructive torrents, sweeping away the earth that has been manufactured with such pains by the vegetation.

Now, the process of earth manufacture had been going on from the beginning of time. At the Revolution the woods were felled, and nature's laboratory brought to a standstill. In place of clothing and creating, denudation and destruction ensued. The soil was no longer protected by trees, nor held together by rootlets. With every storm it was carried away down into the depths of the cloups or into the river valleys, and more and more through the wasted flesh appeared the bald scalp of rock. The flesh was gone ; only the bone remains. Moreover, no regeneration is possible so long as the Gausses remain unplanted.

One hundred years has sufficed to sweep every par- ticle of soil from the Causses which it took countless ages to accumulate ; and land that once maintained a well-to-do population is reduced to a desert.

Upon the Rauhe Alb, a precisely similar district, though of much less extent, in YViirtemberg, a wise and stable Government has provided hydraulic rams that throw up water upon the calcareous plain, and this not only serves to fertilise the soil, but to provide the inhabitants with potable water. But such a great work can only be per- formed by a Government strong enough to resist the

24 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

unintelligent opposition of the peasantry, who would object to the replanting as involving a curtailment of their rights of pasturage over a vast range of wilderness.

Finally, I would say a word relative to this district of limestone as one fit for winter quarters. It is now some years since, spinning down the line from the St. Gothard to Genoa, I passed under the limestone cliffs of Monte Genevra, at Mendrizio, that faced the sun, and seemed to cut off north and west and east winds. It then occurred to me that no better quarters could be desired for winter; and on the following winter I betook myself thither. But what did I discover? That the warmer shone the sun on these cliffs, the more rarefied became the air, and the more tremendous was the down-rush of cold air from the snows of Monte Genevra above, to fill the vacuum created by the ascending warm current.

Every visitor to the Riviera knows how cold is the blast that descends from the Maritime Alps, clad in snow. This is inevitable. As the air becomes warm it mounts, and the ice-cold blast comes in to take its place.

If, then, we desire an equable temperature for the winter, we must not seek a place where there is a cooler atmosphere over our heads, to send down a douche of ice- cold air upon us. We must look out for shelter indeed, but shelter without this disadvantage, — and this is what the region of the Causses affords. I do not recommend those of Lozere, for snow lies on the Cevennes, but those of Quercy, and, better still, of Perigord. There, by the river banks, we have cirques of rock 400 to 600 feet high, cutting off all winds, facing the sun, and concentrating its rays.

Moreover, the chalk and limestone absorb the rain at once, so that the atmosphere is dry, and bracing also.

LES CAUSSES 25

At a time when means are dwindling and expenses are increasing, it is a consideration for a valetudinarian to find a cheap health resort. Now one can run by ex- press, third class, to Brive or PeVigueux, from Paris, for the moderate sum of 25 francs; and one can live in any hotel for from 6 francs to 7.50 per diem. That again is a con- sideration for a good man)'. But that is not all.

It is essential to one who for his health has to ex- patriate himself in winter, to be able to find something to occupy his mind and engage his interest, and afford him at the same time plenty of exercise.

I doubt whether in an)' part of Europe, Italy only excepted, so vast and varied an amount of objects of interest is collected together as in the old Aquitaine. The weather there is usually good. One is rarely confined to the house by more than one day of rain. There is some- thing fresh to be seen at every turn. The inns are not, unfortunately, as yet quite what might be desired, at all events in those villages which nestle into the warmest corners.

The cirques will some day, I believe, become health resorts. Such is that of Cabrerets, a very trap for sun- shine. Les Eyzies on the Vezere is another, but the cliffs there are not so high.

The cirque of Autoire opens to the north, but the climate there is very mild. The little river rises on the Causse de Gramat, and plunges over a lip of rock in a fall of 100 feet sheer into a great cauldron of rocks rising 400 feet. The cliffs on all sides spout forth streams that steam in winter, being warmer than the air, and nourish dense masses of maidenhair fern. Taken all in all, the cirque of Autoire is not surpassed in beaut)' by anything on the Tarn.

26 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

Rocamadour occupies a perfectly sheltered nook, and is in a neighbourhood full of interest, and possesses several very comfortable inns.

At Salles-la-Source in Aveyron is a cirque accessible only through ravines that wind about in a way to cut off every wind. The town is like those of the Amorites, " walled up to heaven" ; but the walls are not of man's construction. In walking to it from the station one May day I took the wrong turn, and traversed the causse. I could see the gorge below, I could look down on the roofs of the houses, I could smell the dejeuner cooking in the kitchens, but how to descend to those houses, and reach those plats I sniffed, puzzled me. That place was a frying-pan in May ; it cannot be cold in winter.

Or take Beynac on the Dordogne. There is not, indeed, a cirque, but a face of rock crowned by a feudal castle, where, a week before Christmas I picked pinks and harebells, wallflowers and valerian, and found a Sunday school sitting outside the church, being catechised in the sun, amidst the buzzing of green-backed flies.

CHAPTER II THE UNDERGROUND WORLD

M. Martel the Columbus of the Underworld — Resemblance between the Structure of the Natural Caves in the Causses and the Cata- combs of Rome — Padirac- -Descent of Padirac by M. Martel — < )ther Gulfs on the Causse de Gramat — The Gouffre de Revillon — The Roque de Corn — Bedes— La Vitarelle — The Formation of Gulfs — Suicides in the Avens — The Igttes — Gulfs in Ardeche — Yig-ne-close — Cave of Darjjilan in Lozere — Bramabiau — Similar Caves everywhere in Dolomitic and Jurassic Limestone.

TflE avens, or pot-holes, and the labyrinthine passages to which some of them give access are far too interesting a feature of the Causses to be dismissed in a quarter of a chapter.

These have had the good fortune to have been explored by a very Columbus of the nether world, M. E. A. Martel, with an enthusiasm and a courage altogether admirable. For my own part, I am like Nero, who, when advised to enter a tunnel in a sand-pit, to escape his pursuers, replied, " No, thank you ; I do not desire to go underground before my proper time."

My cousin, Mr. George Young, who has visited the Causses with me, has more zest for such expeditions than myself, but his experiences are limited to the examination of La Crouzate, and shall be given in the subsequent chapter.

PADIRAC.

28

THE UNDERGROUND WORLD 29

In my appendix I supply references to M. Martel's studies of the world below the surface ; all that I can pretend to do is to sum up the result of his discoveries, and condense the record of some of his exploits.

I know that on one occasion, being invited to descend at the end of a rope into some unknown depth, I suddenly recalled that I had left bills unpaid at home, and thought it more just to my creditors to remain above the surface till I had cleared off all accounts against me. I have hovered around the mouths of many of these holes, but have only entered such as were warranted safe.

Any visitor to Rome who has been through the Cata- combs will remember that the galleries are at several levels, that they are lighted by luminaria, and that they communicate one with another by drops. Now the Causses of Languedoc and Quercy are natural catacombs, resembling those that are artificial in many particulars. In both are galleries, at various levels, in both halls ; the avens of the natural cave correspond to the luminare of the catacomb.

They resemble in another particular also, in that they are the cemeteries of men and beasts that have lived in a past age, not as at Rome at one period only, but from a primeval, a hoar antiquity. To give the reader some idea of the interest attaching to these subterranean abysses, I will condense M. Martel's account of his second explora- tion of Fadirac, a typical cavern in this region of caverns. Padirac lies somewhat east of Rocamadour, on the great Causse of Gramat, about 780 feet above the bed of the Uordogne, which is not many miles distant. It opens in an arid desert, a glebe, as the natives call one of these limestone floors that support only here and there a scanty growth of grass in spring under assiduous rain. The well-

30 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

hole mouth is 105 feet in diameter. The bottom can be discerned when the eye has accustomed itself to looking down the gulf, but at the bottom certain lateral openings are also distinguishable, apparently leading farther down into unknown depths.

The pit has not perpendicular sides ; it forms a hollow cone measuring 195 feet at the bottom, which is at a depth of 225 feet. In the midst is a heap of rubbish fallen from above, rising 135 feet from the original bottom, which it conceals, and beneath which heap the stream percolates that traverses the entire length of the cave.

The gulf of Padirac is nothing other than the falling in of the roof of one vast cavern chamber. On reaching the bottom, the stream is seen gushing out from a side gallery that can be traced to its source 72 feet distant. This stream passes through the mass of debris that obstructs the centre of the great hall, and issues from below it at a little distance, and flows away through another gallery.

In 1889 M. Martel made his first descent into Padirac by a rope ladder. When he had reached the bottom of the natural well, he looked up. "The impression was fantastic; one might have imagined oneself at the bottom of a tele- scope, looking up at a patch of blue sky. The vertical light, strangely sifted, almost violet, illumined the walls of the well with reflections ; these walls were hewn pre- cipitously or in corbelled projections, joined by the cal- careous stratification, one bed overlying the other. Above appeared the tiny heads of my companions, who were lying flat on the ground watching me. At the mouth and from every rib of this colossal funnel drooped streamers of plants that love the gloom and moisture, as clematis, ferns, scolopendria, etc. A botanist would have made a rich harvest in this medley of verdure."

THE LATERAL PASSAGE, PADIRAC.

31

32 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

On this occasion M. Martel spent twenty-three hours underground, exploring the subterranean river he dis- covered, and the marvellous halls hung with stalactite that opened out of the passage through which it flowed.

This expedition was the prelude to another made in 1890. He descended at 2 P.M. on September 9.

" The weather was magnificent, water everywhere very low, after a long drought, and everything promised success. We had with us 1 86 feet of rope ladder, three boats, two photographic apparatuses, and an electric lamp ; in a word, the most perfect materiel to ensure success. Our programme was to pass a night underground, since at least twelve hours were requisite to accomplish the com- plete exploration.

" At 7.30 MM. Pons and de Jaubert, who had accom- panied us to the bottom of the well, ascended, or rather were hauled, to the surface of the soil. It was dark already, and it was by magnesium light that this manoeuvre was executed, a manoeuvre rendered complicated by the cords of the ladder becoming entangled.

" At 8 o'clock, delighted to be alone, we began our real work, unembarrassed by the presence of the curious. A look upwards revealed to us the starry sky like a ceiling set with golden nails. Four watchmen were to pass the night at the edge of the cave, near the telephone, which I had just laid out.

" At 9.30 we dined solidly and merrily, and then gave ourselves an hour for repose, which had become necessary.

"At 12.45 the three boats started, De Launcey and I in an ' Osgood portable folding canoe,' which we called the Cayman ; Gaupillat and Foulquier in another of the same construction we called the Alligator ; Armand alone in a little boat of another description, more solid than the

I.AC DF.S GOURS,

34 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

Osgood canoes, and destined to secure a retreat should the canvas sides of the other boats be torn.

"The departure was indeed majestic. The little illuminated flotilla produced a striking effect on the sub- terranean river, the colossal vault above illumined by the electric light and magnesium. After a course without much difficulty for 1275 feet, a series of lakes was entered, separated from one another by stalagmitic ribs, and the boats had to be lifted over these, and to be carried to a lower level. Then, between two stalagmitic rectilineal columns about 60 feet high, the river sped away into utter blackness. Was it possible for us to follow its course ? The Cayman was the first to make the attempt ; it is somewhat compressible ; with both our hands each of us thrust at the wall ; the membranes of our boat groaned, the canvas grated, but we succeeded in squeezing through. The others followed. The chasm is lofty and narrow, — not more than 3 feet wide, like the passages in the Great Pyramid of Egypt. Let me add that the chandeliers of stalactite, the calcareous arabesques, the black water, the flashes of reflected light, produced a strange effect. The walls were straight, smooth, without banks or shelves on which to disembark."

Having reached the point which M. Martel calls the Lac des Gours, the whole party left their boats at the foot of a steep incline which seemed to lead to another passage. The slope was escaladed, and discovered to be the stalag- mitic overflow of a lake at a higher level in a large hall.

" From this point the coup d'ceil is fairy-like. The dyke and the lake constitute the floor of the largest hall of Padirac ; the vault springs up in dome form some 120 or 150 feet above our heads, some 210 or 240 feet above the Lac des Gours, on which we could distinguish,

THE UNDERGROUND WORLD 35

far down at the bottom of the long slope, our three boats and the flash of the electric lamps we had left there. This superposition of two lakes under one vast cupola glittering with stalactites is sublime. The light smoke of our magnesium rises in spirals, and dissipates before reaching the vault. The delicacy of the circum- volutions of the incrustation holding in the upper lake is remarkable.

" Thie concretion recalls the calcareous terraces of the Mammoth Springs in the Yellowstone region.

" It was 2.20 A.M., and we could remain there no longer. We had to push on, as we did not know when we would leave the cave."

M. Alartel continued the course of the subterranean river. The difficulty of proceeding was considerable, owing to the ridges of stalagmite dividing the river course into basins. Of these as many as thirty-four had to be passed, and then M. Martel had reached the final point attained by him on a descent made the previous year.

" We came to the thirty-fifth ridge, then to a little incline, where we rested for a few moments. We were pretty well tired out, wet through, and at two kilometres from the place of embarkation. The boats were very heavy. The thirty-sixth ridge was of clay, like an ass's back. When I set my foot on it, I slipped and fell into the water up to my neck. I could feel no bottom. I laid hold of the yielding clay, but my brother-in-law drew me out. I was not more wet than I had been, for the vaults drip, and we had been soaked for some time.

" The flotilla pushed on with difficulty. Then, sud- denly, the river disappeared, probably down some fissure, but the gallery continues dry, with a gravelly floor. We disembarked and walked along this passage for 600 feet,

36 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

and came on water again - the eleventh lake. Fagged out, we flung ourselves on the ground, and called the lake ' Le Lac du Decouragement.' It seemed wide, and its extent considerable.

"It was now 6.15 a.m.; we gave ourselves some- rest, plucked up heart, and pushed forward. The change of direction, the different aspect of the soil, the absence of all current, made us hope we were near the end.

" Armand and Foulquier went back after one of the boats, and on its arrival I got in along with Armand. The lake is 300 feet long, and the vault is hung with magnificent stalactites. A contraction, then a twelfth lake, 1 80 feet long, at the end a sandy beach ; the vault lowers a little farther, and then comes a cul-de-sac. We looked for a crack, an opening of any sort, and found none. We had reached the extreme end of Padirac. The hour was 6.45 A.M."

It took three hours to get back to the point of embarkation. Then time was spent in measuring and in photographing.

" At 2 P.M. we breakfasted. We had eaten nothing for sixteen hours, — since 10 o'clock the previous evening, but we suffered from cold and our stooping position, rather than from hunger. At the Fountain we underwent a strange sensation. In the little lake which it forms as it wells from under the great cone of debris, we perceived a pale light like a lamp at the bottom of the water. The appearance was so singular as to puzzle us for some moments, till we discovered that it was the feeble ray of day falling 310 feet down the great gulf and the sinuosities of the successive minor wells. How- ever pale and feeble this luminous ray might be, like a moonbeam glinting through a keyhole, it gave us so

THE UNDERGROUND WORLD

37

much pleasure that we extinguished our lights to observe it the better.

I 111. NARROWS, PADIRAC.

" Then, when we had reached the bottom of the great gulf, we had still 240 feet to ascend by rope ladder; the

38 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

escalade of the Puits <.\u Gour had nearly finished our strength, but the view of blue sky after twenty-three hours of darkness in these caverns, the sound of voices calling- from above, reanimated us, and at 4 P.M. we were once more above ground."

The subterranean river of Padirac possesses a very peculiar and interesting feature, in that it consists of a series of reservoirs separated from each other by thin partitions of stalagmite, and these have to be completely filled before any overflow can take place.

The spot where the waters of Padirac reach the surface is probably at Gintrac, in the valley of the Dordogne, where it issues from the cleft above the impermeable clays, under the upper lias, about two and a half kilometres from the point at which the subterranean course ceases to be traced.

Since the exploration by M. M artel a speculator has bought the hole, and hopes to make the cave accessible, and pick up a little revenue from it.

The Causse de Gramat differs in one respect from those of Lozere in that on it certain streams do flow for a portion of their course over the hard surface till they reach fractures where they are swallowed up. Of these there are six, — the Cazelle, which disappears in the gulf of the Roque de Corn ; the Salgues, which plunges down the tunnel of Revillon ; the Rignac, which dives underground at the Saut de la Pucelle. These are to the north-east of Gramat. To the south-east are the Themines, the Theminette, and the Assier river.

Revillon is a fine picturesque cave, in the face of a precipice which yawns to receive the stream of the Salgues, that leaps into it in a waterfall, glides over a sloping floor, and then disappears down a sombre tunnel. The

THE UNDERGROUND WORLD

39

great entrance hall receives abundance of light ; trees and shrubs surround it. The tunnel can be explored with lights to the length of 1140 feet; it inclines to a depth of 180 feet, and is without these awful sudden drops of a hundred feet and more that are a little trying to the nerves of an inexperienced explorer.

SKETCH MAP OF THE CAUSSK OF GEAMAT.

— Pot-holes, n Dolmens.

La Roque de Corn is another of these gulfs, close to the line, half-way between the station of Rocamadour and Montvalent. This is like a lunar crater. It is bigger than Padirac (210 feet), but not so deep, and it is quite possible to descend into it by clinging to the bushes and going down from ledge to ledge. When the bottom is reached, the sides surrounding one seem to rise sheer to the blue sky above. Indeed, it is much like being at the

4o

THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

bottom of a great ribbed stone barrel. The shepherds arc accustomed to drive down their goats, as grass springs on the floor below, and it is with some surprise that one finds

DESCENDING A POT-HOLE.

one's self, on landing at the lowest level, in the midst of an importunate herd demanding crumbs of salt. At the east side of this cask is a fissure that swallows up the waters of the stream that spills down the side. The

IIIK UNDERGROUND WoKl.l)

41

tunnel cannot be penetrated beyond 1200 feet, where; the stream feeds a lake that fills the termination of the passage.

Another of these sunken hooped barrels near Gramat is Bedes, twice as deep as the Roque de Corn (185 feet_), and four or five times as large. What is singular about this is, that half-way down the side are the remains of troglodyte habitations, a cave walled up in front, accessible only with difficulty.

LA VI.TARELLE.

Another of these craters is close to the line, Les Besaces, a double abyss. A little farther is the huge avert of La Vitarelle, which is 210 feet deep. This also can be descended on one side by a crack in its harelip filled with loose stones and bushes. I, even I, descended this, sustaining myself by my umbrella, and arrived at the base with my umbrella divested of all its silk — a skeleton. Bramble and thorn-bushes retained its fluttering remains as testimonies whither I had <rone.

42 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

It is related that a witch, or an oracular spirit, dwells in this gulf, and answers questions that are shouted down it. On a certain day, when a certain person was below, two peasant girls came to the brink to ask their fortunes. Replies were promptly called from below, and this person in the depths, having a playful wit, gave them very aston- ishing prognostications. The maidens were somewhat staggered, and after a pause of mingled alarm and surprise, timidly put a test question : " La Vitarelle, if you speak the truth, and are no spirit of hell, answer truly, who are we? "

"A pair of young donkeys!" replied the voice from below.

These avens or pot-holes are of very ancient date; it is possible that some of them were formed at the period when the diluvium — that sounds better than the Deluge — washed over these lofty plateaux and strewed them with rolled stones from the mountains of Auvergne. We can imagine the crashing in of the vaults under the weight of water, and its thundering down into the chasms as they gaped.

But similar gulfs open even now. In 1891 a violent storm broke over the causse, and its worst downpour was at Cayrouse, near Reilhac. Here were many cup- like depressions, from 18 to 20 feet deep, with soil at the bottom, and cultivated as fields. These were filled to the brim with water. All at once, with a gurgle, the water fell in one of them, as though rushing down a funnel, to the consternation of the peasant who owned it. When all the water was gulped down, he discovered that his pleasant little field of coffee-coloured earth had dis- appeared wholly, and that in its place yawned a pot-hole. The same storm produced similar effects in three other places.

DESCENT OF AN AVEH.

43

44 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

The avens or the labyrinthine passages underground on the Causse de Gramat can well be visited and explored from Gramat itself, where I can recommend the Motel de l'Europe, kept by M. Bergounoux, the worthy Mayor, a man of no ordinary intelligence; and for a guide, the trusty, modest Alibert Gentil, at Gramat, a man who will not attempt to impose on a stranger, and who will faithfully and carefully ensure all that is necessary for a safe descent into the most dangerous pot-holes.

Padirac, Revillon, Bedes, La Vitarelle, are large open craters ; but others, the zgues, are smaller at the mouth, quite as profound, and sometimes much deeper. These are wells, but wells without water. The igue of Barrieres, between the Roque de Corn and Padirac, goes down abruptly 94 feet, whence continues a gallery ; the igue de Gibert is south of the Alzou, between Gramat and Roca- madour. The mouth measures about 25 feet in diameter, there is an abrupt descent of 75 feet, to a cone of rubbish, then a gallery 120 feet long; if followed, it is found to be blocked with fallen masses of rock. But another passage runs 300 feet till it arrives at a stoppage of liassic clay. The igue near Carlucet is 195 feet deep. In 1890 a poacher, who had murdered a gamekeeper, threw himself down in an access of despair. Two days after, someone passing the mouth heard cries. The man was withdrawn, actually uninjured by his fall, and he was sent to expiate his offence in New Caledonia.

A few winters ago a young peasantess near Reilhac disappeared. She was a married woman with two chil- dren; since the birth of the last she had been strange in her manner.

It was surmised that she had committed suicide. Now, on the causse, those weary of life do not drown them-

THE UNDERGROUND \\ < >RLD

45

selves, as there is not water there sufficient to smother a cat. The}- throw themselves down the pot-holes.

After a few days, the sabots of the poor woman were found at the edge of one of these abysses. A young man volunteered to descend in search of the lost woman. A

triangle of poles was erected over the gulf, and he was let down a sheer descent of 170 feet. At the bottom of this natural well he found the corpse in the attitude of one leaning against the wall, with her right hand to her head, the other in her lap. The face was raised, and the HHit fell on it from above.

46 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANI E

A rope was fastened to the body and it was hauled up, the young man staying it, as it ascended, from swing- ing against the sides.

All the neighbourhood was assembled at the pit mouth, and when the corpse appeared, the scene that ensued baffles description. The excitable peasantry were greatly moved, women screamed and fainted, and the unfortunate- husband could hardly be restrained from sharing his wife's fate.

Suicides in these gulfs are by no means uncommon. One took place in Padirac some years ago. M. Martel recovered the body of a man who had destroyed himself in Bramabiau. Verily, a man must find life very hateful to finish it in one of these horrible abysses.

At Marcillac is an extensive cavern that has long been known. It was commemorated in Latin verse in 1578, in a little volume entitled Pcplus Ita/ice, dedicated to the Bishop of Cahors. One of the most renowned is that of Miremont in Dordogne. It has been so long in honour, and has received so many visits, that the stalactites have lost their beauty, they are smoked or broken. It is of great length. The galleries measure in all 12,700 feet.

None of the tindouls, igues, or averts in Lot, or even in Lozere, attain the astonishing dimensions of some of those in Ardeche and Vaucluse. In Ardeche there are four great abysses in the plateau of Saint-Rameze. One of these, the avert of Vigne-close, measures 570 feet in depth, and is in five stages. The descent is dangerous, and occupied M. Martel three days. Each well is in the shape of a bottle, and each opens out of the other by a narrow orifice and short passage at an incline, and the incline is so rapid as to be eminently dangerous ; it is not easy for those who hold the ropes whilst lowering

THE UNDERGROUND WORLD 47

a companion to maintain their footing on the steep slope. Moreover, there is always danger of dislodging a stone and sending it down on those who are already below. On the occasion of M. Martel's descent in 1892, an accident of this nature very nearly occurred. One of the party, whilst descending the first well, let go his lamp, which shot down 125 feet on the six men who were balancing themselves at the bottom on the edge of the second abyss, that gaped to a depth of 300 feet below. The cry of dismay uttered by the pendent man happily forewarned them ; they threw themselves back against the rock. The lamp fell so close to one fellow as to strike the candle out of his hand.

On my penultimate visit to Reilhac, my friend M. Raymond Pons was suffering from cuts and contusions received in this way whilst descending a well in the bowels of the earth. A piece of rock had given way under the foot of the foremost man who held the rope by which he was being lowered, and almost killed him when suspended in mid-depth.

In Lozere there are averts and caverns of all descrip- tions, and on a great scale. The most famous is that of Dargilan, which was discovered in 1880, and is still in its full virginal splendour of stalagmite and stalactite. A shepherd discovered it by seeing a fox take refuge in a small hole. He cleared the mouth and found to his amazement that he had opened the door into a fairy world.

It was then partially explored, and was exhaustively so in 1888, by the indefatigable M. Martel. It engaged him for five days. I will not attempt a description of the several halls, and organs, waterfalls of stalagmite, statues, etc. Descriptions of stalactitic caves are as unsatisfactory

48 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

as those of waterfalls. Both must be seen, and neither committed to paper. Quite otherwise is it with Brama- biau, which is a cave of a most instructive description,

and not one of glittering incrustations.

Bramabiau is in the department of Gard, hut it is only 8 kilometres from Meyrueis, so that it can be visited from the same headquarters as Dargilan.

The plain of Camprieu, 3000 feet above the sea, was anciently the bottom of a lake that was fed by a rivulet which flowed from the granitic and schistous Aigoual. It was retained by a barrier of limestone on the west, and spilled over the edge in a series of cataracts into the valley of the Burezon. But in that barrier was a weak joint, and the water found it out, and gradually bored itself a way through the restrictive wall ; then all at once the water spurted forth, and the lake was drained. This natural tunnel can be followed throughout ; not indeed without difficulty, and that only when the stream of the Bonheur, which threads it, is low. The first hall or cavern entered by the stream has lost its crown, it has fallen in, and the mass of ruin has to be scrambled over before the brook can be reached again, where it dives under the rock.

"On the 28th of June 1888," writes M. Martel, "we traversed the upper corridor, which is from 2 1 5 to 240 feet long, and is easily accessible. We observed that about half-way through the tunnel that follows, a portion of the Bonheur is engulfed at a low, impracticable fissure. In the large square chamber that now bends to the south, 180 feet long and 45 feet wide, there are five parallel rifts which constitute the veritable avens. In the first the water disappeared that day, and it is the place of the second engulfment of the Bonheur ; the other three serve to cany

THE UNDERGROUND WORLD 49

off the superfluous water in times of flood, as we judged by the gravel and leaves that formed their beds. We were able to traverse all three. These five fissures are at an inclination so rapid that they can only be descended by ropes or ladders. They converge on a hall of a triangular form, each side about 90 feet, and perhaps 150 feet high. Two galleries open into the hall, but both end in a cul- de-sac. Under the rock and rubbish fallen from above we could hear the murmur of the Bonheur, occupied in changing her name to Bramabiau. The course of the stream is still hidden in a conduit parallel to the passage as it continues, and which leads at a rapid slope to a little lake. Here there would be nothing for it but to swim, if it were not for the capricious existence at the side of a gallery in the shape of a Y> which conveys the waters of three springs into the lake, and by means of which one can skirt the sheet of water.

" Beyond this we reached a hall where the river ceases to flow under encumbrances and blockage ; here it enters and fills completely a tunnel. To avoid repetition, I will say nothing more of the magic effect of the magnesium light under these vaults lofty as Gothic naves ; I will only ask the reader to imagine our little party, deafened by the roar of the water, in profound night, with feebly twinkling tapers, scattered about the grotto seeking for fissures, com- municating by whistles, cords stretched and ladders hang- ing over abrupt ledges, our shadows magnified on the walls or on the foaming river, under cupolas 1 50 feet high, or at the end of avenues 300 feet long.

" We had to advance in the water. This we did for

about 90 feet, and then heard the roar of a cascade, and

presently we saw a stream thundering down on our right

from a side gallery. At the confluence the river was,

4

50 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN I RAM E

of course, much swelled. We were constrained to dive under this cascade, in a manner neither graceful nor com- fortable.

" From this point our progress was naught but a series of gymnastic exercises, through passages varying from 3 feet to 9 feet in width, along ledges, and round rocky buttresses, through deep and shallow water; sometimes with legs and arms extended we scrambled along above the torrent, working ourselves forward by means of the walls, or else we sidled along, clinging to the side with our fingers glued as it were to the wall, or else again we waded to the breast in the water. The frequent extinc- tion of the candles, the difficulty of communication, of hearing in the din of the boiling water, all helped to increase the material difficulties we had to encounter.

"A great lateral pocket about 120 feet deep happily allowed us to halt. Almost in front, but a little farther down, a spout of water rushed out of the side through a hole in the wall ; whence it came we could not conjecture. Then we reached an expansion of the gallery filled with a little lake, which we skirted on a cornice. Before us a black cavity announced a continuation of the channel ; but the gallery was here over 6 feet wide, and the opening was higher than our cornice ; if we leaped to reach it and failed, we would fall back either on the rock or into the water. Then Blanc threw himself, arms extended, across the torrent, and fell with his expanded hands against the wall opposite, just below the hole ; but as, in spite of his height, he was unable to reach the entrance by this means, I took hold of his ankles, and held him over the edge, whilst he worked himself up, with rigid knees, till he could seize the lip of the cavity, secure his position, and give me a hand to help me over. How it was we did

IN KKAMABI.U

51

52 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRAN< I

not fall into the black rushing stream below in executing this manoeuvre is more than I can understand.

"Our energy now began to relax. We had traversed

600 feet, and had taken an hour and a half over it, and in the event of our being unable to make an exit at the mouth, we must reserve our force for beating a retreat. A little farther on, and we heard the thunder of another cascade."

M. Martel had now reached a point which he had attained the day before when making the reverse attempt ; it was the sixth cascade from where the river emerged into the light of day. Thence the descent was in the river or along ledges above it — now down inclines, then down abrupt falls. At last, at one o'clock, streaming with water, burning as in a fever, the little party of adventurers came out of the chasm whence the stream bursts into daylight.

There are other districts in Europe also riddled with caverns. Where the formation is limestone, it naturally lends itself to produce similar phenomena. It is so in the Karst, in the limestone of the Jurassic period in Germany, in Yorkshire, and in Ireland. In Yorkshire, the caves of Kirkdale, and of the Greta, which sinks and flows under- ground, are familiar instances. Less familiar are those of Ireland. There, a subterranean river runs from Lough Mask to Lough Corrib.

Nevertheless, I doubt whether anywhere in Europe we have such a multitude of these caves, pot-holes, and sunken streams as in the Causses of Languedoc and Ouercy.

CHAPTER III

LA CROUZATE

Caves used as Refuges in the Reign of Terror — To Priests — M. Arnal — -To the Baron de Montesquieu — The Cave of La Crouzate — Descent by Mr. Young- and M. Pons — The Crane for Lowering- — The Last Abyss — The Twelve Skeletons — Malpial — Black Pottery — The Cave at Reilhac.

That the caves which honeycomb the whole country- should have served as refuges at all times of war and per- secution, and have been utilised as haunts for bandits and outlaws, is what might have been expected.

At the time of the Terror many of the nobles and clergy dived underground, and so escaped la lanterne and the guillotine.

At the extremity of the cliff of the Rou-Rouge, on the Tarn, near Bougane, is a cave which was the place of refuge of a priest, M. Arnal, at the breaking out of the Terror. He was cure of St. Pierre- des-Tripiers. The cave is about 25 feet deep, and the mouth 300 feet above the valley bottom, and 90 feet below the top of the causse. It is low and damp, and difficult of access. Nevertheless, the priest occupied it for many months, and spent his time in weaving baskets. On Sundays he stole forth. At a signal the faithful assembled, sometimes in a ruined chapel, at

54 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN KRANCE

others in a grotto, to hear mass and be given a few

words ol exhortation.

One day M. Arnal hung out his cloak in the sun to dry, after a night spent in visiting a dying man in a down- pour of rain. It was observed by a band of sans-culottes, who at once went in search, suspecting that they had found the hiding-place of one of the proscribed. The priest, observing that men were on his track, withdrew his cloak, and the searchers \\rould not have discovered his den among the many holes and fissures, had not a traitor in the place, named Caussignac, consented to lead them to the spot. The poor priest was taken, conveyed to Mende, and there shot. The firing was so carelessly done that his legs and arms were riddled and broken, but no vital spot was struck. Then the treacherous peasant who had betrayed him loaded a gun, and, standing over him, shot him through the heart.

Not far from the cave where M. Arnal was hid, eight priests remained in another throughout the Terror ; the peasants let down food to them in a basket, by a rope.

On the Tarn, near the ruined castle of Montesquieu, is La Grotte des Proscrits, in which the baron, his wife, and three grandchildren remained in concealment during the same period. The baroness was blind, and over seventy. A shepherd supplied them with necessaries. On an alarm, they migrated to another grotto, farther down the river, called La Grotte de la Momie, from a stalagmitic figure in it like a corpse wound up in cerecloths, and which is only accessible by boat or a ladder. In this place of retreat the five proscribed remained for nine months, and only left it when danger was over. Stripped of all their possessions, the noble family was absolutely destitute. The peasants of La Malene raised a subscription to assist

LA CROUZATK

their former feudal lord, a little money was obtained by other means, and a portion of the ancestral property was repurchased. The baroness died at the age of ninety.

PLAN AND SECTION OK LA CROUZATE.

A. Small hollow. B. Oubliette. C. Another small hollow. D. Great well. E. Bridge. F. Chamber. G. Last well. H. Descent to water.

By the side of the road from Gramat to Reilhac, on a stretch of the calcareous plateau, overgrown with juniper bushes, opens the cave of La Crouzate. It has nothing

56 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

remarkable in appearance to recommend it, as viewed at the mouth. There is a CUp-like depression, and a small tunnel opening out of it, descending at a rapid incline under the highway, into the heart of the rock.

Nevertheless, this is one of the most instructive of caves in the Causse of Gramat, for it has obviously been inhabited at one time by a band of robbers, and that apparently for no brief period. As for the den into which Gil Bias was carried, it was nothing to this ghastly retreat, surrounded with pitfalls. When it was tenanted no one knows. History and tradition alike are mute. Only this is told by the peasants, that at one time their ancestors agreed to pay a poll-tax for every sheep and ox, so as to maintain a levee which should sweep the causse of the marauders who infested it.

After a descent for about 50 feet, a depression of about 12 feet is reached. We have attained a first and inconsiderable hall. Wre descend into this chamber, scramble up the farther side, and continue the inclined passage for another 70 feet. Then we come suddenly on the first pitfall. This is a domed chamber below the level of the gallery, with a hole in its centre in the floor of the passage. The vault is 50 feet deep, and is a veritable oubliette. He who drops in can never climb out. The opening has to be traversed on a bridge of poles. Behind this hole the occupants of the cavern could maintain them- selves in safety, if a watch were kept at it. But this did not satisfy their desire to be absolutely secure, and nature provided them with plenty of other means of protection.

I will give the rest of the account from the pen of my cousin, Mr. George Young, who descended La Crouzate with the assistance of Alibert Gentil. It has, moreover, been examined and planned by M. Martel, accompanied

LA CROUZATE

57

by M. Raymond Pons, who has visited it independently as well.

" The long rubbly descent was, so to speak, the glacis of the brigands' subterranean castle, a glacis that burrows into the rock instead of rising into the air. Here every- thing is inverted. The glacis runs steeply down to the curtain — a yawning precipice, and right and left, to con- tinue my illustrative simile, are flanking towers, otherwise deep pits.

" The hole we have reached occupies the entire breadth of the passage, and is bridged by a rough pole only. The men walk across, steadying themselves against the wall with one hand, and appear to regard a wobbling polished pole as an adequate bridge. Those who disagree with them will do well to insist on someone seating him- self at each end of the pole.

" Beyond, the narrow passage continues, and in Indian file we follow its windings, — a long line of dark figures between the limestone walls, which gleam pale in the murky orange glare of the candles, and fade into im- penetrable gloom above, and into wavering shadow below.

" Suddenly the line halts. The grey sides and floor of the passage break off at a sharp edge, clearly defined against the sombre abysses of a vast cavern. We have reached the main wall ; and to get into the castle proper we shall have to descend this precipice. The process is simple enough. The rope is now brought into requisition. I am placed astride on a bar, and a scarf is looped round my shoulders and knotted to the rope at my chest. I am then told the code of signals — Hai ! go on! Ho! stop! The men brace themselves against the rope. Someone pushes me gently over the edge, and I am descending into utter blackness of a vasty deep.

58 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

"The start is certainly the worst part: as you go over the edge, and your feet feel nothing underneath them, the impulse to check yourself is irresistible. You do so, and your weight being taken off, the bar works itself loose beneath you ; you try to stop yourself, and it turns sideways, and seems disposed to slip between your legs. If it were to accomplish this, then there would be nothing to stop you from dropping down the well something like 90 feet, unless the scarf caught you round the neck. In despair you clutch the rope, which you have been distinctly forbidden to do, and find by experience the reason of this, for your hands are at once pinched under it and dragged over the rocks.

" ' Lazza ! Lazza doucemang ! ' says a voice in another world above, and you have learned some Langue d'Oc you are not likely to forget. ' Ho ! ' you gasp, rather than shout, and you are granted a moment's reprieve to put your fastenings and ideas in order. 'Hat/' and away you go again, legs and arms doing their best to fight clear of the projecting rocks, keep the bar in place and the candle alight, which latter, as you slither down, sprinkles you with scalding grease.

" In spite of your best efforts, a rock detains you long enough for the rope to get slack, so that, on getting clear, you shoot down some 3 or 5 feet, and then the rock hollows out, and you swing clear, spinning like a tee- totum, and come down with a clump on a pile of beams and rubbish. This pile of beams deserves observation ; it had escaped the notice of MM. Martel and Pons when they first explored the cave. On this occasion M. Pons and I turned our attention to them, and soon discovered their purport. Very remarkable they were. In fact, they

LA CROUZATE

59

were the remains of the lowering apparatus employed by the robbers who used the cave as their place of refuge. The apparatus consisted of a crane, forked at one end, with a rude pulley roller at the other, also of beams for supporting the crane, and other contrivances for facilitat- ing the working of the rope by which the rogues ascended and descended. The whole contrivance was placed at the top of the abyss, and we found, when we got up again, the mortice holes cut in the living rock for the recep- tion of the sustaining beams. The crane projected over the gulf, and swung those descending clear from the lip, and thus avoided the prelim- inary tobogganing, which, frequently re- peated, would have proved too much even for the cast-iron nerves and tanned leather jerkins of a mediaeval brigand.

" And what was the rope to which they hung as they went up and down in darkness? We found it — nothing but twisted clematis trailers.

" Leaving three men above, we are joined by the rest,

(RAM. IN I.A CROUZATE

(Restored to its place.)

60 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

and the diminished party proceeds along another passage till we reach a sort of balcony occupying one corner of a

low -roofed cave. The walls of this cave run sheer down on every side — in fact, we stand on the ledge of a well that actually descends 265 feet sheer. On the opposite side of this awful chasm is a steeply inclined slope, and leading to this, along the right-hand wall, a rough bridge of poles."

Beyond this bridge, which may be crossed, for the poles are not completely rotten, is a steep rubbly slope that can be ascended, when a chamber or small cave is entered which probably served as a storeroom to the robbers who occupied the grotto of La Crouzate. M. Pons pretends that he saw therein traces of beds made of branches, but M. Martel, who has since entered' the cave, saw nothing to justify this statement. At the same time, it is not to be doubted that for some purpose or other this innermost recess was frequently visited, if it were not actually the sleeping chamber of the bandits. The elaborate contrivance for descending to the foot of the bridge, the bridge itself over the well, point to this inner sanctuary as having been an important portion of the habitation of the occupants of this underground " castle." I much regret that Mr. Young, in his desire to go to the bottom of the well that is bridged, forgot to explore the cave which served as the last refuge of the brigands, and where they were perfectly unassailable, and could be reduced to surrender only by starvation.

The bridge, as already said, is thrown across the well. This was descended by my cousin and M. Pons ; but M. Pons had gone down before, and he has kindly furnished me with his account.

" It is not possible to get down this well by any other means than a rope, for the walls are vertical. Some

LA CROUZATE 61

rocks project, and threaten to fall at a touch. I struck one with my foot, and it whizzed down with a sound that was really frightening. The men above, who held me suspended, were alarmed, and shouted, ' Are you alive?' I was some minutes without being able to answer them.

" Numerous bats whisking about touched my face with their leather wings ; they really seemed as thick as a swarm of bees.

" Astride on my stout stick, I continued to descend. How grand it all was ! Imagine a vast cylinder of crystal red as glowing iron. The facets glittering in the magnesium light had a grandiose effect. In my many descents into these averts, I hare never seen one so encased in. stalagmite, and here one seems to be descend- ing through a hoop of fire. Although I said that the sides were perpendicular, this is not absolutely accurate, for there is an inclination of the well. After having descended half-way, I seated myself on a ledge in order to rest the men who were letting me down. Whilst seated there, I occupied myself with observing the walls of the gulf. One phenomenon struck me as very curious. In the coat of crystallised calcareous matter are a number of little holes as big as hazel nuts, in which live small red spiders with heads bigger than their bodies, who have spun webs in the form of suns to catch the flies which, white as snow, and with wings large out of all proportion to their bodies, flit dreamily about. I attempted to catch some of these flies, so as to preserve them in a paper cornet, but they were so delicate that they seemed to melt between one's fingers.

" At the depth of 80 feet I observed a hole as large as my fist. I put my hand in, when away rushed something with a noise like that made by a rat running over nuts. What it was, for the life of me I cannot tell."

62 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

My cousin also descended this well, whence M. Mattel had formerly brought up the skull of an Ursus spelceu£\

and he found there large bones of oxen, and, sealed against the wall at the height of 10 feet from the bottom, the antler of a stag.

At the side of the well, at the bottom, is a farther descent, and water can be heard flowing at some distance farther down. Mr. Young attempted to crawl down, but the passage contracted, and he not only could get no farther, but experienced some difficulty in retracing his course backwards. Up this passage the water rises in times of flood, and mounts the great well to the height of from 10 to 12 feet. At one time it must have floated up the stag's head, and retained it in suspense till the antler was affixed to the side by stalagmite.

About thirty years ago, a M. Delpons, at one time prefet of the department of Lot, an enthusiastic antiquarian, living at Livernon, about five miles distant, observed a huge block of limestone reposing in a field beside the road to Reilhac, at only a little distance from La Crouzate ; it lay under an ancient walnut tree. Believing it to be the capstone of a prehistoric tomb, he erected a triangle over it, and with chains succeeded in raising it, when beneath it he discovered twelve skeletons ranged in a circle, their feet inwards, and an iron chain which had apparently bound the twelve together.

Clearly these twrelve men were malefactors who had been executed by the roadside near the scene of their crimes, and buried where they had been executed.

Thirty years later, in La Crouzate, the apparatus used by brigands is discovered. Is there a connection between these discoveries ?

Not far from Gramat, at Malpial, is another cavern.

LA CROUZATE 63

The descent into this is attended by no danger, but by- some difficult)-. There is a circular crater, and one has to creep between two layers of stratification, till a portion of rock has been attained which forms a series of natural steps, perhaps assisted by art. Then a lateral cave is seen which was anciently blocked by a wall of stone. Within is a rapid incline, strewn with great blocks purposely left there to make a descent laborious. After having gone down some distance the passage branches into two arms. On the left is a long extent of level tunnel, perfectly dry, the vault blackened with smoke, and the floor thick strewn with broken pottery. I collected many pieces and brought them to the light of day. They were all of one date and one character, the black pottery of the early iron age. The right-hand passage leads to water, not a spring, but a basin fed with drops from the roof. In times of drought the modern inhabitants of the neighbourhood descend into Malpial in quest of the precious fluid which can always there be found when failing elsewhere.

At Reilhac is a cave on the farm of a man named Rosignol, which was also closed with a wall. Finding that within were bones, which he thought might be useful as dressing for his field, he tore down the wall and ex- cavated the grotto. It proved to have served as a dwell- ing for man from a remote period, and contained vast deposits of men's middens from the epoch of the reindeer, through that of the polished stone, to Gaulish times. Some pottery of the latter date, not black but red and ornamented, was recovered from it by M. Raymond Pons, who at my suggestion sent them to the British Museum as samples of the pottery of the later Gaulish period.

CHAPTER IV

THE CAUSSENARDS

The Iberian Race -Customs remaining- — The Maybush — The Foiigasse — The Paillade — An Iron Cage for Scolds -Marriage Customs — Folk-Song's and Melodies — Small Holdings — The Social Hierarchy : in England ; destroyed in France — Subdivision of Properties in the Limousin — What becomes of the ruined Peasants? — The old Count of Beaumanoir — " Mieux sera."

The whole of Aquitania was unquestionably originally peopled by the Iberian race, of which perhaps the Basques, driven into the westernmost portion of the Pyrenees, are the sole remnants. Along with them was the Ligurian. This latter is a sallow, dark-haired, gentle race, but excitable and passionate. The Ligurians were subjugated by the fair-haired Gauls ; the Gallic conquerors remained as chiefs, but by no means constituted the bulk of the population. Then came the Romans, next the Visigoths. Con- sequently the population is of mixed origin, but the main mass is undoubtedly Iberian and Ligurian. The name Gascon is Basque — the B has become a V in Vascones, and then the V was changed into G. The Gascon character is proverbial. But Vasconia extended anciently to the Loire, and was not contracted to the foot of the Pyrenees till a later period, On the causse, on the most barren and thankless soil, lingered the conquered race,

retreating before the conqueror who appropriated the

64

THE (ArSSHNAKItS

6;

alluvia] valleys. Probably the peasants who now throw down the dolmens that obstruct their ploughs, are the lineal descendants of the neolithic and bronze men who set up these stone monuments over their dead.

They have lost their language, and have adopted and altered that of their successive conquerors, first of the Gauls and then of the Romans. They now speak a

A CAUSSKNARD.

dialect of the great Langue d'Oc, that varies very greatly in the several departments, nay, even differs in adjacent villages, and which is at the present time going through immense deterioration.

A few old customs linger on, but tend to disappear. Lovers still plant the Maybush before the doors of their mistresses, and adorn it with garlands, precisely as was 5

66 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

done in England, and is still done in Sweden and Norway and in parts of German}-.

If a girl has given offence to a young man, he will dress a tree before her door and hang it with horse-heads and bones. But this is an outrage that is never forgotten and forgiven, and is resented by the brothers.

On the festival of the patron saint, there is always a great gathering at the public-house. The young men go about uttering strange noises, like the neighing of horses, and carry round a cake which they call fougasse, and which is decorated with ribbons furnished by their mis- tresses. Often each commune has its own fougasse and its own colours. This is the banner about which all assemble, and dance to the sound of the hurdy-gurdy pr pipe.

The dance most usually performed is la Bourrce. It consists in several cadenced movements of arms and legs, in advances and retreats, and in pirouettes.

The Branle is another dance. The man and his partner stand face to face. The former advances, retires, leaps into the air, and executes all sorts of fantastic steps.

The Rccegado is a sort of round dance. The dancers hold hands and turn in a ring, and at each step they alternately incline their bodies inwards, and give to their arms a vibratory movement as though sawing wood. The song sung to this dance is taken alternately by the young men and maidens.

After the ceremony of a marriage in church, the nobi, or groomsman, runs to the house to which the bride and bridegroom are coming, and fills a bowl with soup and puts a spoon in it, then advances to the door and awaits their arrival. At the doorstep, bride and bridegroom have to take the soup out of the same spoon, and wipe their

THE CAUSSENARDS 67

hands on the same napkin. Then wine is poured into the bowl along with the dregs of the broth, and tin's is called the chabroty which both are expected to drink. This nauseous mixture is a favourite draught in this part of France, and is supposed to be particularly nourishing. It is taken at any time.

When the wedding feast is done, the groomsman offers his hand to the bride, and, followed by the bride- groom and the bridesmaid, they go in quest of an apple which has silver and gold coins stuck in it, and is placed in a large dish. This is carried round to all the guests, with a song —

" Voici la pommt' d'amour,

Qu'a d'arg-ent taut y en mettre ; Voici la pomme d'argent, Qui en amour y en mettrons."

To which the guests respond, and drop their contributions into the dish.

Sometimes a glass is thrown down and broken after the marriage feast. At Jewish marriages an analogous custom exists, and in Greece, the priest, after the nuptial benedic- tion, gives a cup to bride and bridegroom, and, after they have sipped from it, throws it down and shatters it.

When a woman has beaten her husband, an ass is fetched, and the husband is mounted on it, holding a distaff in his hand, with his face to the rear, and the tail of the ass in his hand as bridle ; in this fashion he is promenaded through the parish. If the husband, expecting what will be done, goes off and hides himself, then the people lay hold of his nearest neighbour and treat him in the same manner. This punishment is entitled the paillade, because, if husband and all male neighbours have fled and hid themselves, the people content themselves with

68 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRAN( I.

dressing up a man of straw and promenading this about.

At the museum at Cahors is an iron cage in which scolding' wives were enclosed and ducked. Wives who give tongue are still menaced with it. The Committee of the last Exposition at Paris asked to have it sent there to be exhibited ; but the authorities of the museum at Cahors represented that the even temporary disappearance of the cage might produce such an outburst on the part of the wives, that no husband could view its removal with equanimity.

A second marriage is regarded on the Causses with little approval, and provokes a charivari. At a wedding, the youths invited claim the right to carry off the garters of the bride. The husband usually makes provision before- hand of a supply of coloured ribbons, which are given to the lads in lieu of the garters, and are worn by them throughout the day in their buttonholes.

This used to be universal in England ; and I have myself seen the bridegroom distribute ribbons to save his bride's garters at a wedding in Yorkshire.

On the morrow of a wedding, all invited attend bride and bridegroom to church, where a mass is said for the repose of the souls of the ancestors of the husband, who, in the popular idea, have now become those of the bride.

A large number of folk-songs and carols exist, but they have nothing distinctive from those found all over France, from Brittany to Provence. Some few are identical with certain English folk ditties. As I was walking along the road from Souillac to Cahors one bright winter day, I heard a slightly inebriated peasant sing a ballad to a fine melody in one of the old church modes. After a little difficulty I found a teacher of music, who was him-

THE CAUSSENARDS 69

self the son of peasants, and who knew a number of the folk -airs of Ouercy, and at my request he very kindly wrote them down for me. They arc quaint, but are remarkably inferior in musical quality to the folk melodies of England. In the Appendix I give a few of the most characteristic.

The question whether small proprietorships are an advantage, is forced on the attention of the traveller on the Causses. Whatever it may be elsewhere, there it is of doubtful advantage.

The peasant is adscriptus glebce, tied down to his little acre of soil that he has inherited ; he spends his life in a desperate struggle to maintain a wretched existence thereon; he cannot- allow himself more than one or two children ; he is dwarfed mentally and morally by his serf- dom. In the middle ages he was the slave of a lord, — a man, — now of an inanimate clod.

Anciently, he dared not desert the patch of land he was set by his seigneur to cultivate, unless called to serve in his wars. It is much the same now. He makes it a matter of conscience to till the wretched earth that is hardly six inches deep, and he leaves it only to attend his drill and go through his military service at the summons of the Government official who stands over him.

The great Dionysius the Areopagite taught that in heaven above and in earth beneath the law of God is one of hierarchies, of stages ; that heaven is a stair from the angelic to the perfection of divinity ; that earth is a stair from the first glimmer of intelligence to the all-but-angelic intellect. He taught, further, that light passes down each stair by a series of communications from one to another, and that the institution of hierarchies

70 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

everywhere is for the purpose of communicating light t<>

those below from those who stand above.

Now, what is very characteristic in English social life: is the even arrangement of the social stair, so that there is constant interchange of thought and communica- tion of culture from top to bottom. In our great cities this is not the case ; the East haul and West End are far apart, yet there are a thousand agencies whereby attempts are made to bridge this separation, and to bring the classes into relation the one with the other. And I think that much, if not all, of the fellow-feeling which certainly pervades the whole community in England, that feeling of love and tenderness for the poor and ignorant and needy that, with us, assuredly prevails through every stage of the upper portion of the ladder, and that respect and regard for those above them which animates the lower classes, is due to the even distribution of the steps in the great stair, in the hierarchic organisation of society in England.

Now, when one looks at Erance, especially at that portion of it I am now considering, what strikes and saddens a visitor above all is that this evenness of grada- tion is lacking. There are no upper classes, there are rich people here and there who have a chateau to which they come for a month or six weeks in the year, but they live in Paris — in Bordeaux — not in the country. The society of the country consists of peasants and officials, avocats and notaires, that is all. And with what result? Absolute stagnation : no transmission of light, no gradual upraising of dull intelligence, no sweetening of a sour life, paralysis everywhere, and paralysis that is incurable.

There is not a parish in country places in England where there is not an upward movement, where energetic

THE CAUSSENARDS 71

minds and active hands are not helping' members of the community to raise themselves, and throw open doors for their brothers and sisters to advance upwards also. In my own parish, on my own land, I have a number of cottages. In my grandfather's time each of these, now occupied by a single family, contained three, packed together without regard to decency. In my father's time, he insisted on dispersion, and each cottage was divided into two, and two only. How is it now? No cottager is content with having what my father settled, and two cottages in my time are thrown into one, so that each labouring man and his family may have several rooms. That is one instance of the gradual rise in sense of the moral and sanatory fitness of things. That is not all. I doubt if there be a single labouring man's family that I have known for many years which is not decorated with its star — some son or daughter who has done well — " bravely," as they say, and is earning a sum with which a gentleman would be content to lead a cafe existence in France.

I do not attribute this uprise socially — and moral improvement is just as marked — to difference in race, but to the fact that the hierarchy of Dionysius exists in England, and that the stair has been broken to pieces in France, and only the lowest rungs of the ladder left with nothing above them.

Now let us go back to the question of small pro- prietorships.

It may be different elsewhere, but on the Causses, not only is the soil becoming poorer every year, but, with compulsory subdivision of estates, the farms are becoming more broken up, and impossible of culture. On this topic I venture to quote a writer on the social

72 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

and economic conditions of the Limousin, a province that is rich compared with Quercy, the Rouergue, and the GeVaudan, and one far more calculated to flourish under peasant proprietorship. If things are bad under this system in the green tree, then what must they be in the dry?

" Little proprietorships tend more and more to sink into indefinite crumbling ; with this phenomenon as the result, one very contrary to the intentions of the legis- lator, that large properties are reconstituting themselves, that moderate ones possess some power of resistance, but that the small ones are absolutely ravaged. Now, if landed property in a large number of hands is desir- able, pushed too far, reduced to the infinitely little, this principle loses its greatest advantages. Here, without exaggeration of any sort, is the result, in almost every family of little landholders, on the death of the parents. Usually, as in Creuse, the father has nominated his heir, and he receives all that is legally disposable ; but as the heir finds it impossible for him to find the cash to pay off his co-heirs, the property is brought into the notarial court, or before the tribunal of the judge. Generally, the favoured child engages to take the whole estate, and to pay off his fellow-heirs, but, as he has not sufficient cash, he is constrained to mortgage ; and then, for life, he wears a collar of misery nailed to his shoulders, with inevitable ruin to the family as the result. If the father has not named his heir, then the estate is parcelled up or sold to a stranger, and the family disappears.

" The result of this legislation is, that large families cannot hope to live and develop the paternal estate. Thrown, so to speak, into dislocation every generation, there is always a new start made, again to be destroyed.

THE CAUSSENARDS 73

The domestic hearth is no mure traditional; and yet heaven knows with what passion the peasant loves the soil, the little nook of earth which he has watered with his sweat, where he has reared his children. One must have witnessed the grief and desolation when a farm is brought to the hammer to realise the intensity of this feeling. And these auctions of farms are becoming more frequent — to a really appalling degree. These expropria- tions and this parcelling up into farms more and more reduced in size go on like clockwork ; this parcelling, periodically renewed, necessarily leads to the systematic sterility of marriages. Our rural family is no longer fruitful. The cost of a child is counted, and, as it has been wittily said, first-borns are manufactured by the suppression of cadets.

" For some time the peasants of Creuse have been demanding a modification of the laws relative to suc- cession. In 1866 they addressed a petition to the Senate, to give security to the labourer, in giving him liberty to bequeath his property ; this would encourage him to perfect his work, to call successors into existence — it would re-establish the family on its true basis, in giving to the father the authority with which he was invested by God. A law of succession, which would safeguard the integrity of the domestic hearth of the peasant, even if it be very humble, would arrest this indefinite parcelling up of estates, and would be welcomed as a social boon. It would arrest the ruin of our rural population, it would secure their fecundity, and assure their stability. This is a question that concerns the future of our race. The democracy of the New World has comprehended that, and it leans all its weight on the domestic hearth. Without families rooted in the soil, there is no security

74 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

to the State; without attachment to the soil, no

patriotism." '

The writer of the above passage in ;i note says, that it would be worth examining how frequently peasant proper- ties change hands, and the peasant families become effaced. "In the commune which I inhabit," he says, "very feu- properties remain in the same family for three genera- tions. During the last thirty years more than half the small proprietors have been replaced, often by strangers."

What becomes of these peasants that are driven out of their farms, or abandon them in despair? They go, as did the peasants of Italy at the decline of the Roman Republic, to the towns, to the capital, to recruit the effete populace there, some to be industrious artisans, others to swell the dangerous classes, and others again to be mere loafers, crying only for panis et ci 'recuses.

Meanwhile, where is the old noblesse? Here and there may be found a noble family occupying its ancestral chateau, but usually poor. Most of the castles, however, have been bought by well-to-do wine merchants of Bor- deaux or rich bourgeois in Paris, who think it fine to have a chateau in the country, and who, perhaps, find it cheaper in the long run to have a house of their own for holiday time, than to go to a fashionable watering- place ; but whose influence for good on the neighbour- hood is nil, because they are not permanent residents.

I will conclude this chapter with a sketch.

One Sunday in December I was in a little place on the Dordogne dominated by an extensive and stately chateau that crowned a huge rock. I had my early dinner or dejeuner at the open window, looking out on the spark-

1 Le Limousin, Association Francaise pour l'avancement des Sciences, Congr^s de 1890. Limoges, 1891, p. 376.

THE CAUSSENARDS 75

ling river as it flowed by, and at the towers and battle- ments high up, white against a blue sky.

I asked the little maid who served the meal to whom the castle belonged. She replied promptly, "To M. le Comte de Beaumanoir." I give a feigned name for reasons that will soon be obvious.

"Was he rich?" was my next question.

The fair-haired girl, a true Gaul, shook her head. " Ah, no ! — but — such a name ! Such a family ! " The Celtic feeling of clanship coming out strongly.

After my dijeuner I climbed the hill. I was informed that the Count would be proud to show his ancestral man- sion. I passed the gateway, converted into a cart-shed, then penetrated to the terrace. Here was the great stair leading to the state apartments. The flags were broken, and grass was pushing through the interstices. The balustrade of the staircase supported on one side a red geranium in an ornamental terra-cotta vase ; to correspond with this on the other side stood a pumpkin. The second vase had been broken, and funds were not available for replacing it.

I ascended the steps to the great entrance. I could find no knocker, no bell, so I tapped, and, meeting with no response, walked in, and found myself in the splendid, stone-vaulted, knightly hall, illumined by great window's to the south. This, as I afterwards learned, had been hung with superb tapestries, and furnished with inlaid and carved cabinets. But Mdlle. de Beaumanoir was to be married, a dot was needed, and to provide it tapestries and cabinets travelled to a Jewish curiosity- dealer in Paris.

One adornment there was in the mighty, bare hall, a number of family portraits all put together into one deal

76 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

frame for economy. I stood, sorrowful and musing. A great noble family in England had branched off from this house, and bore the splendid name of Beaumanoir, and

here was the ancestral nest, here lived the head of this mighty house, sticking his family portraits together into a miserable deal border because a gold bead at I franc 50 per foot was beyond his means. All was still. No servant-man came — no servant at all, for the one bonne kept was also cook and scullery-maid, and was washing up the plates in a hurry, that she might attend vespers.

I went forth and stepped from the terrace. The castle chapel was also parish church, and village children were creeping up the steps in the rock to attend the prayers, and stopping at intervals to pick the wild pinks that grew out of the rocks, and stick them in their hair.

Then I saw a little weedy vineyard blighted with phylloxera, that had been cultivated on a ledge over the precipice, and on it, pacing up and down, with bowed head, was a grey-haired, tall old man with a beautiful, kindly, aristocratic profile.

I knew7 it was the Count. He did not see me, and I sat in the sun watching him, and those who came up the rock to vespers.

Presently a little girl of five or six, with a psalm-book under her arm, arrived on the platform, in a poor, patched, washed-out cotton frock. She halted, saw the old noble pacing his withered vineyard, and with a sudden inspira- tion ran to him, and without a word put her little hand into his.

So, without speaking, the two walked up and down, up and down, the old Count with his eyes on the ground and his mind in the past, the child's daring orbs glancing at the future and at far horizons.

THE CAUSSENARDS 77

Was it a figure of what might be? A reconciliation between the paysan and the noblesse ? I went away hoping rather than believing that there was truth in the sanguine motto of the family, Mieux sera — "Things will improve."

78

CHAPTER V

THE CAN UN OF THE TARN

The Rivers of the Causses flow through Ravines — The Ravine of the Tarn — The Causse from Mende to Ste. Enemie — Ispagnac — Quezac — Castelbouc — Its Oven — Prades — Ste. Enemie — The Descent of the Canon — St. Chely— La Caze — Montesquieu — The Detroit — Cirque des Baumes — Caverns — Le Pas de Soucy — Legend — Les Vignes — Les Roziers — Montpellier-le-Vieux — The Jonte— -St. Gervais— Mey- rueis- -Castle Roquedols — Huguenots.

As said in the first chapter, the salient characteristics of the Causses are its pot-holes and its gorges. Every river through the limestone and the chalk flows through a rift that is but an open cavern. Here and there we have a river seen in glimpses through the fallen-in roofs of the caverns under which it flows. Very often we see nothing of the river till we go down a pot-hole to look for it, or see it well forth in volume from under a preci- pice, as the Divonne at Cahors, the Leygues at Touzac, and the L'Ouysse. But the great arteries into which all the subsidiary streams converged rapidly wore away their sides, in fell the crowns of the natural arches and domes, and the fragments were swept along, leaving in course of time the entire line of stream open to the sun.

This is the characteristic of the rivers in the Causses, and highly picturesque, wild, and romantic they are. Some have gorges wide enough to admit of river, road, and

79

80 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

rail, seme arc so narrow that the river admits of no way at its side. Its waters wash the precipitous cliffs to right

and left.

The finest of the canons in the Causses is that of the Tarn. The whole of the course, from Ispagnac to Les Roziers, a distance of thirty miles, is one succession of marvels. At every turn comes a surprise. The forms of the rocks are not alone singular or beautiful, the colouring is rich as it is surprising. The Dolomitic limestone, which rises in nakedness to the height of 600 feet, and even 1800 feet, on each side of the water, is tinged and splashed with colour. It is fawn, salmon-colour, with patches of red ochre ; here stained black, there it gleams white. Everywhere it is sprinkled with the green of the box and the juniper clinging to the interstices. Overhead gleams down the azure sky, and below flashes the foaming river.

The camera is of little advantage here. The heights are too considerable and the colours too strong to produce any satisfaction to the photographer.

The only means of transit is by boat. We shoot rapids where the vast fissure is but 100 feet to 1500 feet wide at bottom, and the walls rise sheer 1000 feet to right and left.

" One might fancy," says M. Martel, " that it was sad and sombre in these formidable runnels. It is not so by any means. Light plays freely there, and converts them into sunlit wells ; moreover, though in places the walls seem almost to meet, so that there is scarce room for the river to run, yet soon after they fall apart and give place to green fields, to vineyards and orchards. Thus the traveller is kept on the alert, and charmed by the con- trasts between the different aspects of the gorges, and this especially after he has been depressed recently by traversing the top of the sad and uniform causse.

THE CANON OF THE TARN Si

"That which gives peculiar beauty and quaintness to these ravines are the Dolomitic ramparts which wall them in ; ramparts hacked about by atmospheric agents, frosts, rain, lightning, into crenelations, turrets, donjons ; they are all streaked with ferruginous salts of every tinge, from vivid red to yellow and orange ; nowhere, save in Dolo- mitic formations, can one find such an orgy of colour, and shapes so fantastic and imitative of ruins of human work.

" The gorge of the Tarn is the finest of the three. For 80 kilometres (48 miles) from Florae to Millau this river flows through a narrow sinuous cleft, averaging 1500 feet in depth, between walls flaming like a setting sun." 1

From Mende I crossed the Causse de Sauveterre in the little rattle-trap post vehicle, wondering at the desola- tion on all sides. Passing the wretched, waterless, and squalid village of Sauveterre, seeing once or twice a shepherd in his long cloak, and being furiously assailed by his savage dogs ; at length, weary, and seeing that the evening was closing in, I said to the driver, " Mais, ou done est Ste. Enemie?"

" C'est la bas dans ce trou." He pointed with his whip to a gap, over the edge of a precipice, actually into a hole, and there, 1000 feet below, positively at the bottom of this hole, this split in the ground, I could distinguish roofs. We were apparently coming down their chimneys in a drop from the clouds.

A skilfully engineered road, in a series of zigzags, like that of the Gemmi on Leukerbad, brought us to Ste. Enemie, and to a tidy little inn, cleaner than one might have anticipated in a country where cleanliness is not much considered, owing to the deficiency of water.

1 Les Causses du Languedoc. Paris, 1890.

6

82 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

But it is more just to the reader t<> conduct him to [spagnac, and descend the very fine portion <>l the gorge to Ste. Knemie.

[spagnac is not a particularly interesting little town. The

venerable monastic church of the twelfth century was partly destroyed by the Huguenots. It was taken by the terrible- Merle in November 1580. So as to bombard it, he let his cannons down the sides of the steep slopes, with twenty pairs of oxen attached to each by a rope to prevent it from falling, whilst two oxen went ahead leading each cannon in its descent. The Calvinists burnt the town, the monastery, and the church. Nothing escaped the flames save the castle. The mighty rocks of Chaumette that rise over Ispagnac reach an elevation of 1540 feet above the town.

A little farther down, behind a forest of walnuts, is Quezac. This place fell into the hands of the Huguenots, under the Baron d'Alais, on June 9, 1 562, when the col- legiate church was sacked. It was taken again ten months later by the royal troops ; but this was the place of rendez- vous of the Huguenots, whence they marched to Chirac, on the Gevaudan, where the)' cut the throats of twenty- nine priests and eighty laymen. When Merle chose to leave Quezac, at the conclusion of a bargain with the Crown, he found it impossible to convey his cannon up the heights down which he had lowered them. He was forced to saw them into pieces and carry them away in bits ; it was worth his while preserving the metal for recasting.

In the valley of the Tarn, indeed in all these gorges, the heat in summer is intense ; in winter the temperature is warm and delicious. The vine grew here till the phyl- loxera destroyed it. Were the inns more comfortable, and cleanliness more to the fore, a very cosy, sunny nook

THE CANON OF THE TARN

83

would suit the delicate chest at every turn. The patient could take easy walks on the level road by the river, or float down it in a boat. The winds sweep overhead, driving the snow in clouds from the Causse de Sauveterre

THE OVEN. CASTKI.BOL'C.

to the Causse Mejean, but none falls into the sunny laps below. Every ray is caught and held there, and radiates back from the warm rocks.

As we proceed, we pass the castle of Charbonnieres, dating from the thirteenth century ; it was held by Merle for three years.

84 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

Next come three sunny villages in a nest of verdure. We reach the extraordinary site of Castelbouc, a castle in ruins, occupying a tall rock that rises like an isolated block of masonry, with cottages and a chapel clinging to the sides, lest they should slip down into the river. This place can be reached only by a ferry-boat. It is planted near a cave, from whence gushes a copious stream. Though small, the village is full of quaint and picturesque bits: cottages built into the holes in the rock ; arches, under which one must pass to get to the church ; an odd little imitation of Notre Dame de Lourdes, contrived under the overhanging ledges of the castle rock.

" At Castelbouc," says Louvreleul in his Memoires, " is a village oven so vast that when one puts in the bread, by the time you have walked round the oven you find the bread is baked." The reason is that this oven is scooped out in the rock, and consequently one requires some time to make the circuit. This oven is still in use.

The castle was demolished in the sixteenth century, lest it should fall into the hands of the Huguenot cap- tains, to become a centre for their depredations, from which it would not be possible to dislodge them.

A mile lower down, at a turn of the river, is Trades. Merle and his men, having taken Ispagnac and Quezac, came to Prades, to treat that as they had treated the other places ; but the prior of Ste. Enemie threw himself into it, at the head of all the men he could collect, and arrested the captain. Merle in vain endeavoured to take the castle by storm. He was forced to beat a retreat, and by this means Ste. Enemie and the other villages down the canon of the Tarn escaped his ravages.

The little town of Ste. Enemie lies about a rock on which stood anciently a royal monastery. It was founded

CHATEAU AT STE. ENEMIE. 85

86 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

in the seventh century by the daughter of Clothaire II. and sister of Dagobert 1. I ler little hermitage stands high up on the face of the rock, and there she is represented in wax over the altar. The monastery is a mass of ruins, but the platform of rock on which it stands is worthy of ascent for the magnificent view it commands of the river, the towering precipices about, and the little town clustered at its feet.

There is but one street in Ste. Enemie, exactly 6 feet wide. Should a cart pass through it, one has to jump into the open door of a house to escape the wheels. This street is the town sewer, into which every sort of abomination is cast.

As my cousin remarked to me, " It would suffice to dip this place of 6oo inhabitants in the Amazon to pollute the entire river."

Happily there are no drains ; the foulness of Ste. Enemie does not poison the crystal Tarn that glides below its walls.

To an Englishman there is something alarming in the entire absence of, and indifference to, sanitary arrange- ments in this part of the world. He supposes that typhoid fever, diphtheria, cholera, must rage here and run riot. No such thing.

At Biarritz, when it became a fashionable place, a system of drainage was devised and executed, and at once typhoid fever broke out in all directions. The authorities were obliged to revert to the old system, or rather want of sys- tem. Unless drainage be carried out with plenty of water to rinse the drains thoroughly, and these be provided with ventilating shafts, they do more harm than good. In fact, the atmosphere when dry is the best — I will not say deodoriser, for the stinks are self-assertive — but dissipater of the noxious elements.

THE CANON OF THE TARN 87

At Stc. Knemie one engages boatmen. From this point as far as Les Roziers the canon of the Tarn must be trav- ersed by boat, at one time sliding down an easy stream, then floating over a plariiol or glassy sheet of almost cur- rentlcss water, and anon shooting a rapid. The boatmen are very skilful, they perfectly understand their trade, they know every submerged rock that has to be avoided, so that there is in fact no danger, though not a little excite- ment. On reaching a cataract, the boat's head is turned to the V that the water makes, and if it touch the acute angle where the current is strongest, down it shoots merrily. The passenger sees the leaping and foaming of the river over some rock that opposes the stream, at which his boat seems to be running full tilt ; a dexterous turn of the paddle, and the vessel swings round and glides past.

Almost directly we start, the world of enchantment begins. We turn the great buttress of the Chante, and the little capital of the canon is hidden. The mighty ramparts of the Gausses rise abruptly on both sides. Below, beside the water, is a long ribbon of willows, poplars, alders, nut- trees. As we glide on, it seems as though the trees were marching past us in file, and the boat were motionless. Here and there the precipices on each side throw forward bastions and send up pinnacles. One strange mass, like a gigantic and podgy peasant, with his hands in his pockets, and a green berri on his head, stands with feet in water, as though to take toll of us as we pass. Before us is the glowing red cliff that faces St. Chely, hot with the sun on it, as though on fire.

Presently we halt at a weir, and have to change boats. St. Chely is a little village of 530 inhabitants, built on a mass of tufa, the produce of a petrifying spring. At this

88 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

point the causse rises 1X20 feet above the river. The eye has lost the power of judging heights and distances. The

rocks close in, and seem to completely oppose all farther passage. At St. Chely are two copious sources, one of which foams clown into the river below the village. One springs out of a cavern into which are thrust a quaint little chapel and a mill. The church of St. Chely boasts of some antiquity, and has a curious tower with an open arch, behind which is the stair leading to the belfry.

Having left this quaint village, the grandest scenery on the river begins. On the left bank the Tarn has bored caves and tunnels through the white Dolomitic limestone. Between Ste. Enemie and St. Chely we had verdure beside the water ; now we pass into a defile where the rocks rise directly out of the river. Through this chasm we glide till the sides fall somewhat back at Pougnadoire. Here we see on our right a great cliff with a vast arched cavern in it, and this cavern occupied by a ruined castle, sus- tained on a bold arch of masonry below ; the rubble and earth slope are terraced, and occupied by farms and shaded by walnut trees. A little lower is another — a couple of dwellings like swallows' nests built in a cave, and still inhabited. It is worth while arresting the boat to visit these troglodyte habitations.

We push on, and the next object of interest that arrests us is the delightful little castle of La Caze. This tiny castle was erected in 1489, and was built by Soubey- rane Alamand. It passed to Bertrand de Mostuejols, commonly called le Capitaine la Caze, who spent his life fighting Merle, and he succeeded in recovering from him the greater part of the Gevaudan. The story goes that this little gem of a castle fell to eight beautiful damsels, sisters, all heiresses to this nutshell. It could be reached

THE CANON OF THE TARN

89

only by boat or by a goat path down the face of the precipitous cliffs from the desert above. Nevertheless, neither river, nor desert, nor precipice could deter suitors, who came, and each returned puzzled to know which of the

POUGNADOIKE.

eight sisters he should take, and how much she would be worth when he got her ; and as none of the suitors could make up their minds, the sisters remained old maids to the end.

In the vaulted parlour that looks out on the river, their portraits are painted in the spandrils. The castle

9o THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

stands <>n a little green platform by the waterside, and is surrounded by trees. A spring issues from the rock behind it, and beside it is a farmhouse. The whole castle is in a tolerably perfect condition, and is the property of a gentleman who is unhappily under restraint, so that nothing can be done with it, nor does anyone like to take on him the responsibility of putting it in order, and repair- ing slight damages caused by weather and neglect. One wing, unfortunately, was burnt a few years ago; of the rest all is in a condition of neglect, windows broken, roof tiles out of place, the rain and damp staining the walls. Four or five hundred pounds would go a long way towards putting the castle into order, in a place where labour is cheap.

Before the castle is one of the finest plcuiiols, or sheets of still water, in the course of the river, and a few miles of boating conducts to La Malene, a flourishing village at the bridge where the road to Meyrueis descends from the Causse de Sauveterre and climbs that of Mejean.

In descending the canon, it is best to make of the passage a matter of two days, and to halt at La Malene. This is what I did, and it allows time for visits to objects of interest on the way. The whole can be done in a day, but then nothing is carried away but a confused remem- brance of shooting rapids and whirling under precipices. Besides, at La Malene is a very decent inn, kept by most worthy old people, the Monginoux, who, when their con- fidence is gained, can give a great deal of information relative to the past.

We come now into the land of the Montesquieu, who have a chateau in La Malene, and ruined castles on the heights. In the rocks above the water is the grotto where four priests remained in concealment for two years during

THE CANON OF THE TARN 91

the Terror. One of these, M. Montegut, was a very nervous man, and the thought of death filled him with fear. He is said to have trembled like an aspen whenever he believed that the sans-culoltes were near, and his prayer was to escape la lanterne. On the other hand, his comrade, M. Popel, was full of courage, and often said that he would rejoice to die for the Faith. Heaven dealt with each according to his powers. Popel fell into the hands of the enemy and was guillotined ; the other died in the cave ; a third of the priests was paralysed, and was hardly conscious of his danger. They were supplied with food by a young girl, a peasantess of the village of Angle, or by her father.

The boat now enters the Detroit, the most striking portion of the canon. A writer in the Tour du Monde says : —

" Here the river is wide, and it is a pleasure to see the reflection of the precipices in the mirror of its glassy waters. They are 300 feet high ; above them come loftier cliffs, shooting up another 1 500 feet, forming towers, needles, crenelations, bastions, on both sides. In all the fissures of the rock, under all the crevices, rise or lean pines, shrubs of all kinds, and creepers. Here and there between the great masses are slips of verdure. In this solitude, sonorous as a cathedral, one feels a sort of religious veneration ; silence falls on one, and the inclina- tion to remove the hat becomes strong. The Straits are the splendid preface to the marvellous Cirque des Baumes."

The Cirque des Baumes is a vast cavern, three-quar- ters of a mile in diameter, that has fallen in and left an amphitheatre of precipitous fawn-coloured and orange and red streaked cliffs and terraces, in places overhang-

THE CANON OF THE TARN 93

ing, with the crown of the immense vault lying in ruins in the midst, the river being powerless to remove such masses. Earth has accumulated in the bottom, washed down from the wasted crown of the causse; the red friable earth and the marl lying in films between the beds of dolomite and lias have formed pockets, and rich vegeta- tion and fine trees have grown up among the prostrate masses, and cottages and farm-buildings peep out from between the verdure. Against the face of the smooth cliff is a little chapel of St. Ilerius, Bishop of Mende in the seventh century, built about the hermitage to which he retired, and where there is a spring reputed to have marvellous powers for the cure of ophthalmia.

Portions of the walls of the cirque fall at intervals ; and in fact a few years ago a mass buried a farmhouse.

The precipices are riddled with holes, caves that have been occupied by beasts of prey and by men — also of prey, or who have been preyed upon — from a remote antiquity. About 950 feet up, indistinguishable from the boat, is the opening to a remarkable cavern. It was entered in 1 866 by the Abbe Solanet, who is said to have discovered at the end a man seated on a natural stone bench, with his elbow on a rock table, and his head resting in his hand, encased in a film of stalagmite and turned to stone. This is no doubt a somewhat fanciful descrip- tion of a skeleton in a squatting posture, such as was affected by the neolithic men in their burials, before the fashion for cremation set in. In 1875 Doctor Prunieres examined the cave, and found remains of the prehistoric inhabitants, of interments of the neolithic age, and skulls of the great cave bear. In 1888 the cave was completely explored by M. Martel. It consists of a series of nine vertical wells in succession, separated from one another by

')A

THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

galleries more or less horizontal. The wells are super- posed in three stages. The cave extends 2700 feet, and reaches a depth of 270 feet. The inmost and deepest well ends in ;i little subterranean lake, X40 feet above the

DESCENT OF THIC PUITS DU I.AC.

level of the river, and 600 feet below the platform of the causse.

A very little observation serves to explain the nature of this great amphitheatre of the Baumes. The cavern contained a great lake ; the river boiling in it surged up,

THE CANON' OF THE TARN 95

tore at the sides, and worked its way farther, unable to discharge all its waters by the narrow orifice that sufficed in ordinary times, but was insufficient in floods. The roof fell in, the surge leaped over, burrowed under, and final ly broke through the barrier of rock that had arrested its course, and the lake, first subterranean, then open, drained away.

Farther down the river comes another barrier, Le Pas de Soucy, where the Tarn disappears under the vast masses of fallen rock. Here the boat has to be left, and a walk of two miles taken before another is reached, where the river reappears at Les Vignes. The Pas de Soucy actually consists of two great falls of rock ; the first took place in quaternary times, the latter, it is supposed, in the great earthquake mentioned by Gregory of Tours in A.D. 580. Among the fallen and poised masses three are conspicuous — La Sourde, L'Aiguille, and La Roche Rouge. L'Aiguille is a natural pyramid or spire, 240 feet high, slightly inclining. Below is the enormous block of La Sourde. The following story is told of these stones. Ste. Enemie was much troubled in her cell by the persecutions of the devil. At last, her patience exhausted, she went at him with her hand full of holy water. Asmodeus fled down the Tarn, and the saint pursued. At the Cirque des Baumes was St. Ilerius, rapt in an ecstasy of devotion. The devil, afraid of his coming to the assistance of Ste. Enemie, reduced himself to the size of a field-mouse, and stole past unobserved ; then, when beyond, he resumed his natural dimensions and speed, and continued his flight. Just above Les Vignes was the mouth of Tartarus ; could he reach that, he would be safe. Ste. Enemie saw that he was on the point of escaping her, when she cried, " Mountain ! to my aid ! "

96

THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

Instantly the rocks fell to bar the way. The devil scrambled over the ruins, then down came La Sourde,

followed by L'Aiguille. The latter paused in the descent before making the final leap, and called out to La Sourde,

HIE CANON OF THE TARN 97

"Sister, do you want me?" "No need," answered the more advanced stone ; " I've nipped the rascal."

As the period of St. Ilerius and Ste. Enemie was not so very far removed from the date of the earthquake mentioned by St. Gregory of Tours, which he says brought down mountains in ruins, it is possible that in this legend there may be a dim reminiscence of the real cataclysm.

At Les Vignes the last stage of the descent of the canon is begun. This stage is also very fine, but a description can but consist of a repetition of the same expressions and of superlatives. Enough has been said to let the reader understand that in the canon of the Tarn he will enjoy one of the finest successions of wild scenes to be found in Europe.

But it will never do to pass Les Vignes without mention of one of the shortest and best sermons ever preached, and which was there delivered — by a lay- man.

In 1794, when the months were changed, and the days of the week were made ten instead of seven, and the worship of God was proscribed, the procureur of Les Vignes, a man named Ferrat, received an order from Paris that the Feast of Reason was to be celebrated, and that he should make a suitable address on the occasion. Accordingly the church bells were rung, as though for divine service, and when the parishioners assembled, they found the procureur standing on the altar steps, to pro- nounce the requisite discourse for the new festival.

" Dearly beloved," said he in a stentorian voice : " you married women with any worries, pour them into the hearts of your husbands.

" You unmarried girls, find lovers, and do ditto.

"You all who hear me, mind that what goes in at one 7

THE ("ANON OK THE TARN

99

ear don't come out at the other. Amen ! You may go. Iti\ missa est ! "

At Les Roziers there is a comfortable inn, and thence the tourist can start for a visit to the " City of the Devil," Montpellier-le-Vieux.

This is a second natural marvel, a great depression in

MONTPELLIER-LE-VI EUX.

the Causse Noir, worn away by water first, and then by atmospheric agents. A crowd of rocks, hard enough to resist degradation, have been left in the wildest confusion, upright, forming towers, pinnacles, churches, castles, minarets, domes. The space occupied by these fantastic rocks is about 300 acres. Montpellier-le-Vieux was unknown to the world till 1883, when discovered by M. de Malafosse. It was not noticed on the Government

ioo THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

maps till attention was drawn to it. The discoverer announced what he had found to the Geographical Society of Toulouse. "A mighty entanglement of streets, of vaults, of alleys, of projections overhanging, — now cross- ing at right angles, like a town drawn out to a regular plan, then tossed into a labyrinth in which one wanders with confusion of mind ; taken as a whole, or taken in detail, it surpasses description." I do not know that I can give a better idea of it than by saying that it is like one of Gustave Dore's fantasies realised.

There are other of these singular collections of grotesque rocks, those of Moureze and Bois-de-Paolive, the former on the Causse de Larzac. The only thing at all like these two singular agglomerations of nature's work in a fit of frolic are the sandstone devil-cities in the Riesen Gebirge, Wickelsdorf and Adersbach, both of which I have seen, and, on the whole, consider superior. But all are very fantastic, and stimulating to the imagination.

It must by no means be supposed that the gorge of the Tarn is alone. The Herault, the Vis, the Dourbie, the Ardeche, all deserve visiting, and richly repay a descent. That of the Tarn has been described as typical, that is all, and as being the finest in its way, but the others present scenes and objects hardly inferior in singularity or in beauty. At Les Roziers the traveller will not only find comfortable quarters, but will be able to make this a centre for the exploration of the Jonte, another interesting valley, where, among the objects of curiosity, he will see the isolated rock of St. Gervais, with its little chapel, a noted place of pilgrimage, on the summit. The peasants of the neighbourhood have an affection for being buried, when dead, in the tiny cemetery on the top, and the corpses have to be hauled up by

THE ("ANON OF THE TARN

ropes for interment. Meyrueis is a town half Protestant, with a "temple" of octagonal shape.

ST. GERVAIS.

About two miles up a side valley is the Castle of Roquedols, of the sixteenth century, a charming building, in perfect order, in the midst of its ancient woods. Alas ! it has recently been sold to a company, which has set up

io2 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

a saw-mill, and is cutting down all the timber and dis- posing of it in planks. So the old order changeth. It is interesting to notice the abrupt change of flora when one passes from one geologic formation to another. As I walked up the green valley, in which the nightingales were singing among the poplars as in Virgil's days, I saw that the meadows were white as with dog-daisies, but the gentle air that fanned my face hinted to me to look a little closer, and lo ! the fields were white with Narcissus poeticus. Then I knew we were off the lime- stone and on the granite. Numerous caves are in the rocks on the sides of the Jonte, high up, partly closed by walls, so as to convert them into goat-shelters. These have yielded many bones and skulls of the Ursus spcltmis, which the Christian brothers at Meyrueis have collected in their little museum, where they lie jumbled with objects from the South Sea Islands, sent home by missionaries.

Catholics and Calvinists live in the same place with- out contention, neither proselytising. They are cut off the one from the other, in religion, as by the great cleft that separates the Causse Sauveterre from the Causse Mejean, and there is no passing from the one to the other. Neither religion presents any attraction to the other. The losses of the Catholics are into Nothingarianism. The Calvinists in the Cevennes are at present afflicted with the Salvation Army, the phylloxera of evangelicalism. Possibly the inventors of the Calvinist religion, in banish- ing from it every element of emotionalism, made it too cold and monotonous, and this new phenomenon supplies just that animation which is not to be found in the " temples," and so draws to it a certain class of persons predisposed to religious hysteria.

CHA-PTER VI

THE FIRFIIILLS OF CRANSAC

Coal Formation — Cransac — The People of the District — Courtesy — Combustion of the Pyrites — Scene of Fire — Saline Deposits- — As described in the beginning of the Century.

In the sandstone formation of Aveyron lie pockets and beds of coal, and the fields of Decazeville are some of the most important in France, and the collieries of that place form one of the most combustible and dangerous elements in the country.

One colliery district is very much like another in

. , ._,-. ._ ^s-gsj^'^r

FIREHILLS OF CRANSAC.

Europe, and Decazeville requires no particular description. But it is otherwise with Cransac ; where also coal and iron mining are carried on to a large extent. On arriving at Cransac the visitor is at once struck by the clouds of smoke rising from the hills, and by the red charred condition of those which are not burning. He speedily

io4 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

discovers that he is in a district that is on fire at several points, that has burnt itself out at others, and in which man is fighting the fire and is endeavouring to extract the coal from the bowels of the mountains before the subterranean combustion reaches them.

The district is hilly ; the town dirty with coal dust and deposits of ash ; the people are dirty,— they cannot help that, — but are good-humoured and courteous.

Shortly before visiting Cransac I had read a very charming volume, Our Home in Avcyron, by an author, who, I believe, was an English overseer to some mines in the neighbourhood. The description he gave of the Uecazeville and Cransac miners and their families was not pleasing. He said that scowls and muttered threats met every well-dressed person who appeared in the streets, and that he was repeatedly warned by the police to carry a revolver, and to let it be seen that he carried one.

Now this, no doubt, is quite true of a time of strike and disturbances, and also true with regard to a man in a position of authority over workmen in the mines. But it conveys a false impression relative to these colliers and their womenkind in peaceful times and with regard to strangers.

I may mention an incident which will illustrate this, trifling in itself, but characteristic. I was in a third-class carriage travelling between Decazeville and Cransac, and the compartment was packed with miners, with faces and garments black - begrimed ; they were all talking in langued'oc, and smoking hard. Now, I happened to cough, being troubled with bronchitis. At once out of their mouths came their pipes. " Did the smoking annoy monsieur? if so they would extinguish their tobacco."

THE FIREHILLS OF CRANSAC 105

In vain did I protest that, so far from finding discomfort from the smoke, I liked it. They supposed that I spoke this out of courtesy, and all put their pipes into their pockets.

In the people's park at Cransac, I missed my way. I wanted to get up to the burning fields, and came in a bosky and shadowed walk on a lover and his lass in amorous talk. I somewhat hesitated about interrupting them so as to inquire my way, but the moment they discovered what I wanted, they forgot their love-making to escort me into the nearest track to my destination.

So much for the miner folks' courtesy. The colliers have a hard life of it ; for they have to work in terrible heat underground, and in no little danger. In some places the coal-beds they are exploiting underlie other beds that are on fire, and there is ever present the peril of the heat generating explosive gases, or of suffocation. In other mines the men have to cut the beds and build walls athwart them to arrest the fire.

According to popular belief, the English, at the close of the Hundred Years' War, when their domination of Guienne ceased, set fire to the coal-beds out of revenge for their expulsion, and they have been burning ever since the first half of the fifteenth century. This is, of course, entirely untrue. The mountains have been on fire from all time, for they contain the elements for ignition in themselves when in contact with the air.

The coal basin of Decazeville and of Aubin occupies about 40 square kilometres, nearly 25 square miles. The country is hilly and is built up of red sandstone, argil- laceous schist and coal, with beds of iron, and porphyries intercalated. Much of the iron is in the condition of pyrites, sulphuret of iron. The sulphur in contact with

106 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

atmospheric air rapidly combines, fire is the result, and a development of sulphuric acid which attacks such bases as are present, lime, magnesia, aluminium, and oxide of iron. The sulphates of iron and aluminium formed under these circumstances are often decomposed again by the action of the heat, and the sulphuric acid, set at liberty, escapes along with watery vapour and attacks the organic and inorganic substances round. This greatly adds to the desolation of the mountain heights : the trees are blasted, grass will not grow, and the bushes lose their leaves and die.

On approaching the scene of combustion, one sees that the soil is mined and contains crevices out of which issue watery vapour and acid exhalations. At the edge of the cracks the heat is insupportable. In looking down them one sees fire glowing, on all sides one hears the exploding of rocks and stones, and at night the scene is like that of a volcanic crater, with red masses of fire, lambent blue, green, and yellow flames flickering, and here and there a dazzling star of almost pure white light glaring out from a mass of incandescent cinder.

In some places one may observe conglomerates which have been subjected to the intensest heat, and have completely changed their appearance. These are sand- stone, schorls, and clays. Under the heat they have been reduced to a condition like chalcedony and jasper, or run like enamel of many colours, or, again, have been burned to cinders and pumice.

The soil, mined by the fires underground, collapses

after a while and forms a series of inverted cones, precisely

dike volcanic craters, and about them many volcanic

products, such as crystals of sulphur and chlorhydrate of

ammonia, may be detected.

THE FIREHILLS OF CRANSAC 107

The burning surface is sprinkled with saline concre- tions and efflorescences of the most varied colours and parts. The white silky needles are composed of alum, the orange are sulphate ofbarytes; the yellow sulphate of arsenic, in fact, orpiment, is that powerful and dangerous pigment so much affected by .'esthetic paperhangers.

In the coal basins of Aubin there are at present four burning mountains, those of Monteils, La Kuegne, La Salle, and Fontaignes. One of the large crevasses at Cransac contains eighteen craters all on fire, producing a striking effect at night. By day a pale whitish-blue smoke like a veil plays about the mountain. There are natural vapour baths in the hill of Fontaignes about forty-five feet deep, in which the air is charged with sulphurous exhalations, and the temperature is at 500 Cent. At Severac l'Eglise also is a burning coal measure.

One caution must be given to the visitor, the result of experience, not to drink any water from the springs or wells in the region of the burning mountains — at Cransac certainly not ; all is impregnated with the minerals liberated and crystallised by the fire, and which, being soluble, sink into the veins of water which supply the town, and act with strong medicinal effect on the consumer. Consequently, it is not on the Causses only, but here on the houilliercs, that the conscientious and scrupulous teetotaller will have a bad time.

A writer in 1802, who published a description of the department of Aveyron, describes the mountain of Fon- taignes much as it is at present. He says : " It may be considered a Vesuvius in miniature. It is 400 feet high, and half-way up is a great crevasse of elliptical form, containing eighteen craters grouped at three points. During the day the fire is not visible. This hollow,

io8

THE DESERTS 0-F SOUTHERN FRANCE

bordered by trees with pallid leaves, and full of stones calcined white and of burning red earth, has from a distance the aspect of a great wound. By night the spectacle is sufficiently alarming to those unfamiliarised with such phenomena. On approaching the spot the fire is seen; the soil sounds hollow under one's feet. If

CHURCH, CKANSAC.

we brave the heat and smoke, and look into the fumaroles, we see gulfs of fire where the incandescence is very active. Sticks thrust in are speedily ignited. If one attempts to enlarge the orifices, the column of smoke is enlarged, and little shoots of fire follow. The summit of the mountain is cultivated, and there is even a hamlet there a hundred paces from this natural furnace. One might really suppose that it was inhabited by un-

THE FIREHILLS OF CRANSAC 109

fortunates indifferent to life, who were careless as to the mode of death in store for them, or by physicians who were taking observations on the progress made by the fire. But neither is the case. Familiarity breeds con- tempt in the simple peasants on the spot. However, the combustion spreads daily. The land under their gardens is full of fissures, where the heat is insupportable by the hand ; and the cellars of the houses, and indeed the lower rooms, are often full of smoke."

This is not the only place where there is fire. There are several others in the neighbourhood. Some proprietors, in the hopes of saving their land, have turned streams of water into the chasms, with a result quite other than what they anticipated ; for the water seemed to augment the activity of the combustion, and led to explosions of flame and eruptions of red-hot stones.

ROQUEFORT CHEESE-STORF

CHAPTER VII

ROQUEFORT CHEESE

The Scanty Herbage of the Causse — The Sheep of the Causse — Ewes .Milk Cheese — The Caussenard Shepherd — Wolves — The Bete du Gevaudan — Its Depredations — Hunt after it — Roquefort Cheese — Its Manufacture — Roquefort Cellars — Glove-Making.

The Causses where the rock is burnt and deprived of soil grow nothing save a little juniper and other aromatic herbs, and these serve as food for the sheep that in great numbers ramble over them in quest of food, and by force of circumstances are obliged to do without water. In England we consider that a field in which is water is worth half as much again for cattle and sheep. Beasts of all kinds need water, as do men, and it is only dire necessity which forces the sheep of the Causses to slake their thirst on the dew, and do without drinking. Their meat is wretched stuff; and they are reared and tended mainly for their milk and for their skins. Millau and Meyrueis are centres of glove manufacturing, and the gloves are made of sheepskin. Everywhere cheese is the product of the sheep's milk, but Roquefort is the great centre for export, and has given its name to the ewes' milk cheese of the Causses.

The men who attend to the flocks are picturesque objects in their long brown cloth cloaks, tucked up during

THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

the clay if fine, that serve as blankets by night. On smaller Causses girls feed the sheep, attended by ferocious dogs, and as they watch their flocks they spin and sing old langue d'oc ballads.

The Caussenard shepherd sleeps out, guarding his flock.

Occasionally wolves come down from the Cevennes or the mountains of Auvergne, but they are happily becom- ing scarcer every year.

I sketched the habitation of a shepherd, a hut on

a pair of wheels. The

entrance is at the side,

and he crawls in by

thrusting out one of

the wheels sufficiently

to allow him to creep

into the hive behind it.

Formerly the wolves

were not uncommon

visitors, and did much

destruction.

The Gevaudan was in panic from 1764 to 1767,

because it was believed that the Causses were haunted

by a monstrous wolf that committed such depredations

as to make its fame known throughout Europe.

In June 1764 this beast began its ravages, and the first person attacked was a woman, but she fled among some oxen and escaped with only torn clothes. Two days after a couple of children were carried off by it.

Popular imagination worked. It was said by those who professed to have seen it, that it was as big as an ass, with a snout like that of a pig. An engraving of

HUT ON WHEELS.

ROQUEFORT CHEESE 1 13

the period represents it as having its front paws armed with claws, and the hind feet in sabots.

The terrible beast existed, and the whole province was in an ecstacy of terror. It attacked, in preference, children, women, or old men. Between June and October in 1764 it had devoured or gravely wounded twenty-six persons.

On July 3, a girl aged fourteen was devoured at St. Etienne de Lugdares in the Vivarais ; on August 8, a girl aged fifteen at Puy Laurent; at the end of the same month a boy of the same age. At the beginning of September, a woman fell a victim at Arzenac ; on the 26th, a girl perished in the same manner at Roches. The beast devoured a girl aged twenty at Apcher on October 7 ; next day it attacked a boy of fifteen, and tore the flesh off his head. It did the same shortly after to another youth. A child of thirteen was next eaten, then a girl aged twenty. On the 10th October, two young people of Bergounhoux were attacked, along with their little sister, whilst keeping sheep. In spite of their resistance the child was fearfully torn in the cheek and arms. All these assaults were committed in full day.

The matter became so serious that the peasants organised battues against the beast. Several wolves were killed, but the ravages continued undiminished, some in one province, some in another.

The beast had made more victims in the neighbour- hood of St. Chely, when the Count de Moncam, governor of Languedoc, sent a company of dragoons — fifty-six men in all — to assist in the chase of the " bete feroce."

Within two leagues of St. Chely, on December 16, a

girl was devoured in spite of the presence of the dragoons

hard by. It leaped on her, tore her throat, and escaped

with the head. At St. Flour another young woman fell a

8

ii4 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

prey. On December 28, the beast was seen and pursued, but escaped, owing to a wrong signal having been given

by the trumpeter, so that the soldiery did not fire. On

December 28, a boy was carried off.

Now the Bishop of Mende intervened with a pastoral. " A savage beast," said the prelate," unknown to our climate, has suddenly appeared in our midst, and no one knows whence it came. Wherever it appears, there its bloody traces are left, and consternation is spread. The fields are deserted, the boldest men are filled with fear at the sight of the horrible beast, and none dare go forth unarmed. The creature is the more difficult to resist, for it is as cunning as it is cruel. It springs on its prey with incredible agility, and rapidly passes from one district to another to elude pursuit. It attacks in preference the most tender and feeble, even the aged, — in fact, such as are unable to offer effective resistance." The bishop ordered prayers to be offered up in the churches for deliverance.

On December 27, a girl aged nineteen was devoured, next day a man and his daughter were attacked, but managed to escape.

On January 6, 1765, a woman was killed and eaten at Fournels, and the same day, whilst a girl was on her way to mass she was attacked, but escaped. Next day, how- over, another girl had less luck — she was killed.

The most striking incident occurred on January 12, at Chanaleilles. A little boy, aged between twelve and thirteen, was keeping cows along with several other children, amongst whom was a girl aged seventeen. Suddenly the wolf appeared, rushed in among them, and carried off the girl into a marshy place at some distance. The gallant boy at once started in pursuit, drove the beast

ROQUEFORT CHEESE 115

into a portion of the marsh from which it could not well escape, and with a knife fastened to the end of a stick attacked it, and forced it to relinquish hold on the girl, who, though torn, escaped by this means with life.

The officer in command of the detachment sent to hunt the wolf was so pleased with the lad's pluck that he had him enrolled, when old enough, in his corps. He was advanced, and died as lieutenant of artillery in 1785.

A woman at Rouget was seated on a bank near her garden with two children, of which one was a babe at her breast, and the other was on her lap. All at once the wolf was on her, and had snatched away one of the children. The woman put down the other, went in pur- suit, and as the beast was escaping over a hedge, laid hold of its hind legs and held on till the brute let go its prey. The Intendant of the province granted this woman a reward of a hundred crowns for her courage.

The very same day that the boy at Chanaleilles had delivered the girl from the wolf, the beast attacked a boy at Grezes and devoured him.

On the 14th, a girl was eaten at La Bastide in Auvergne.

In a letter of the 20th, the Intendant of the province thus drew the portrait of the " Bete du Gevaudan " : " This animal is of the size of a bullock a year old, it has paws as strong as those of a bear, with six claws, each an inch long. Its jaws are of enormous size, the breast wide as that of a horse, the body long as that of a leopard, the tail stout as a man's arm and four feet long. The hair of the head is dusky, the eyes large as those of a calf and sparkling, the ears those of a wolf. The hair of the belly is whitish, that of the rest of the body reddish, with a black line four inches wide running down the back."

n6 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

It is singular to find so minute an account of a brute that had not as yet been captured or killed.

On January 21, a girl was attacked, but delivered by the neighbours. Next day it tore off a woman's head.

On January 23, it entered an enclosure, snatched off a child of three, and disappeared with it.

On January 30, it killed a young girl and ate her.

" On the last day of January, at Javols," says the report made by the Intendant, "the son of the farmer of M. Labarthe of Marvejols was playing skittles with two companions, when he was carried off some 200 paces, but was delivered by the house dog and the villagers running up to his rescue."

On February 7, 1765, a general battue was ordered through seventy-two parishes in the Gevaudan, forty in Auvergne, and twenty in the Rouergue. The snow was on the ground. The only success obtained was that a peasant who saw the wolf fired, but the beast escaped, leaving traces of blood on the snow.

Next day, at 2 P.M., a child was carried off from the cottage door of its parents, but was happily rescued.

On February 9, a girl of fifteen was devoured. On the two following days, another general battue was ordered and carried out, also without success.

On February 14, another child was eaten. Then a muleteer was attacked, but delivered by his dogs, and by- villagers who came to his assistance at his cries. That same evening a little girl of eight years was attacked, and though delivered, died the same night of her wounds. On the last day of February, two women who were in company on their way to mass were attacked, the wolf tore away the throat of one, the other escaped with her garments in tatters.

ROQUEFORT CHEESE 117

Then the king issued an edict to enforce the destruc- tion of this terrible beast, and orders were given that when the creature was captured or killed, it was to be sent to Clermont for investigation.

The " Bete du Gevaudan " laughed at the royal injunc- tion. On March 4, it devoured a woman aged forty. On the 8th, it tore off the head of a child of ten, and horribly mangled the body. On the 9th, a girl of twenty was torn to pieces ; on the 1 ith, a child of eleven met the same fate. Children were attacked on the 12th and 13th. On the 1 8th, a boy was fallen upon; on the 20th, a child was half consumed ; on the 22nd, a man and two women were assailed, but escaped. On the 29th, another child fell a victim under the eyes of its parents.

On April 3, a boy of ten, on the 4th, a girl, were eaten ; on the 5th, four children were attacked, and one was carried off.

On the ioth fresh battues. Two wolves were seen, but escaped. The whole country was up and armed. Nevertheless, on the 16th, the brute attacked a man on horseback ; on the 1 8th, it killed a young man — "it bled him like a butcher, tore out one eye, gnawed his cheeks and thighs, and disjointed his knees."

On the 2 1st, as many as 10,000 men were out, and the pursuit was resultless. However, on the 23rd, a she- wolf was killed, and in her paunch were found some rags. The same day a boy of fifteen years old was attacked. On May 2, a woman of forty was devoured, on the 4th another woman. On the 6th, a general hunt — resultless ; again on the 9th, the 12th, the 16th, without capturing the terrible beast. On the 24th, it tore the throat of a young woman of twenty-five. She died of the wound. Half an hour later a eir! of fifteen fell a victim.

ii8 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

An odd suggestion was now made. It was observed that the /v/V especially attacked women. It was proposed to manufacture a number of sham females and stuff them with poison. Steel traps were proposed, pitfalls. The beast was too wary to be caught by any of these devices.

On June I, a girl was eaten ; on June 8, three children were half devoured. Again, deaths from the same cause on June 20 and 21.

Again the king now intervened, not with a mande- ment, but by sending a detachment of gardes-chasses from Versailles and St. Germain. The Dukes of Orleans and Penthievre also contributed bodies of their huntsmen and keepers ; and this large contingent arrived in the Gevaudan on August 7, 1765. During the two months from the order given for the marching of the detachment and its arrival, almost every day had been marked by some fresh attack or death ; it is hardly necessary to detail them.

In a great general chase on September 20, the captain in command believed that he had succeeded in clearing the country of the brute. The Intendant of Auvergne wrote to the king: " Sire, we are full of joy unspeakable. M. Antoine de Beauterne, the porte-arquebuse of your Majesty, has killed the Bete du Gevaudan. Having heard that the brute was continuing its ravages in the royal forest of Chazes, he sent there your Majesty's valets, beaters, and dogs. Then he went in pursuit, and, finding its whereabouts, ordered a battue. Your Majesty's keepers and forty Languedoc sharpshooters entered the wood. M. Antoine planted himself at a narrow exit. All at once he saw the monster coming towards him, trotting down the path, and presenting his flank. He fired his tromblon, charged with 35 wolf-shot and a bullet.

ROQUEFORT CHEESE 119

The beast fell, with an eye blinded. The Sieur Antoine was upset by the recoil of his tromblon. Mow ever, the beast rose and rushed on him; M. Antoine, not having time to reload, cried for help. A man named Reinhard, keeper to Mgr. the Duke of Orleans, arrived in time, aimed his carbine, and shot the creature dead. It turns out to be a wolf, 32 in. high, 5 ft. j\ in. long, and 3 ft. in circumference. The weight, 150 lbs.

The Sieur de Beauterne received the Cross of St. Louis and a pension of 1000 livres as recompence for his courage.

The country breathed for a while. It was believed that it was freed from the beast, but next December the ravages began again.

Dead dogs, poisoned with mix vomica, pounded glass, and dried sponge, were strewn about the country, but though many wolves were killed by this means, the number of deaths through the ferocity of the terrible bite continued.

At last a peasant named Chastel shot it. The brute was disembowelled, and in its paunch was found the shoulder-bones of a girl it had devoured some thirty hours before. The body was put in a box and sent to Paris, but on its arrival was in such a condition of decomposition that it had to be burned.

The deaths by violence now ceased, and the Estates of Languedoc decreed large rewards to the peasant who had cleared it of the terrible monster.

The Bete du Gevaudan had finished his career. His ravages had excited general attention through Europe. For three years the newspapers had recorded his doings. Finally, Freron, in his Annie Litte'rain", had given a portrait of the brute, which the celebrated actress, Mdlle.

i2o THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN lk.\\< I

Clairon, believed to be a caricature of herself; she there upon obtained an order for the committal <>f FreYon to prison in Fort l'Ev£que. Happily an attack of the gout saved the journalist from being interned.

A report on the ravages of the three years, 1763 to 1765, names ninety-two victims, and main- others who had been attacked or wounded by the brute.

Now, when we come to look through the results of the continuous wolf-hunts these deaths gave rise to, we find that between 1762 and 1766 as man}- as 288 wolves had been killed. It is, therefore, by no means unlikely — indeed, it is most probable — that instead of one mon- strous Bete du Gevaudan, there had been a good many wolves engaged in eating girls and little children ; but popular imagination ran them all into one gigantic mon- ster. The number of wolves in the Gevaudan must at that time have been very great, for between May 1761 and February 1770 the number killed was 679.

The Gevaudan monster has occupied us perhaps too long. We will return to our muttons.

Roquefort cheese is made either exclusively of ewes' milk or of ewes' milk and goats' milk combined. If even a little cows' milk were mixed with it, the peculiar char- acter of this cheese would be lost.

The milk is passed through a colander, and then allowed to stand. After that, it is put into great copper vessels, and is subjected to pressure till it coagulates and the whey is squeezed out. It takes about 100 lbs. of milk to make a small spoonful of curd.

When the curd is sufficiently compressed, it is given to women to stir with their hands for three-quarters of an hour. Then it is subjected to pressure again, and the rest of the whey is drawn off. Next, the curd is

ROQUEFi >RT CHEESE 121

placed in boxes pierced with holes, and allowed to drain. At the end of three hours the cheese is withdrawn from these cases, and is bound up into shape by means of bands of linen. Then it is taken to the drying place,

ROQUEFORT CHEESE-GIKI..

where it is turned several times a day till covered with a crust which allows of the cheese being handled with- out breaking. This operation, which lasts from six to a dozen days, is the last to which the cheese is subjected in the dairy. In this condition it is sent to Roquefort. There it is put away in vaults, natural and artificial.

122 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

Roquefort is a singular village or small town, built on the side of a limestone rock or mountain that is literally

honeycombed, riddled through and through with cellars for cheese. Many of these are natural, many natural caves that have been enlarged artificially. The mountain is called Cambalou ; on the south side it is quite precipi- tous. The natural caves number twenty-three, and there are thirty-four in all. The rocks in parts of the town lean over the street, and close so as to contract the way to the smallest possible limits. It is a quaintly pictur- esque place. Its whole business is connected with the cheese trade, and indeed a savour — not savoury — of cheese pervades the place. Some of the cellars are in storeys superposed. Within are shelves covered with straw, on which the cheeses are ranged on their sides. The rock is perfectly dry, but in a south-west wind water trickles down the sides, due to the condensation of the moisture in the air on the ever cold rocks. The tempera- ture in the caves is always much the same, from io° to 12° Cent. It is in these cellars that the cheeses acquire their peculiar flavour, or rather maturity. Formerly they were kept for months in the rocky vaults, and leisurely developed the blue mould that is so much appreciated. But now the manufacture of the cheeses has fallen into the hands of companies, and these, being impatient of so lengthy a process, and being eager. for a rapid return, contrive to blow bread-crumbs into the curd, and the bread-crumbs become mildewed rapidly, and give to the cheese the appearance, if not the flavour, of old blue mould.

But the treatment of the cheeses is not yet complete. After they have been brought into the natural cellars of Roquefort, salt is crumbled over them, and rubbed

ROQUEFORT CHEESE 123

in during two or three clays. Then more is put on them, and this also is rubbed in. When thoroughly salted, they are scraped till the outer skin is removed, and of this round cheeses are made, called boles or rubarbes, that are intensely salt. Next, the cheeses are laid out on shelves apart. In a fortnight they are covered with a white growth of mould, which is removed. A second fortnight produces another similar crop, which is also brushed off. Then they are tested if ripe. Formerly it took from two to three months to ripen them ; now they are ripened and sold off quicker.

The milk of which these cheeses are made comes nearly all from the immense Causse of Larzac. The production of Roquefort cheese is said to put eight million francs in circulation every year. The population of the place is about 1 300 ; but the cheeses sold as from Roque- fort do not all come thence ; they are manufactured also at Cornus, Landric, Saint Paul, Corps, Bourquet, and many other villages. The hides of the sheep go to Millau and Meyrueis for glove-making.

Roquefort cheese may be excellent eating — it is not pleasant to the nose. I left Marvejols on my way to Paris. Three little parties were in the same carriage with me, all prepared for a night journey. We left Marvejols at 3.10 P.M. and were to arrive in Paris at 5.15 the follow- ing morning. All the three little parties were provided for the night — for supper, collation at midnight, early breakfast — with supplies of Roquefort cheese in an ad- vanced condition of ripeness, exhaling a very emphatic odour. I held out till shortly before midnight, and then fled — to an hotel at Clermont, to continue my journey next day, sans Roquefort cheese.

CHAPTER VIII

TRUFFLES AND TRUFFLE-HUNTERS

The Story of the Talon Family — The Truffle and the Oak The Truffle a Parasite — Formation of a Nursery — When the Truffle is Ripe— The Pig as Truffle-Hunter — Dogs Employed — The Growth of the Tuber — The Preservation of the Truffle — Commerce in Truffles — Cahors — Its Market — Italian Truffles — Fattening of Geese for patd de foie gras.

In the year 1810 there lived in the hamlet of Talons, at St. Talons, at St. Saturnin-lez-Apt, in Provence, two men, cousins, bearing the same name of Joseph Talon ; the one was the son of Peter Talon, the other of Anthony. Joseph, son of Peter, had some land that produced nothing, and, rather than that it should remain unprofitable, he sowed it with acorns, thinking to feed his pigs from the trees when they bore. Bear they did, in the course of time ; but what was his astonishment, when he turned his pigs in among them, to find that they bore something far more profitable than acorns, viz. truffles. They did not, indeed, bear them on their branches, but about their roots. This was indeed a discovery. Joseph now gathered care- fully every acorn from his little plantation and sowed a fresh patch of ground, and carefully also destroyed every acorn he did not plant, lest his neighbours should obtain any of this precious truffle-bearing tree. He went on

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sowing every parcel of his little property with glands,

and as the oak trees grew, they produced truffles. That was the beginning of his fortune. Years after he took his children to look at his plantations, and said to them, " Every man is sent into the world for some purpose : I was sent for this."

But the secret could not be hidden. The villagers mar- velled to see how eager Joseph was to plant oak trees, and they watched him closely. His cousin Joseph, son of Anthony, detected him destroying his acorns, and as it was now well known that Joseph, son of Peter, sold truffles, it was concluded that he had discovered a sort of truffle-bearing oak. Now, truffles fetch a high price — a sovereign for a kilo ; that is a little over two pounds. The neighbours of Talon, above all his cousin, followed his course — they sought out oaks about whose roots truffles grew, and sowed their land with their glands. They also, in course of time, reaped a harvest, as had the discoverer. That was the beginning of truffle culture, which is now assuming some proportions in that part of France where the vines have been destroyed by the phylloxera, and planta- tions of oak are taking the place of vineyards.

But what connection has the truffle with the oak ? That has long been a puzzle. Where no oak trees grow — but, indeed, a few other trees, such as the nut and the poplar — there are also truffles. In certain soils, in certain climates, as surely as oaks are planted, so surely in ten or twelve years do truffles arrive. Cut down an oak wood that has yielded a harvest of this precious tuber, and the truffle disappears.

When Pliny said that the truffle was the curdling of the soil, under a lightning flash, he talked nonsense. He had not subjected the truffle to observation, and he ventured

i26 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANI I

on a guess. The peasants, who for many centuries have made money by collecting truffles, formed their own theory to explain the existence of these products of nature. They asserted that the truffle was an underground oak-gall, due

to the puncturing of the roots by a little fly that they observed hovering in the shade of the oak, and was a sure indication of the presence of truffles beneath the soil. Their theory was better than the guess of Pliny, for it was based on observation and showed reason. Nevertheless, it is false; but its falsity has been demonstrated only of quite late years.

The true position of the truffle has been determined by science with the aid of the microscope, and it has been proved that it is a subterranean mushroom — a parasite on the fibrous roots of the oak.

The truffle is a parasite, or of semi-parasitic life, on the tender fibrous roots of the young oak, the nut tree, the poplar, and a few other trees. Moreover, of truffles there are many kinds, none absolutely poisonous, but two only come into the market, the winter and the summer truffles, the black and the grey.

The truffle is of the nature and order of the mushroom, and it grows from spores as does the mushroom. The latter carries its seeds in the delicate radiating films under its umbrella, whereas those of the truffle are contained within its fleshy mass, and are liberated only by the de- composition of the flesh.

It has no roots perceptible to the eye, when taken out of the ground; it has, nevertheless, filaments very fine and delicate, with which it draws its nourishment from the oak and from the soil, and these are atrophied when it reaches maturity.

There are certain essentials to the well-being of the

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truffle; these are that the soil should be shallow and light, and that it should not be subjected to frost.

Shallow the soil must be, as it lives on the minute fibrous roots of the oak, and cannot endure to seek these deep in the earth. Consequently, where the oak cannot drive its tap-root far down, but must send out lateral roots near the surface, there the truffle thrives. The truffle, moreover, hates heavy soils, clay it cannot tolerate. The soil must be light that it may expand to its full develop- ment. Frost, when it touches the tuber, kills it, and it rots. The shallow soil that covers the limestone hills of Ouercy, of Perigord, and of Provence, suits the truffle exactly, so does the mild climate, and the absence of intense frosts. The black truffle, gathered in winter, grows abundantly to the south and west of the great central tableland of France. On that it cannot live, owing to the cold, but it thrives on its sun-baked spurs. The summer truffle, however, is found so far north as Paris, and is gathered in tolerable quantities in Burgundy and Cham- pagne. It is, however, considered inferior to the black winter truffle.

Juvenal represents a certain Alledius as exclaiming, " O Lybia, keep your corn, but send us your truffles."

The tuber has been in request by gourmands ever since, but never perhaps was the demand for it greater than at present. In Paris no good dinner is served without truffles, they are as much expected as olives ; and the demand has provoked the formation of artificial fields of truffle-culture. Nothing indeed is more simple, nothing demands less labour; but then patience is required, for the truffle does not appear till the oak plants are ten or twelve years old.

The first token that the truffles have attacked the fibrous roots of the tree is the withering away of the

128 THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

herbage in a circle round the trunk. The truffle only

attacks the delicate fibrous tissue of root, and that only when spread near the surface. As the tree grows older, the ring of dead herbage widens round it; but after some years the oak becomes so robust that it is able to resist the attacks of this tuber, and an oak of a good ripe age has them not. The truffle may be likened to certain diseases to which children are liable, but from which adults are free.

In forming a nursery of truffles, the oak-glands must be sown in a light soil, in a sunny aspect, in a position well drained, and also where the rock is near the surface, so as to force the tree to expand its roots laterally. It cannot bear the frost, as already said, and therefore the true black truffle is found only within a well-determined zone in France, where the mild climate and the friable soil lying on limestone exactly accord with its tastes. Only the grey tuber that is harvested in summer, a very inferior truffle, is found north of