THE RIVERS OF FRANCE
Broadly speaking, one half of France is mountainous, and the other
flat or undulating. All the mountains are on the eastern half, the
high grounds of Normandy and Brittany being scarcely more than hills.
The whole country might, for some purposes, be considered as an
inclined plane, for in travelling from the Alps on the eastern
frontiers to the Atlantic coast the altitudes (omitting the valley of
the Rhone) are constantly decreasing. Thus, with the exception of the
Rhone, which carries the snow-waters of the Bernese and Pennine Alps,
the Vosges and the Jura chains, into the Mediterranean, the waters of
nearly the whole of the more habitable three-quarters of the country
drain westwards to the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel. Most of
this immense reticulation of river and stream is included in the
three great systems of the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne. The
Adour drains the triangle between the Pyrenees and the Garonne; the
Charente waters the Plain of Poitou between the Garonne and the Loire,
but both are of small account in comparison to the vast areas included
in the basins of the great rivers.
Both the Rhone and the Garonne are of foreign birth, the first
beginning life at the foot of the great Rhone Glacier in Switzerland,
feeding on her snows and glaciers all the year round, and the second
rising in a Spanish valley of the Pyrenees.
[Illustration: THE CHATEAU OF AMBOISE ON THE LOIRE.]
The Loire, the longest of her rivers, is, however, entirely a
possession of France. It is, like the Seine, a cause of very much
anxiety on account of its inconstancy. At one season of the year it
inundates large areas with its superabundance, and at another it is
capable of running so low that only mere streams flow between the
sand-banks. So unfortunately situated is the city of Tours in times of
flood that it has found it necessary to surround itself with a
protective dyke. The chief cause of sudden inundations is when the
flood-waters of two or three tributaries conspire to pour in their
contributions to the main channel simultaneously, and only when these
headstrong young things are held in check will there be any hope of a
fairly regular level of water in the main course. Two centuries ago
(1711) the need for curbing the flood-waters was recognised so clearly
that a dam was constructed at Pinay, a village 18 miles above Roanne.
It held up 350 to 450 million cubic feet of water, and has been very
successful in maintaining the supply of water in the river-bed during
seasons of drought, as well as checking the violence of the floods. In
recent times three other dams have been built, two of them near the
busy industrial centre of St. Etienne, but until several others have
been constructed the flood-waters cannot be held in check.
Its immense length of 625 miles takes the Loire through ten
departments, but the changes of scenery are not so remarkable as those
of the Rhone. The source is in the Cevennes, about 4500 feet above
sea-level, on the east side of the Gerbier de Jonc, and almost in
sight of the Rhone. Through Haute Loire in the marvellously
picturesque region of dead volcanoes near Le Puy-en-Velay it takes its
course northwards, flowing at the foot of basaltic cliffs and
chestnut-clad slopes. On commanding spurs ruined castles are perched
in most romantic fashion, and if it were not for their painful
inaccessibility, the demand among the wealthy for these little
strongholds of the Middle Ages would run up their value to astonishing
figures.
The action of water in the past has been vastly more energetic in the
Auvergnes and the Cevennes in the ages since their masses of plutonic
rock were produced than at the present day, for the scoria and the
general debris of seismic disturbance has been so much eroded that the
throats of volcanoes filled with the last product of the immense heat
below here and there stand out stripped of their cones. One of the
most remarkable of these phenomena is to be seen at Le Puy. This
strange _aiguille_ has been crowned with a beautiful Romanesque chapel
for some nine centuries, and it is just possible that a Roman temple
stood there at an earlier date.
In the neighbourhood of St. Etienne the Loire is considered to be
navigable. It traverses the alluvial plain of Forez, the mountains of
that name to the west separating it from the basin of its great
tributary the Allier, which takes a roughly parallel course and joins
it just below Nevers. If rivers could express their feeling by other
means than overproduction and strikes, the Allier would no doubt say
something forcible as to the ascendency of its neighbour, whose claims
to be the parent stream are open to question.
Nearly all the way through this plain of Forez the Loire, in fine
weather, resembles a ribbon of fairest blue threaded through lace of
exquisite delicacy, for it is bordered by trees growing close to the
water-side, and only now and then does the band of blue show an
uninterrupted surface. Lower down bare red hills are encountered,
through which the river has forced its way to the plain in which
stands the town of Roanne, after which its course is less picturesque
for a time. This is perhaps a scarcely accurate statement, for
picture-making qualities with trees, cattle, and distant hills are
scarcely ever absent, but there is a certain monotony in the scenery
such as one can hardly find on the Thames or the Wye. From Nevers to
Orleans there are no towns on the river, which gradually turns its
course to the west, flowing exactly in that direction at Orleans,
where its ample width adds much interest and charm to a very much
modernised city. Its habit of flooding, and so causing immense damage
over large areas, has made it necessary to construct very formidable
dykes, which now protect the country it traverses between La
Martiniere and Nantes. Between Orleans and Tours, where embankments do
not exist, the writer has seen the cream-coloured flood-waters foaming
and swirling past trees, fences, and hay-stacks over large areas of
the Sologne. Here and there it has been almost impossible to see any
indications of the usual river-bed, and so level is the country to the
south in the neighbourhood of Beaugency that there seems nothing to
check the floods for several kilometres from the river. On these
occasions one trembles on account of the danger to which the
thirteenth-century bridge at Beaugency, patched, and in part rebuilt,
is hourly exposed. It is the oldest bridge on the Loire.
Below Blois embankments contain the river, and the roadway on that
which defends the north side provides the charming riverside drive to
Amboise and Tours familiar to all who have visited the romantic
_chateaux_ of Touraine. The average rise of the river in flood is 14
feet, and these dykes are quite equal to this task, but when, as in
1846 and 1856, the Loire raised its surface to over 22 feet, even
these banks were useless. With dredging, embanking, and dam
construction the river is being gradually harnessed, but there is
still much to be done before riverside towns can contemplate the rapid
melting of snow in the mountains without the gravest anxiety.
An upper course in a country of impervious rock means that the volume
of water is not reduced by absorption, and the difficulties of the
river are increased when it encounters the tertiary beds of the
formation to which Paris gives its name. In this soft soil the Loire
gathers up great quantities of detritus, which it deposits farther
down, producing the sand-banks which cost the communities large sums
to remove.
If the middle part of its course is not very interesting, the Loire
removes that reproach between Orleans and its mouth. Its waters, and
those of some of its shorter tributaries, reflect the towers and
crenellated walls of some of the most remarkable and interesting of
all the _chateaux_ of France. Blois, the scene of the murders of the
Duc de Guise (who had instigated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew) and
of his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine; Amboise, with its great
tower, containing a spiral roadway for carriages and the courtyard in
which Mary Stuart had, in 1560, been the swooning witness of a most
appalling massacre of 1200 Huguenot prisoners, the Duc de Guise
refusing to listen to her entreaties that they should be spared;
Chenonceaux, the scene of many a royal hunting party, and the
possession for a time of Diane de Poitiers, and Chaumont, which
Catherine de Medici obliged Diane to take in exchange; Langeais, where
rich furnishings of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance bring
one into the very atmosphere of the poignard and of deadly intrigue;
and Angers, with its seventeen round towers, begun by Philippe
Auguste, are all eloquent of the romantic age of French history, of
human passion, of love, hate, and despair.
[Illustration: CHATEAU GAILLARD AND A LOOP OF THE SEINE.]
It would not be easy to think offhand of any river of similar length
and importance whose course shows such amazing dilatoriness as that of
the Seine. The statue of a nymph placed at its source by the city of
Paris is only 250 miles from the sea in a direct line, but the river
seems to have an unconquerable desire to postpone the hour when it is
swallowed up by the English Channel, and by turning out of its normal
direction, northwards or southwards, every few miles it has dug for
itself a channel 482 miles in length. Such sinuosities on the course
of a great river might be called undignified, if one could not point
to that part of the course of the Moselle that lies between Treves and
Coblentz, and to the Ebro in the middle part of its journey between
Saragossa and the sea. The increased friction at the numerous sharp
curves prevents the flood-waters from getting away with the rapidity
the Parisians sometimes desire, and this is partly responsible for the
serious damage done in the capital when circumstances combine to send
down an abnormal quantity of water from the higher tributaries. In
January 1910 the height of the river above the normal was 24 feet, and
the racing waters swirled against the keystones of the bridges. But if
the Seine misbehaves itself at intervals,[12] its average flow is so
steady that its navigability is greater than the other important
rivers. This excellent quality is due to the fact that about
three-quarters of the basin (an area of some 30,000 square miles) is
formed of permeable deposits, and consequently a vast absorption is
constantly taking place. The waters subtracted in this way are given
back by the perennial springs supplied by the saturation of different
strata. In rainless summer weather the first two or three dozen miles
of the river frequently dry up, and only from Chatillon is it a
permanent river. Tributaries of importance then begin to flow in. The
Aube and the Yonne are followed by the Loing and the Essonne, and just
before Paris the confluence with the Marne takes place. At the door of
the last-mentioned river, longer than the Seine by 31 miles, is laid
much of the blame for the volume of the floods. Its source is in the
Plateau de Langres not many miles to the north-east of the Seine. Rich
pasture-lands broken with long lines of tall-stemmed trees and
brown-roofed villages are typical of the scenery of the main river and
its tributaries above Paris. The painter who loves to be in the midst
of opulent nature is happy here. Quaint groups of tall trees, whose
foliage in the fall of the year turns to those delicate yellow greens
and subtle browns that are a never-failing joy to those with seeing
eyes, are everywhere arranged in some delightful scheme in which
reflections in smooth oily waters add a double charm to the scene.
[12] Great risings of the Seine occurred in 1658, 1740, 1799, 1802,
1876, and 1883.
It is not until Paris has been left behind that the river begins to
wash the bold white ramparts of the cretaceous beds. In and out of the
deeply indented front the meandering river takes its way, on the right
bank a wall of gleaming white cliffs and on the left green savannahs
stretching to a far and level horizon. In many places the escarpments
of chalk have the characteristics of ruined drum towers, of barbicans,
and of broken curtains, so that when Richard Coeur-de-Lion's
"_fillette d'un an_," the Chateau Gaillard which he caused to be built
with such incredible speed, comes into view, it is at first difficult
to believe that it is anything more than a still more realistic
natural effect. From the high ground that commands the _chateau_ one
looks over one of the giant loops of the river, hemmed in by
green-topped cliffs of the same marine deposits that form Gris Nez and
the curious caves of Etretat, as well as the white cliffs of Albion.
At one's feet are the still very perfect ruins of a castle that stood
on the frontier of England's possessions in France seven centuries
ago, and lower still is the little town of Le Petit Andely huddled
for protection at the base of the castle cliff.
Farther west, where the cliffs fall away, stands that historic city of
France--Rouen, the ancient capital of Normandy. It is a port, for the
Seine at this point becomes navigable for fair-sized sea-going
steamers, and one may watch the unloading of china clay from Cornwall
among the various imports carried directly to the quays.
Possibly the waterway to the sea was looked upon with little joy by
the inhabitants of the city during the ninth and tenth centuries, when
at any time, and without much warning, the shallow-draught vessels of
the Vikings might appear on the river. How these bloodthirsty pirates
came and came again in spite of strenuous resistance, heavy losses,
and much Dane-geld, is a terrible chapter in the story of the Seine.
How the night sky became copper-coloured under the furnace glow of
burning houses, churches, and monasteries, is a picture which no
historian of the river can fail to put into vivid words. Long ago,
however, Rouen recovered from the disasters inflicted by the Northmen,
and those who wander through her picturesque streets can find traces
of buildings that came into existence not very long after this
period.
[Illustration: MONT BLANC REFLECTING THE SUNSET GLOW.]
A rare type of steel bridge spans the Seine at Rouen. It consists of a
travelling platform, large enough to take horses and carts, and all
the usual load of a ferry-boat, which is slung from a light framework
connecting two tall lattice steel towers. This curious achievement of
modern engineering and the very tall iron fleche of the cathedral form
the salient features of all distant views of the city.
Some of the peninsulas carved by the vagaries of the river are
entirely given up to forest, and for many miles dark masses of trees
extend to the southern horizon. Dykes hold the river to its course
below Rouen. Before they were built it was impossible for vessels of
20-feet draught to navigate the river except under exceptional
conditions. A notable feature of the lower reaches is the bore which
occurs at every tide and reaches its maximum height of about 8 feet in
the neighbourhood of Caudebec, where enterprising watermen entice the
visitor into their boats to enjoy a natural water-show that quite
eclipses the artificial thrills of the "Earl's Court" order.
Beautiful and historic buildings are thickly strewn along the lowest
reaches of the Seine. The ruined abbey of Jumieges, where Edward the
Confessor was educated, raises its lofty Norman towers high above the
trees at the southern end of a big loop; the monastery of St.
Wandrille, which is now converted into a private house and became the
home of Maeterlinck a few years ago, is in a pretty valley leading
from the river; Caudebec, with its glorious Gothic church and romantic
old streets, stands on the right bank and has a sunny quay, and an
open view across the sparkling waters, the opulent level pastures, and
the belts of forest beyond; Lillebonne is the _Julia Bona_ of Roman
times, and has important remains of a Roman theatre, besides the
castle, in whose great hall--alas! no longer existing--William the
Norman announced to a great gathering of leading men his project of
invading England; Tancarville Castle, with its prominent circular
tower, is reflected in the broadening waters nearer the estuary, where
Harfleur looks across to Honfleur, and both seem to dream of the days
when their great neighbour Le Havre was not.
Being an entirely French river, the Loire has been described first in
this chapter; the Seine followed, being a smaller river, although of
more commercial importance. Its basin, it should be mentioned, is not
entirely French, some of its water being taken from Belgium. Of the
two great rivers of foreign birth the Rhone is of the greater
importance. It has a drainage area of close upon 38,000 square miles,
and is the greatest river of all those that pour their waters directly
into the Mediterranean. Besides this the Rhone is numbered in that
distinguished group composed of the greatest of the rivers of Europe.
More than any of the rivers of France it stands out as a big factor in
history. One thinks of Hannibal with his host and his elephants faced
by the swiftness and breadth of its flow; of the terrible struggle of
the Romans with the Cimbri and Teutones on its banks; of St. Benezet
in the twelfth century copying the methods of the Roman architect of
the Pont du Gard, and accomplishing what had never been done before,
_i.e._ the construction of a stone bridge that could resist the
onslaught of the flood-waters for centuries. Four of the big
elliptical arches still stand, seemingly as strong as the day they
were erected, and above one of the piers rises the little Romanesque
bridge chapel where the body of the good builder was buried.
The source of the Rhone is fitting for such a mighty waterway. It
begins life as a torrent that pours from the foot of the great Rhone
Glacier, 5909 feet above sea-level. It is now ascertained that it is
the glacier itself from under which it emerges which gives birth to
the river, and not the warm springs which issue from the ground at the
point formerly reached by the glacier. Very early on its course
another glacier-fed torrent adds its waters to the Rhone, which foams
and rages through a gorge of typical Alpine grandeur. The exuberance
of its youth is maintained by the torrents that feed its adolescent
stages. It falls more than 3600 feet in less than thirty miles from
its source, joined at frequent intervals by companions born of ice and
snow, such as the Eginen, the Binna, and the Massa, a child of the
Aletsch Glaciers. Below Brieg comes the Saltine, and then follows a
quiet stretch, when the growing river passes through a stretch of
alluvium--a dull period, a first governess, as it were, to a
high-spirited youth--where floods are frequent. Below the old town of
St. Maurice the river is confined within the narrow gorge that
forms the western entrance of the Vallais, and it emerges from this
gateway to Switzerland to flow across the marshy plain that was
formerly the south-eastern end of the Lake of Geneva. Year by year the
debris of the Bernese and the Pennine Alps is washed down by the
tireless waters, and the date is approximately ascertainable when the
lake will have ceased to exist. That will be a sad day for the Rhone,
for it is through the filter-like action of the lake that the river
flows forth freed from its burden of detritus, and Byron's "blue
rushing of the arrowy Rhone" will describe a river whose character has
changed for ever, unless the hand of man erects barriers in its
course, and so introduces periods of artificial repose. But France
to-day does not receive from Switzerland the gift of a river in its
unsullied youth, for not long after it has passed from the lake it is
contaminated by an untutored glacier-bred youth fresh from the Mont
Blanc range, whence it has carried down much solid matter. For a
certain distance the two rivers do not recognise one another, the
waters refusing to mix, but propinquity brings its familiar result and
justifies the copy-book maxim concerning evil companionship.
[Illustration: EVIAN LES BAINS. ON LAKE GENEVA.]
All through the long journey to Lyons the Rhone preserves the
character of an uncivilised mountain-bred river, of small service to
commerce or communication, although it is termed "navigable" from a
point between Le Parc and Pyrimont. It must be said in defence of the
river that the circumstances of its path in life do not tend towards
the restful stability beloved of commerce. No sooner does it enter
France than it is obliged to fight its way through a constricted
channel between the Credo and the Vuache, and gorge succeeds gorge for
the greatest part of the distance between Geneva and Lyons. And who is
there possessing any love for untrammelled nature who does not love
the river's wild moods, its impetuosity, its generosity, and its
reckless enthusiasm. By the time it has reached the great city of
Lyons it has, however, subdued its wild ways, for having come within
sight of the beautiful Saone it passes through the city on a sedately
parallel course, and very soon they are wedded. For the rest of its
life--a distance of 230 miles--the Rhone is a hard-working member of
society, carrying day by day the manufactures of Central France down
to the ancient "middle sea." It was the little time of engagement,
the brief interval before the marriage with the Saone was
consummated, that produced the peninsula whereon the second city of
France was founded, and gave it a situation of the greatest security
in unsettled times. No doubt the Segusiani, who are generally
mentioned as the earliest people to occupy the tongue of land, had had
predecessors on the same spot, but the fogs of prehistoric times
prevent one from knowing much of the settlement before the Roman had
reached the confluence of the rivers. Then the mists roll away, and
one has a vision of Agrippa making it the centre of four great roads;
Augustus is seen giving the city a senate and making it the place of
annual assembly of representatives from the sixty cities of Gallia
Comata. Besides conferring these distinctions, the reign of Augustus
saw the building of temples, aqueducts, and a theatre. In A.D. 59,
during the reign of the half-demented Nero, the city was burnt and
afterwards rebuilt on grander lines. Great buildings succeeded one
another until the two rivers must have reflected as fine a city as
could be found within the Roman Empire. But the unsettled centuries of
the Dark Age of Europe brought successive waves of destructive
invasion to _Lugdunum_, and for evidences of the Roman period of the
city it is necessary to go to the museum, where, however, the
Gallo-Roman objects are numerous and of the greatest importance.
[Illustration: THE CHAPEL ON THE BRIDGE OF ST. BENEZET, AVIGNON.]
Farther down its course the great river's swift-flowing flood has on
its banks the towns of Vienne, Valence, Avignon, Tarascon, and Arles,
all by a curious chance on the left bank, although at Avignon and
Tarascon there are sister towns on the opposite side, and Arles has a
suburb across the water. Vienne and Arles still boast notable Roman
structures, and Orange and Nimes, as well as the Gard, the last
tributary the river receives before entering the period of its dotage
in the Carmargue, preserve vast Roman buildings at no great distance
from the Rhone. It is just possible that the great part this river has
played in the making of France might have received a far less adequate
recognition had these visual tokens of the days of imperial Rome
vanished as did so many others.
In its journey southwards from Lyons the character of the country
traversed by the Rhone undergoes remarkable changes, and after Valence
there is a decidedly southern aspect in the landscapes. The olive
begins to appear, the vine is cultivated on all sides, and dark lines
of cypresses become conspicuous. From Avignon the dusty limestone
country extends across Provence to the sea, and the arid sun-baked
hills terraced here and there for vineyards, the lines of sentinel
cypresses, and the constant presence of the olive are the chief
features of scenery that might be in Turkey, in Asia, or the Holy
Land. And yet this river began life in an Alpine glacier and passed
its middle age in the fertile lands of west-central France. The delta
of the Rhone is a huge triangular area enclosed between the Grand
Rhone and the smaller branch it throws off near Arles. It is called
the Carmargue, and is a flat waste only cultivated at the river sides,
and in certain patches helped by irrigation. Almost treeless in great
portions, and exposed to the fierce mistral that blows its cold Alpine
breath upon the delta whenever the mood arises, it is surprising to
find any towns or villages in the whole district. Yet Aigues Mortes
and St. Gilles, and a few villages, keep alive under the most adverse
conditions. Below Arles, to the east of the river, and extending to
the Etang de Berre, is the stony plain of La Crau, and there too, in
spite of the climatic discomforts and lack of soil, two or three
villages have come into existence along the main road between Arles
and Aix-en-Provence. The Crau is probably more the work of the Durance
than of the Rhone, which has deposited its burden of ice-carried
boulders in the Lake of Geneva for ages, while the Durance in its
comparatively short course from the Maritime Alps has no filtering
vat, and in its periods of flood has forced millions of large stones
down to the Rhone delta, gradually building up a barrier between
itself and the sea, and necessitating a junction with the Rhone just
below Avignon. When the sun beats down on the level waste of stones,
whose depth averages from 30 to 45 feet, such heat is produced that a
mirage is a not uncommon result. Any explanation for such a remarkable
number of stones accumulated in one place was so hard to be found in
early days that it was necessary to resort to the supernatural, and
Strabo records the legend that it was Zeus who bombarded with these
projectiles the Ligurian tribesmen who attacked the early Phoenician
traders and colonisers of the mouth of the Rhone.
[Illustration: CAP MARTIN, NEAR MENTONE.]
The Garonne, the last of the four great rivers of France, is the least
interesting. As already mentioned it is of foreign birth, its
head-waters being in the Maladetta chain of peaks in a Spanish portion
of the Pyrenees, and the river has traversed about 30 miles before it
enters France through the _cluse_ of the Pont du Roi. One of the two
torrents in which the river begins its life plunges into a cavity in
the rock, known as the Trou du Taureau, and does not appear again for
two and a half miles. The Rhone also had formerly a small subterranean
experience in its upper course, but the roof of rock has been
destroyed.
The course of the river is roughly north-westward until it reaches the
formidable plateau of Lannemezan, where it is turned sharply to the
east, carrying with it the waters of the Neste, a considerable stream
fed by the snows of Mont Perdu and its big neighbours. In this part of
its course the scenery is exceedingly fine. Before the snows have
melted off the mountains there are always the pale blue-grey peaks
flecked with sunny patches, and slopes forming a magnificent
background to dark wooded hills full of purples and ambers, and in
spring the more subtle browns turning to yellow and the palest
suspicion of green. Immense views are obtained from the Lannemezan
plateau, the frontier mountain-range stretching away east and west in
a most imposing perspective of white peaks.
On its eastward course the Garonne passes the little town of St.
Gaudens, whose name is derived from a Christian boy who was martyred
in 475 by Euric, king of the Visigoths. St. Martory, the next
town, spans the river with a bridge guarded by a formidable
eighteenth-century gateway which Arthur Young thought could have been
built for no other purpose than to please the eye of travellers. After
this the westward tilt of France begins to assert itself, and the
river works northwards to the city of Toulouse, where it gradually
turns towards the west. Toulouse, while owing much to its river, does
not forget the ill-turns it has received from its mountain-born
waterway, which carried away the suspension bridge of St. Pierre in
1855, and twenty years later, in a disastrous flood, demolished the
bridge of St. Michel and 7000 houses in the Faubourg St. Cyprien,
while about 300 people were drowned. This suburb is on the left bank,
and its situation on the inner side of the curve made by the river as
it passes through the city makes it peculiarly liable to suffer from
floods. The Pont Neuf, occupying a central position, was built about
the middle of the sixteenth century by the sculptor Nicholas
Bachelier, whose arches have proved capable of resisting the angry
moods of the Garonne until the present day. He adorned with his work
many of the churches and mansions of Toulouse.
For the remainder of its course the river keeps to a north-westerly
direction, and passing along the northern edge of the plateau which
diverted its course, it absorbs all the rivers that flow from it.
There is no other town of any consequence until the great port of
Bordeaux is reached. This is not many miles from the mouth of the
Garonne, for when the Dordogne adds its flood to the longer river the
wide tidal estuary called the Gironde has been entered. It is scarcely
fair on the Dordogne to call it a tributary of the Garonne when it
does not join that river until it has entered the broad waterway
common to both, but it is undoubtedly a part of the Garonne system.
With the exception of the town of Bergerac--a place of no importance
and of less interest--the Dordogne has only one other town on its
banks, the little port of Libourne at its mouth where the wines of the
locality are shipped.
The Adour and its important tributary the Gave de Pau figured
conspicuously in Wellington's successful operations against Marshal
Soult in the concluding period of the Peninsular War, and it was
during the siege of Bayonne by Sir John Hope, while the Duke was
following Soult towards Orthez, that the famous bridge of boats was
built across the river below the town. The construction of this bridge
entailed enormous risks in getting the boats across the bar at the
river's mouth, and its successful accomplishment was considered one of
the greatest engineering feats achieved by the British army during
this period.
[Illustration: THE CHATEAU OF CHENONCEAUX.
_From a watercolour by Mr. A. H. Hallam Murray._]