THE VOLCANOES OF THE VIVARAIS
Attraction of cohesion—Vals—Aubenas—Factory girls—Anomalies
in the department—View from the terrace—When the volcanoes
ceased to erupt—The castle—The Ornano family—The poisoning of
the Marshal—Attractions of Vals—Intermittent spring—Castle
of Boulogne—The Lestranges—Antraigues—The Count—Cascades—The
Marquesses—Fête of S. Roch—The Coupe d'Aizac—Castle of
Ventadour—Pretended Jewish origin of the family of Levis—Valley
of the Lignon—Jaujac—The Coupe—The Gravenne—Castle of
Pourcheirolles—The Flandrins—Bourzet—Good Friday there—Prismatic
basalt—Montpezat—Le Pal—Huge crater—Suc de Bauzon—Thueyts—Pavé des
Géants—The royal ladder—Mayres—The great eagle—What medieval men
thought about basalt—First discovery of the Vivarais mountains
being volcanoes.
The attraction of cohesion is one of the mightiest and most active
forces in nature. It went towards the formation out of molecules of the
terrestrial globe, it acts in the accumulation of large fortunes in
the hands of millionaires, and it draws together great masses of human
beings to one spot. Even when the heat of summer and the dispersion
of schools scatter them to the north and south, east and west, out
of cities, they draw together and coagulate in knots. But why one of
these centres of concentration should be Vals and not Aubenas is to
me a puzzle. Why when engaging a lodging should one select the cellar
instead of an upper suite of apartments?
[Illustration: THE VIVARAIS CHAIN]
Vals-les-Bains lies in a hole shut in between steep hills, it commands
no view, it trails like an ugly worm along the bank of a petty stream;
whereas Aubenas, hard by, accessible by electric tram, is throned on
a height, sits as a queen on a platform of rock, and commands such a
prospect as is worth going thither from England to see if that were its
only attraction.
Are there good hotels in Vals? So there are in Aubenas. Shops? As
good in both. Electric illumination, telegraph and telephone? Each is
similarly supplied. That which draws a crowd in the season to Vals is
the baths. But the baths are a mere excuse. The fashion has set in and
the crowd follow the fashion.
The river Ardèche, after having ploughed its way through beds of
basaltic lava, runs between the prismatic columns as though sweeping
through a forest of petrified bulrushes. It emerges above Aubenas into
a broad, luxuriant, and well-peopled valley, where white walls smile
and glass windows wink in the sun as far down as the eye can reach, and
as far up the sides of the hills as folk choose to climb to their homes.
Moreover, factories stretch their long roofs below the rock of Aubenas
and throw up their smoke, but without disfigurement to the scene or
vitiation of the limpid air.
Come to Aubenas from the junction at Vogué on a Sunday evening, and you
will see something of merry girl-life. The factory-hands from the lower
country are returning from their homes to resume their work on Monday
morning. They swarm into every carriage, crowding in at every station,
each with a basket in one hand and a sack over the shoulder or under
the arm. All are chattering, laughing; one wiping away a tear either
because she is suffering from toothache or heartache at parting with
her intended. But neither ache is very enduring. Before the train has
gone a thousand mètres, she is laughing and chirping like the rest.
When settled into their seats they open their baskets to show each
other the posies of flowers they are taking to Aubenas to brighten the
poor little attic bedrooms and diffuse through them a fragrance and
memory of home. But the sacks—what do they contain? As I helped some
of the girls to heave these into the carriage and stow them under the
seats or into the shelf above, I could guess from the feel, and see
when the sack mouth gaped and discharged some of its contents. It holds
their factory clothing washed by their mothers—aprons, bibs, and among
them huge loaves of bread and greasy sausages, these latter wrapped
round with a newspaper that has transferred its information reversed on
to the skin of the _saucisson_.
These mill-hands do not wear the pretty scarlet or blue handkerchief
over the head that adorns the Lancashire and Yorkshire factory girl,
the theme of one of our most charming folk-songs.
"Why wear you that kerchief tied over your head?
'Tis the country girls' fashion, kind sir, then she said;
And the fashion young maidens will always be in,
So I wear a blue kerchief tied under the chin.
Why wear a _blue_ kerchief, sweet maiden? I said.
Because the blue colour is not one to fade.
As a sailor's blue jacket who fights for the king,
So's my bonny blue kerchief tied under the chin."
These Vivarais girls wear no costume. There is not much beauty among
them; but their honest faces are good to look on. The glorious southern
sun has penetrated to their hearts and shines back on you from their
merry eyes.
They do not leave the train at the Aubenas station, but go on to the
next, the group of factories at the foot of the hill at the head of the
basin, between the town and the opening of the Valley of Vals.
From the station is a long ascent to the town; there is a gradual
inclined road for carriages, and a short, steep climb for foot
travellers.
Aubenas is, next to Annonay, the most important town in the Vivarais;
neither is the seat of the préfet, nor of the bishop, nor of a
university.
The department of Ardèche has been treated somewhat perversely in this
respect. Its capital is Privas, of difficult access at the extremity of
a branch line served by trains that run forward and back, advance and
retreat again to pick up or to discharge luggage trucks, and that is
ignorant of any other train than an _omnibus_.
The cathedral city is at one end of the department at its extreme
verge, at Viviers, one of the deadest of dead cities, with a population
of three thousand. The lycée is near the other end of the department,
also at its eastern limit, with only a streak of water between it and
Drôme. That is Tournon, which has indeed a population of a little
over five thousand, whereas in Annonay it is seventeen thousand, and
in Aubenas above eight thousand. Moreover, Aubenas is not even a
_chef-lieu d'arrondissement_, which Largentière is, numbering 2,780.
Aubenas stands 930 feet above the sea. You can breathe there; you
stifle at Vals. And what a prospect it commands! To the west the wild
heights of the mountains of the Vivarais, volcanoes that have burst
through the rocks, and flung them aloft in rents that reveal to this
day the agony through which the earth passed when fire and fury broke
forth. To the north the Coiron, a chain of huge lava beds overlying
other rocks, that have given way and left the chain a mighty hacked and
battered saw standing up against the sky. A look at a geological map of
the Vivarais shows the Plutonic deposits extended like the fingers of a
hand or the nerves of a vine-leaf over the mountain tops.
When did these explosions cease? Some of the deposits are of great age,
others are comparatively recent. As we have seen, the bones of men have
been found under the lavas of Mont Denise, near Le Puy. Nothing of this
kind has been so far discovered in the Vivarais, only the skeletons of
the mastodon. But there is historic evidence that leads us to suspect
that the last expiring throe was in A.D. 468. S. Mamertus, Bishop of
Vienne, instituted Rogation processions, and drew up a litany for use
there, because the people were panic-stricken by the earthquakes, by
a glare of light in the sky and the falling of ashes, and by loud
explosions that were heard. The stags, the wolves even, fled from the
Cévennes and took refuge in the towns, laying aside their instinctive
fear of men.
Aubenas was erected about a large castle that was begun in the twelfth
century and completed in the sixteenth by the Ornano family. It
afterwards passed into the possession of the Count of Vogué, who held
it till the Revolution. It has happily not been destroyed, and now
serves as mairie, tribunal of commerce, etc. The façade is imposing,
flanked by round towers and commanded by a square keep. The whole
was roofed with glazed brown and yellow tiles. A portion was ripped
by a storm and has been repaired with green tiles, and the effect is
singular, as if a huge pot of green paint had been spilled over the
roof.
The church, with a vulgar modern west-front, is wholly modernised
within, but without, where not built into houses, shows that the
original church was of the fourteenth century. The buttresses were
round turrets that have been deprived of their tops. In a chapel of the
church is the monument in black marble of the Marshal Ornano, raised by
his wife the Duchess. It was mutilated at the Revolution.
The Ornano family was that of the Sovereign Counts of Corsica,
descended from Ugo Colonna whom Leo III. charged with the expulsion of
the Saracens from that isle. He was invested with the title of Count by
Charlemagne, and he obtained at the same time sovereign rights.
The Genoese, by making themselves masters of Corsica, drove out the
Ornanos, and Sanpietro, who went into the service of France, was
engaged all his life in fighting the Genoese; and he succeeded in
gaining the whole island for France, but Henry II. basely restored it
to the Genoese. His son, Alphonso d'Ornano, born in 1548, died in 1610.
He fought the Genoese like his father, and with equal success, and was
created Marshal of France. His son, Jean Baptiste, was born in 1583,
and died in 1626. He was brought up at the Court and was appointed
governor of Pont-Esprit, and he was there when tidings reached him of
the assassination of Henry IV. He married the Countess of Montlaure, an
heiress. Under De Luynes he was appointed tutor to the Duke of Orléans,
the King's brother, and governor for the King in Normandy. The favour
in which he was held raised him many enemies, and they persuaded Louis
XIII. to withdraw his offices from him, and bid him retire to his
estates. Ornano at once demanded admittance to the young King, and
placed his person at his disposal. Let him be sent to prison, he urged,
for he was resolved not to go back into Languedoc with the stigma of
disgrace upon him. This bold conduct confounded his foes, and satisfied
the King as to his innocence. His former offices were restored to him,
and he was named Marshal of France. But Ornano was a bad courtier. He
refused to go cap in hand and thank Richelieu for his restoration to
honour, and he was so imprudent as to advise the King that he was old
enough no longer to be held in leading-strings. The Cardinal, in alarm,
had him arrested and thrown into the Castle of Vincennes and summarily
poisoned, before any steps could be taken to obtain his release under
the King's hand and seal. The Marshal died at the age of forty-three
without issue, and his sorrowing widow had the magnificent mausoleum
erected to him in the church of Aubenas.
From Aubenas an electric tram conveys one in ten minutes to Vals on
the Volane, a lively spot during the season, dead out of it when the
hotels are shut and the shops containing wares to attract visitors are
closed. The only object of interest in Vals itself is the intermittent
spring on the left bank of the stream. This rises in a paved basin
with no outlet; and springs forth five times during the day. The hours
are not certain, but almost invariably it jets at eleven o'clock or a
few minutes later, sometimes leaping to the height of fifteen feet,
sometimes rising no more than three, and emitting sulphuretted
hydrogen, which phthisic patients inhale eagerly. When the water falls
it is sucked back into the bore.
[Illustration: THE VOLANE VALLEY, BY VALS]
"For the inhabitants of the plains of Gard and the
Bouches-du-Rhône," says Ardouin-Dumazet, "lands roasted by the
sun, without shade or water, the valley of the Volane, with
its growling torrents, its green chestnuts, the freshness of
its slopes, is a little Switzerland. Vals has become to these
exuberant populations what Dieppe and Trouville are to the
Parisian. But it must not be concluded that folk come here only to
be intoxicated with the gas from the springs that rise at every
step under cupolas or from amidst rockwork. I have met here with
many and genuine bathers, who have come to cure their livers and
other internal vessels, by drinking the waters of the spring La
Précieuse or that of Saint Jean. Those of the former are not only
agreeable to the palate, they have also their _clientelle_ which
finds health in this mineralised draught. On tasting this light,
sparkling, pleasant water one has some wish to be a patient so as
to linger at the taps under the shade of the great trees, and to
listen to the murmur of the Volane."
The splendid ruins of the Castle of Boulogne attract a host of visitors
from Vals annually during the season. It is reached by carriage,
quitting the high road from Aubenas to Privas by a branch road from
Auriolles to S. Etienne. The castle was built by a Count of Valentinois
in the eleventh century. It remained in the hands of the Grimaldi,
Counts of Valentinois, to 1344. In 1384 it became the property of the
Lestranges, and they retained it to 1579; when it passed to the de
Hautefort de Lestranges till 1632. After that it shifted proprietors
rapidly. At the Revolution it belonged to Fay-Gerlande till 1794, when
it was sold. The Count, seeing what was coming, disposed of most of
his land to one Blaise Comte on condition that he should every year
present a violet at the castle on the 15th of March. Nevertheless it
was disposed of to a man of S. Etienne, who pulled much of it down
and sold the materials. It was then purchased by the Abbé Volle, curé
of Asperjoc, to rescue it from complete demolition, and he retained
it for thirty years and then disposed of it to the Marquess Theodore
de Lestrange. The magnificent gateway with twisted columns and the
arms of Montlaun was erected by Claude René d'Hautefort de Lestrange,
who brought to him the barony of Privas; he it was who transformed a
feudal stronghold into a sumptuous palace. The façade is sustained on a
structural terrace.
A favourite walk of but an hour above Vals and through the valley of
the Volane leads to Antraigues. The river has worked its laborious
course through masses of basalt and beds of scoria overlying granite
and porphyry. At every step some fresh picture opens or some fresh
object of interest arrests the eye. Here is a precipice over which
leaps a stream in a beautiful fall; there colonnades of prismatic form;
further on masses of scoriæ brought down by the rains from the mountain
side, whose flanks have been bared. The road plunges even deeper into
the ravine that narrows. Then a stream bounds in a double fall over a
basaltic face of rock, the second leap being formed by a ledge entitled
the Devil's Chair, on which His Majesty is said to cool himself in
the water on leaving his heated realms below. Next the Cheese Rock is
reached, a mass of basalt standing by itself, and Antraigues appears
as an eagle's nest perched on a peninsula of crag between three
valleys, those of the Mas, the Bise, and the Volane. The tower of the
church is all that remains of the old fortress of the Marquesses of
Antraigues. The site is savage, amidst green chestnuts, black lava
rocks, and red volcanic cinders. The Marquesses of Antraigues bore an
evil name as robbers, lawless and violent in the extreme, for which
several were executed at Toulouse. The story of the last of those who
owned and for a while occupied the castle forms the theme of Jules
Claretie's _Les Muscadins_.
[Illustration: VALÉE DE LA VOLANE (LE FAUTEUIL DU DIABLE)]
Emmanuel-Louis-Henri de Launez, Comte d'Antraigues, was born at
Villeneuve de Berg, in the Vivarais, in 1755. In 1788 he published a
_Mémoire sur les états généraux_, which attracted attention, as in
it he denounced the hereditary nobility as the greatest scourge with
which heaven could chastise a free people. It is an ill bird that
befouls its own nest, and that the Count was sincere in his attack
on the prerogatives of the aristocracy in France is doubtful judging
by his subsequent conduct. This pamphlet caused him to be elected to
the States-General convoked for the following year. But no sooner
had he taken his seat in the Assembly than he changed his note, and
spoke for the retention of the privileges of his class. This sudden
conversion caused great offence, and he did not long retain his seat.
In consequence of the events of the 5th and 6th October he quitted the
Assembly, and left France in 1790 and went first to Switzerland, then
to Russia, and after that to Vienna. The coalition of princes forgot
his early encouragement of the Revolution and charged him with divers
secret missions, and granted him a pension of 36,000 francs. He became
the chief organiser of various plots to effect a counterrevolution
in France, that "guerre de pots de chambre," as Napoleon called it in
his highly coloured language; and he was at the bottom of the intrigue
that provoked the treason of Pichegru. In 1797 he was in Venice, but
when he saw that the capital of the Adriatic was about to succumb
he fled, but fell into the hands of an outpost of the French army
in Italy, and was arrested with all his papers that contained full
evidence of the conspiracy of Pichegru. However, he managed to escape
by the contrivance of Mme. Sainte-Huberti, who, after having been his
mistress, later became his wife. Then he fled to Russia, where he
joined the Greek Church, was accorded a pension by the Emperor, and was
sent to Dresden as attaché to the Russian Legation. There he published
a pamphlet against Bonaparte so violent and scurrilous, that the Saxon
Government was constrained to expel him so as to avoid a conflict with
France. He departed for London, carrying with him certain documents
containing secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit, of which he had
obtained a copy. He communicated these to the English ministry, and in
return was granted a liberal pension.
He still maintained relations with Paris, and was mixed up in every
plot for the restoration of the Bourbons.
However, it was not given to him to see the realisation of his schemes.
The imperial police had sent two emissaries to London, who managed
to seduce Lorenzo, the Italian valet of the Count, and through him
to obtain notes and despatches which his master was preparing for
transmission to the Cabinet of the Prime Minister. On July 22nd, 1812,
the Count d'Antraigues having expressed his intention to visit the
Prime Minister to obtain his opinion on a certain memoir, Lorenzo,
who had purloined it and committed it to the spies of Napoleon that
they might make a transcript of it, saw that his faithlessness was at
the point of being discovered. Then he resolved on killing his master
and mistress and on blowing out his own brains.
This he did. Such was the version of the story as given in the English
newspapers. The only witness to the murder was the Count's coachman.
The circumstances of the assassination and suicide were never sifted;
the whole matter was hushed up; and it became a matter of mutual
recrimination between the French and English Governments, each casting
on the other the blame of the murder of this miserable man—a man
without a respectable quality.
The name of Antraigues is taken from its position, Inter Aquæ, between
the three streams—the Volane, the Bise, and the Mas.
[Illustration: FALL AT ANTRAIGUES]
On August 16th, the fête of S. Roch, a great pilgrimage is made to
Antraigues, attended by many thousand persons. The neighbouring
villages send their processions with clergy, crosses, and banners
waving. The bells of Antraigues clash merrily. The whole bourg is in
gala costume. At nine o'clock a.m. all the processions unite and form
one long, many-coloured, winding line that creeps up the hill towards
the chapel of S. Roch, hid among chestnut trees. The path is rough,
stony, sun-scorched. At intervals are little shrines constructed of
boughs and adorned with flowers, roses, broom, lavender. In each of
these is a little girl dressed in white with a chaplet on her head,
holding a scroll that bears an inscription in honour of the patron
saint, lavishing on him every possible expression of love and respect.
The procession advances, now murmuring a litany, now breaking into
hymn, and in the rear come the clergy in white, with the blue smoke of
incense rising and spreading in the clear summer air.
On reaching the chapel the pilgrims separate their files to allow the
ecclesiastics to pass. The priest ascends to the altar for Mass, and
the crowd falls into a living stair along the slope of the mountain,
kneeling in ranges, some among the chestnut trees, athwart whose leaves
the sun shoots arrows of fire that make the white caps and the gold
chains of the women flash. The Mass ended, the procession descends in
the same order as that in which it mounted, and disperses. The second
scene is less edifying—it is changed to the cabaret, where the pilgrims
refresh themselves, and the men, in too many cases, carouse.
S. Roch was a native of Montpellier. His story is an ecclesiastical
romance. The earliest biographer states candidly that he found "nothing
trustworthy about him" in record, and so compiled his life from popular
legend. In or about 1350 a squalid-looking man, a beggar, was taken up
by the authorities of Montpellier and cast into gaol, where he died. On
the removal of the body for burial, it was discovered that the vagabond
was Roch, a nephew of the governor of the town, who had embraced a life
of dirt and poverty out of "sheer cussedness." There always have been
and always will be men who, like Falstaff, "have a kind of alacrity in
sinking"; who revolt against the restraints and refinements of social
life, and find their pleasure in living like swine. S. Roch had his
parallel in Bampfylde Moore Carew.
There is nothing edifying in the story, nothing in his career to
justify canonisation. Nevertheless he is in vast repute as a patron
against plague and fever and sores, and he has been given a place in
the Roman martyrology, accepted and held up to be invoked, although
absolutely nothing trustworthy is known of him. Can slackness and
carelessness go further? In fact, the Roman martyrology, possessing the
sanction of the self-entitled Vicar of Christ, is a veritable Noah's
Ark containing clean and unclean beasts.
From Antraigues, a climb of an hour leads to the Coupe d'Aizac, the
best-preserved crater in the Vivarais. M. Paulett Scrope thus describes
it:—
"The Coupe d'Aizac rises on the ridge of one of the granitic
abutments that project from the steep escarpment of the Haut
Vivarais. It has a beautiful crater slightly broken down towards
the north-west, and from the breach a stream of basalt may be seen
to descend the flank of the hill, and turning to the north-east
enter the valley of the river Volane, which has subsequently
cut it entirely across, and discloses three distinct storied
ranges; the lowermost very regularly columnar, that in the middle
less so, and the upper nearly amorphous, cellular, and with a
ragged scoriform surface. This current, which appears originally
to have occupied the bottom of the gorge in an extent of four
miles, from the village of Antraigues nearly to Vals, has been
worn away and carried off on many points by the violence of the
torrent. Its relics adhere in vast masses to the granite rocks on
both sides, sometimes reaching the height of 160 feet above it.
The lower portion of this bed is very beautifully columnar, the
upper obscurely so; this latter has been in parts destroyed, and
a pavement or causeway left, formed by an assemblage of upright
and almost geometrically regular columns fitted together with the
utmost symmetry."
One interesting lesson one learns from the overflow of this crater, and
that is that the prismatic structure of basalt is due to pressure from
above. Except under great superincumbent weight it has not crystallised
regularly.
A beautiful fall in four dives under the bridge of the road to
Genestelle, on the road to Antraigues, irresistibly obliges one with
a camera to take views. But indeed the whole neighbourhood is weeping
these beautiful tears—tears of joy that the fire floods are over.
The valley of the Ardèche above where it falls into the basin of
Aubenas is finer still; it leads into the heart of the noblest volcanic
heights.
At Pont de la Beaume one has the stately tower of the castle of
Ventadour rising from the summit of a rock that commands the road up to
Thueyts (pronounced Two-ets) and that to Jaujac, where the Lignon flows
into the Ardèche.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF VENTADOUR]
The Ventadour family were Levis by origin, and claimed to be
descendants of the tribe of Levi of the seed of Aaron, and therefore
justified in meddling to any extent in ecclesiastical matters. It is
really wonderful what changes can be rung on the name of Levi. It
becomes in England Lewis and Levison, Lowe and Lyons, and Lawson.
But there was absolutely no justification in the Ventadour family
asserting to themselves a Hebraic origin. It is strange how eager these
Levis were to assert a fabulous descent, and how desirous the modern
sons of Levi are to obscure the traces of what is undoubtedly theirs.
The Levis first appear in history in the eleventh century, and derive
their name not from Levi, but from their castle of Levis near
Chevreuse; they became Seigneurs of Mirepoix. Philippe IV. de Levis,
who died in 1440, was the father of Bermond, the ancestor of the
Ventadour branch. He became Baron of La Voute, and was father of Louis,
who married the heiress of the Count of Ventadour. Gilbert III. de
Levis was created Duke of Ventadour and peer of France, the former in
1578, the latter in 1589. The castle was blown up by that determined
wrecker of feudal strongholds, Richelieu, in 1626.
[Illustration: IN THE ARDÈCHE]
At Pont-de-la-Beaume a steep ascent leads to a level road, over a
terrace of lava through which the Lignon has cleft a way from Jaujac,
clean cut as by a knife, with basaltic ranges on both sides. The
mountain forms here are very fine; to the right is the Gravenne de
Soulhiol, rent by a ravine down which flows a thread of silver. On the
left La Tanargue, 4,330 feet, and the rock of Abraham, 4,630 feet,
closing up the scene. The whole when powdered with snow, as I saw it,
of Alpine grandeur.
The Coupe de Jaujac, that sent a flood of lava down the valley of
the Lignon, rises to an insignificant height above the village, and
is easily visited. At the foot of the cone of scoria rises a spring
where picnickers from Vals settle to lunch, and amuse themselves
with smashing there the bottles of wine they have brought with them,
and raising a pile of the fragments. The side of the cone of Jaujac
is indeed so strewn with broken pots of _foie gras_ and battered
sardine-tins, that the volcanic vent conveys the impression of having
been the eruption of a great establishment of grocery and preserves.
The sides of the bowl of the crater are dotted with chestnut trees, so
as somewhat to disguise its character. Volcanic dust and cinder seem to
be peculiarly favourable to the vegetation of the Spanish chestnut.
The village of Jaujac stands on the bed of lava that issued from this
cone, on the edge of a mural precipice, 150 feet high, and is connected
with old Jaujac on the further side by a stone bridge. There are the
scanty remains of a castle in this latter. The château, in close
proximity to the village or town, is now converted into a school.
The Gravenne de Soulhiol also disgorged its lava into the valley of the
Lignon, about three hundred yards above the junction of this river with
the Ardèche.
"A wide and massive plateau of basalt thus formed, after entering
the valley of La Beaume, prolongs itself to some distance below
Neigles, bordering the Ardèche on the south with a bold and
precipitous wall which may be seen to rest on a layer of pebbles,
the ancient bed of the river."
At Pont-de-la-Beaume a road to the right leads up the valley of
Fontollière to the fertile basin of Champagne, at the head of which
stands Montpezat, the foot of the mountain, as its name implies, and
it lies, in fact, under the Gravenne, that has poured its flood of
molten lava into the valley and filled it to a depth of 150 feet. The
Gravenne de Montpezat has a very regular crater dipping slightly to
the north, and it was on this side that the stream of basalt flowed
for a width of half a mile. It reached the point where the Bourges
entered the Fontollière and there stopped, the volcano having exhausted
its efforts. Before reaching Montpezat, the ruins of the Castle of
Pourcheirolles appear in a site truly marvellous, perched on a tongue
of land between the rivers Fontollière and Pourseilles.
[Illustration: CRATER OF LA GRAVENNE]
When the Gravenne had turned the former valley into a lake of molten
stone, and when that lake had chilled, then the watery elements began
their work. The two rivers laboured to fray themselves a course. The
Pourseilles has cut through an upper and amorphous bed of lava, then it
leaps over a lower and very regular bed of prismatic basalt that rests
on softer material, which has been worn away by weather and water so
that the basalt forms a cornice and canopy overhead. Pourcheirolles is
undoubtedly one of the most picturesque points in Ardèche. The castle,
perched as a vultures' lair in the midst of the valley of Montpezat,
suspended between precipices, seems calculated to evade and defy
assault. The castle was, however, erected not by a man of war, but
a man of peace, Cardinal Pierre Flandrin, born on the flanks of the
Mézenc in 1312. He was created Cardinal by Gregory XI., who employed
him in various delicate negotiations. He died in 1378. His tomb was at
Viviers, but was destroyed by the Huguenots. His nephew, Jean Flandrin,
after having been Archbishop of Auch, was created Cardinal by Clement
VII. The choice of the valley of Montpezat for their residence in
summer heats was due to proximity to Avignon, at that time the seat of
the papacy. The castle was never very large, and its importance was due
to its position, not to its walls and towers.
The river Burzet flows into the Fontollière, and a road leads up the
valley to the little town of the same name as the stream. The church,
with nave and side aisles, dates from 1400. When the three bells in the
tower are rung, the tower sways eight inches out of the perpendicular.
A walk of from three to four hours from Burzet leads to the very fine
cascade of Ray-Pic, where the river leaps over a basaltic escarpment
that had been vomited by the volcano of the same name, which filled the
valley of the Burzet to the distance of ten miles. "He who has not seen
Ray-Pic has seen nothing" is a saying among the peasantry.
[Illustration: FALLS OF RUY PIC]
At Burzet, on Good Friday, a procession perambulates the little place,
bearing representations on cars of the scenes of the Passion, much like
that which is famous at Seville, but here on a much smaller scale.
The river of Burzet has not, like other streams, sawn its way through
the basalt, only through the upper uncrystallised portion which it has
carried away, and it slides on its course over a paved bed of the tops
of the prisms, "not unlike the Roman roads in Italy, but arranged with
far greater neatness and accuracy of design." The columns in Lower
Vivarais, says Mr. Scrope, are usually hexahedral, often five-sided;
those of four occur rarely, of seven still more rarely.
But to return to the valley of Montpezat. Of this small town not much
need be said. It is a very ancient place, and was the second stage on
the high road to Gergovia. It contained a temple to Jupiter Olympus,
and a medieval castle of which very little remains. But at Montpezat
quarters must be found for the night, if it be desired to ascend so
as to explore the Vestide du Pal, the most formidable mouth by which
subterranean fires were belched, in all France, and perhaps even in all
Europe.
An excellent road following the course of the Roman highway mounts
here to the miserable village of Le Pal, 3,600 feet above the sea,
where in winter the snow heaps itself up before the raging winds and
buries the houses so that not infrequently a week passes before
the inhabitants see daylight. The Vestide rises above this village
to the height from the sea of 4,220 feet. The name Vestide in patois
signifies a sheltered place, and is applied to the crater itself, the
only sheltered spot thereabouts, and indeed this huge basin is an Eden
to the peasants of Le Pal. The bottom is cultivated, but the sides
are covered with timber. The volcano is remarkable not only for its
enormous proportions, the bottom of the crater being over two miles in
circumference, but also for its alternate dejections of lava, mud, and
cinders. The depth of the crater is 900 feet, and its diameter 5,500
feet.
In the midst of the crater a slight cone has been raised by the
expiring efforts of the volcanic fires. Each eruption has left its
traces written in ineffaceable characters on the slopes of the crater.
Here was one of sand and mud, there one of lava and scoriæ ejected over
the bed of mud. Then again an outpour of lava, and after that another
of mud containing great boulders of granite burnt red and rendered
friable.
"Imagination is roused," says M. A. Mazon, "at the thought of what
must have been the scene when the volcano of la Vestide belched
forth tempests of fire which agitated, upset, and shaped the soil
of the Vivarais. The huge bowl, incessantly active, threw out
showers of cinders into the basins alike of the Rhône and of the
Loire. When winter came with its hurricanes of snow, deluges of
water were precipitated into the furnace, but quenched the fires
for a moment only, and then burst forth in torrents of mud mingled
with steam. It was thus that the walls of the crater were built up
into veritable mountains."[6]
From the foot of the cone issues the source of the Fontollière, strong
enough at ten paces down to turn a mill. Near the Vestide is the little
lake Forraud, not situated in a crater, but formed in a depression of
the surface. Also, near at hand, is the Suc de Bauzon, another volcanic
vent, red-headed, and 4,430 feet high. On the summit is a large stone
table, at which, according to tradition, every year the four Seigneurs
of Montpezat, Roux, Urclades, and S. Cirgues met, and each sat on a
seat in his own territory, as all their lands met in the midst of this
table. There is no crater on this _suc_.
We return again to the valley of the Ardèche and mount to Thueyts,
leaving on the left the pretty little bathing establishment of Neyrac.
The road ascends along the flank of the Petit Gravenne on the left
bank of the river and crosses a bridge thrown over the stream of the
Mordaric, whose waters form the cascade of the Gueule d'Enfer. The
huge basaltic wall now comes into sight that sustains the plateau
of Thueyts, on which the town is built. The river has carved for
itself a channel through this mass of lava and the granite below, and
exhibits a majestic colonnade of basalt 150 feet high, and extending
with few breaks for a mile and a half along the valley. But one of
these breaks forms the Echelle du Roy, a rift due to dislocation of
the flow. To visit the Pavé des Géants, the finest basaltic causeway
in the Vivarais, it is well to descend to the river at the Gueule
d'Enfer, sometimes on basaltic prisms, then on masses of granite. The
columnar basalt now becomes regular; some prisms 60 feet long, others
shorter jointed. The black walls rise like those of a fortress, and the
path follows the base till the Royal Ladder is reached, a staircase
in a natural chimney, where every step is a basaltic prism that has
been broken. The view of the valley from the top of the ladder is of
striking beauty. The ascent is 240 feet.
In Thueyts itself there is not much to be seen of architectural
interest.
Still further up the valley of the Ardèche, by the fine road
constructed by the Estates of Languedoc for communication with Le Puy
as easier than that followed by the Romans by Montpezat, is Mayres in
the bottom of a valley and in a delightful situation surrounded by
mountains. It is the last station before ascending the pass over the
backbone of the Cévennes.
Here flutters and soars a great black eagle, that carries off lambs to
the nest in the rocks of Astel rising over 900 feet from the valley.
It is believed to come from the Alps to spend its breeding season in
the Vivarais, both in these rocks and in those of Abraham, and that it
returns to the Alps in winter. This is not the _Aquila fulva_, which is
common enough, but the _Aquila imperialis_. It soars so high and keeps
so well at a distance from men that the hunters very rarely are able to
kill one.
How greatly one would like to know what the men in medieval days
thought of the volcanic phenomena of Auvergne and the Velay and the
Vivarais. Possibly enough they did not give a thought to them, any more
than does the peasant of to-day. But the baron who built his castle on
the top of a rock compiled of basaltic prisms thick-set as reeds by
a river side, the builders of churches who exploited these naturally
faced columns—did they never ask how these came into existence, what
their origin was? One can understand how they explained the existence
of fossil shells on the mountains—they were relics of the universal
deluge. But these marvellous prisms, as neatly made and put together
as the cells of wax in a honeycomb—did they look at them and not
exercise their minds over them? There is not a particle of evidence
that they did, although there were men of inquiring and eager minds
in all ages. No suspicion that volcanoes had raged and spluttered on
French soil occurred to any man till the year 1751, when Guettard and
Malesherbes arrived at Montélimar on their way to Paris from Italy,
when they halted in amazement at the pavement of the streets composed
of polygonal cubes of basalt. "Why!" exclaimed Guettard, "these are
precisely the same sort of stones we have seen paving the Roman roads
of Rome and Naples—and those came from volcanoes." The two men asked
to be shown the quarries whence these blocks came, and they were taken
to Rochemaure. They turned aside from their direct course, visited
the mountains of Vivarais, but not till they reached Auvergne were
their minds thoroughly convinced. In 1751, that same year, Guettard
published his _Mémoire sur quelques Montagnes de la France qui ont
été des Volcans_. It roused a storm of jeers and objections. A savant
of Clermont even wrote to controvert his thesis, and argued that the
cinders were the remains of forges established by the Romans. But at
Montélimar Guettard and Malesherbes had dined with an Abbé Faujas de
S. Fond, living on the spot. His eyes were unsealed, his interest was
kindled, and he went through the Vivarais and explored the basaltic
beds and the craters. Finally, the works of this man in 1778, and of
de Soulaire in 1870, placed the further existence of volcanoes beyond
possibility of dispute.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] _Voyage aux Pays Volcaniques du Vivarais_, Privas, 1878.