L'AIGOUAL
Meteorological station—Battle of the winds—Warnings of
floods—Different aspects of the Aigoual—The Garden of
God—Meyrueis—Bramabiau—Exploration of—Valleraugue—Roman
road—Barre—Limestone cirques—Causse de l'Hospitalet—Florac—Dirty
streets—Mimente—Cassagnas—Fontaine du Pêcher—The
Dourbie—Trèves—Baume de S. Firmin—Prehistoric man—Nant—Source of
the Durzon—Cantobre—S. Veran—Roquesaltes.
The Aigoual is the hinge or knot of the inner range of the Cévennes,
as Mézenc is that of the outer range. On one of its summits sits a
meteorological observatory astride on the ridge of the watershed.
Indeed, so exactly is it so placed, that the rain pouring off the roof
on one side reaches the Mediterranean, whereas that off the other side
goes to replenish the Atlantic.
[Illustration: PEASANT GIRLS OF THE CAUSSES]
The station is admirably calculated for the purpose, as thence can be
watched the atmospheric currents as they sweep from the north or from
the south, and the battle of the winds may be contemplated when the
northern blast rolls back the moisture-laden currents from the south.
This battle of the winds is an interesting phenomenon. Occasionally
it happens that a veil of mist rising from the Mediterranean is
swept forward, obscuring the landscape as it gathers density, and is
propelled by the south-east wind till it reaches the Cévennes. It
gradually becomes thicker and darker, packing in the valleys and then
creeping up the heights. No sooner, however, has it reached the summit
of the chain, than it is caught by the north-west wind and sent back in
flying streamers, like the mare's tails we are accustomed to see in our
skies presaging a change of wind, but with this difference, that these
streamers are viewed from above.
The north wind gathering strength, as though mustering its forces
against the audacious invasion of the southern vapours, rages and
blusters for several days. Meanwhile the south-east wind is still
thrusting forward volumes of vapour and compacting them in the gorges
and valleys, cautiously throwing up a tentacle towards the heights, up
lateral ravines, as though to feel whether the north wind is still on
the alert. Should Boreas slacken his efforts, then the clouds climb
the mountain sides like storming parties and reach the battlements.
But their success is momentary only. The north wind has been dozing,
and awakes to resume the combat. The heavily charged clouds, packed
beyond endurance in the valleys, can make no progress, and the volleys
of ice-cold wind overhead condense the mist and bring about torrential
rains, accompanied by incessant explosions of thunder and lightning.
In a few minutes the granitic or limestone cliffs are seamed with
cascades. The silver thread that meandered through the meadows below is
transformed into a yellow raging torrent, carrying before it masses of
rock torn from the mountain side, trees, the wreckage of enclosures,
houses even with their inhabitants. The rivers hitherto sliding through
rubbly beds, vastly out of proportion to their diminutive size, swell
to the brim and overflow, carrying devastation on every side. As in
the story of Puss in Boots the magician transforms himself into a mouse
at one moment and into an elephant at another, so is it with these
Cevenol rivers—what is a rill to-day is like the Thames to-morrow.
Those in the Observatory on the Aigoual perform a most valuable
service. They can predict the coming of a flood, and they telegraph
to all villages and towns that are menaced, to be on their guard, and
evacuate dwellings on low ground, and remove their cattle to heights.
The inmates of the Observatory have become very weatherwise, and note
many indications of an approaching tempest. One that is infallible in
summer is the conduct of the bees. These shrewd insects, that have
been humming and honey-gathering among the wild thyme, fly to the
Observatory and cling to the panes, darkening them, and remaining
motionless till the atmospheric disturbance is over.
How furious the wind may be, and what a force it exercises on the
Aigoual, may be judged by looking at the refuge of the Touring Club
that is fastened to the rock by chains, like the ropes of a tent.
The Mont Lozère, though higher than the Aigoual, is not so subject to
these veritable tornadoes. There the wind blows almost invariably from
the north. The Cevenol peasant says:
"Se lo nibou bén de l'Oual prén tons bioous et baï o l'oustal.
Se lo nibou bén de Louzero, prén tons bioous et baï o lo rego";
which may be rendered, "If the cloud comes from the Aigoual, take your
oxen and go to the stable. If the cloud comes from the Lozère, take
your oxen and go to the furrow."
The Aigoual is a granitic mass, reaching to 5,140 feet, whereas the Roc
de Malpertus, in the Mont Lozère group, rises to 5,520 feet, but this
latter is far less suitable for meteorologic observation. Around the
Aigoual erosion has formed a labyrinth of gorges and profound valleys,
in the beds of which race torrents impatient to reach lower levels.
From the side of Merueys, the Aigoual does not present by any means
an imposing appearance. It is a domed green mass, on the top of which
gleam white the walls of the Observatory. From the side of La Luzette
it bears some resemblance to a huge antediluvian monster in a crouching
posture with fore paws extended.
On the south side the Aigoual is rugged and abrupt. Its precipices
descend to great depths. The stream of the Claron there in a succession
of falls drops to the depth of 3,000 feet in a very short distance.
The Aigoual has two heads, one of these, La Fayède, looking towards the
sun-bathed basin of the Rhône; the other, that of the Hort Dieu, the
loftiest but the least picturesque. Between these is a coombe, watered
by a thousand springs that ooze from the turf and nourish a rich
vegetation. It is this coombe really which is the Garden of God, as the
natives term it.
On the one side the Aigoual rises out of mulberry and chestnut woods,
torn and precipitous; on the other it is smooth and velvety, wooded
only with distorted beech. It has been ravaged by the merciless axe
of the peasant that has left it bald and desolate. From the summit
a superb view is obtained of the tossed and torn ridges of schist
mountain, some rounded, but furrowed like the face of one very aged,
some starting up into peaks, some stretching out saw-like ridges, some
flat-headed, according to the nature of the rock of which composed. To
the north rises the Tarnon that passes by Florac, below which it enters
the Tarn. A little to the north-east is the Signal de l'Hospitalet,
and beyond Barre des Cévennes. The old Roman road ran over this latter
col to penetrate into the heart of the Cévennes; it kept to the crest,
commanding glorious views.
The Aigoual should be ascended from Meyrueis, a little town half the
population of which is Protestant. Near it, and on the way, is the
Renaissance castle of Roquedols.
Here one passes abruptly from the limestone to the granite, and at once
notes a corresponding difference in the flora. Among the limestone
rocks the pinks show as drops of blood. On the granite are none. The
fields by Roquedols are white with narcissus poeticus, not a flower
of that bulb is in the calcareous fields. The distance from Meyrueis
to the Aigoual is just over nineteen miles, and a carriage should
be taken at least as far as to Camprieu, where Bramabiau demands a
visit. On the top of the Aigoual a dinner and a bed may be obtained
at the Observatory. Bramabiau may also be visited from Le Vigan. The
rivulet of the Bonheur, that descends from the Col de Séyrerède near
the Aigoual, after flowing over granite and schist, encounters a mass
of Dolomitic limestone, through which it has bored a channel for a
distance of 1,200 feet. The tunnel through which it flows is in one
place open to the sky through the falling in of the roof. The name
Bramabiau given to this cavern traversed by a stream is onomatopœic,
and signifies the bellowing of a bull, as the water in time of flood
gives forth angry sounds.
Nothing surprises one more than the apparent inadequacy of the means
to the end attained. The Bonheur is but a small stream, yet the work
it has achieved is tremendous. But it must be borne in mind that where
stands Camprieu was once a lake, the water held back by the barrier of
limestone, and that the accumulated force was brought to bear on the
rock to effect this tunnel of drainage. Moreover, the rock itself was
full of holes like a sponge, with large vaults like huge bubbles in its
interior, so that it was not a solid mass through which the stream had
to bore its way. It was further aided by several springs rising within
the rock, all working in their several courses to effect their escape.
[Illustration: BRAMABIAU]
The exploration of Bramabiau was accomplished in June, 1888, by M.
Martel and his guides. They attempted first to penetrate by the opening
through which the Bonheur leaps into light again, but found that the
gallery consisted of a series of ascents, with cascades and pools;
and although by wading and with ladders they succeeded in reaching
a considerable distance, they could not attain to the point where
the stream begins to dive underground. On the following day these
indefatigable explorers attacked the tunnel from above, where the
Bonheur enters, and were able to descend to the point reached on the
preceding day, and further to pursue their course till they came out
where the stream issues, a distance as the crow flies of a kilometre.
In January, 1888, a man of Camprieu disappeared, and there was reason
to suspect he had committed suicide. As his body could not be found,
it was supposed that he had flung himself down the abyss of the
Bonheur; and, in fact, when M. Martel searched the cavern he found
the body wedged into a spot where, in the cave itself, the stream
disappears underground for a while, to again reappear and continue
its subterranean course. It goes through these vagaries twice, and
perpetrates seven cascades.
"To avoid repetitions," says M. Martel in his account of the
exploration, "I will say no more of the magic of magnesium light
under vaults lofty as Gothic naves; I must only ask of the reader
to figure, if he can in the profound night of these caverns, the
deafening roar of the falling water, the dispersion of the party
groping in all directions for passages, the flicker of the feeble
candles, the distant calls and signals, whistles, and horns, the
cords strained, and the ladders set up against steep walls, our
silhouettes magnified against the walls in shadows, and profiled
against the boiling torrent, all under vaults 150 feet high and at
the extremity of galleries of 300 feet.
"One portion of our course was effected only by a series of
gymnastics, according to the width of the gallery that varied
from three feet to ten feet, according to how far the ledges were
practicable—so we crept along, a few yards above the torrent,
clinging to the rock with our fingers, our breasts against the
wall, or else wading in the water up to our armpits. Often our
candles went out, caused by our rapid movements, or by the rush
of wind that swept through the tunnel; the drip of our soaked
clothes, the difficulty of communication amidst the roar of the
falling water, increased our difficulties tenfold."
Where the Bonheur escapes into daylight there is an immense rift in
the rocks, and out of this the stream leaps in a fall of some dignity.
Up to 1888 it was not thought possible that the Bonheur could be the
stream that issued at Bramabiau, for anything thrown in above never
issued below. But the exploration by M. Martel solved the mystery.
The stream sinks, filters through the rock, leaving above that which
is thrown in, and issues limpid at the cascade that rushes from the
entrance.
The descent of the Aigoual on the side of Valleraugue is by a thousand
steps hewn in granite and schist, and at the bottom of this is the
vegetable garden of the officials of the Observatory.
Valleraugue lies at the bottom of a cirque of mountains at the
confluence of the rivers of the Mallet and the Clareau, and it is after
their marriage that the united streams assume the name of Hérault. The
descent from the Aigoual to Valleraugue occupies two hours, the ascent
by the carriage road takes seven. Valleraugue is a busy factory town;
the population is mainly engaged in silk spinning and weaving. The
place is almost wholly Protestant. This valley of the Hérault as far
as Ganges is one of the most active in silk industry in the Cévennes.
The vegetation is wholly southern; the hillsides disposed in terraces
are planted with vines and mulberries; and ilexes abound, providing
the tanneries with their bark. "This valley," says Ardouin Dumazet,
"is a synthesis of all the somewhat severe graces of the Cevenol
land." The Roman road over l'Hospitalet has been already referred to.
It runs from Avignon to Anduze and then ascends the crest above the
Gardon, and passing under Barre stretches away to Florac. Barre itself
occupies a Gallo-Roman oppidum, of which traces remain, and throughout
the neighbourhood relics of the Roman tenure of the land are found.
After the Col d'Aire de Côte ensues a series of frightful cirques,
whose vertical walls crumble away by degrees under the action of the
weather. The flanks of the mountain are profoundly breached, and form
precipices. The nature of the rock contributes to augment the savagery
of the region. It is composed of schists steeply inclined towards the
north, and penetrated by numerous veins of porphyry that metamorphized
them. Here are needles, here masses of schist support tables of
limestone. A little triangular plateau, a lost islet of the Causse,
succeeds to the schists. This is the Can de l'Hospitalet.
"Here, atmospheric agencies have carved the strangest edifices.
Huge calcareous hats cover and overhang slender schistous
supports, shaped like the tables in a glacier. Many of these
gigantic mushrooms have reeled on their corroded stalks and are
thrown into a sloping position like fallen dolmens. The plateau of
l'Hospitalet is both picturesque and of scientific interest."[12]
Florac hardly comes within the range that I have marked out for
description, and yet some words must be given to it, as it was the
centre of the Cevenol revolt, and was the scene of several conflicts
and of the execution of Camisards.
It is a very dirty place, originally walled; the houses were so crowded
that the streets were contracted to the narrowest possible width. One
has to be careful not to walk down them before eight o'clock in the
morning, as all the slops are thrown from the windows into the street,
and may fall on the head of the incautious passenger; and here no
warning call is given, as in the narrow lanes of old Edinburgh, to put
the man in the street on his guard. What is cast forth remains where it
falls till torrential rains sweep away the accumulated filth of weeks
and even months. In the Languedoc towns that reek with evil odours, in
a country too where the hillsides are redolent with aromatic herbs,
lavender, sage, marjoram, rosemary, beds of violets, thyme in sheets,
one can hardly help repeating the lines of Bishop Heber:
"What though the spicy breezes
Blow sweet o'er Ceylon's isle,
And every prospect pleases,
Yet only man is vile."
But it is not man who is vile, _that_ he is nowhere, it is the refuse
he casts about him that is offensive, and the offensiveness is a
provision of nature to instruct him to remove it beyond the reach of
the nose. But familiarity must breed a liking for these disgusting
odours, or women would not sit on their doorsteps all day working and
chatting, and let their children play about amidst festering garbage.
Florac is, in spite of dragonades and gallows and the stake, almost
entirely Protestant. The large meeting-house contains nothing but
a pulpit and bare benches. The Catholic church is a new and mean
structure, the temple bare as a barn, the church ugly as a modern
French architect can make one.
Florac is near the influx of the Mimente into the Tarnon. The three
valleys of the Mimente, the Tarn, and the Tarnon lead into the
inextricable labyrinth of defiles in which the Camisards were able
to establish their arsenals, hospitals, and storehouses. The Mimente
rises in the mountain of Bougès, whose summit is crowned by the forest
of Altefage, where under three huge beech trees met the murderers of
the Abbé du Chayla. At Cassagnas, a village near the source of the
Mimente, the caverns may be inspected that served the Camisards as
magazines, filled with corn, wine, oil, and above all chestnuts. Roland
had established here a powder factory; the saltpetre was obtained, as
later during the European wars of Bonaparte, from the numerous caverns
that contained the bones of extinct beasts. Drugs were procured for
the wounded from Montpellier, where there were many well-wishers ready
to smuggle them into the mountains. When the water-mills for grinding
the corn were destroyed by the military commander of Languedoc, the
Camisards reverted to the use of querns. In some of the caves whole
flocks and herds were secreted; others were stored with salted meat.
Florac possesses its natural curiosity, the Fontaine du Pêcher, that
discharges the water infiltrated from the plateau of Méjan. It pours
forth in an abundant stream and forms a cascade, but the water is at
once eagerly captured for the purpose of irrigation. During the winter
and after a storm it vomits forth a torrent with a roar like that of a
lion.
After a visit to the summit of the Aigoual it would be well to
descend the Dourbie to Milau, reaching the Dourbie by the ravine of
the Trévesel. The Pas de l'Ase is a profound gorge, 1,200 feet deep,
between fiery-red dolomitic cliffs, in three stages superposed and
separated by slopes of detritus. At midday, when the sun streams down
on these rocks, the effect is dazzling. At Trèves, where are coal
mines, is the cave called the Baume de S. Firmin, and near by the ruins
of a castle.
S. Firmin was the grandson of Tonantius Ferreolus, Prefect of Gaul,
who, as we have seen, was the host of Sidonius Apollinaris. He had a
villa here, Trevido, as the town was then called, and in it he died
in the year 470. Firminus was educated by his uncle Noricus, Bishop
of Uzès, the son of Tonantius, and he in turn became bishop of the
same see, and died at the early age of thirty-seven, in the year 553,
and was succeeded by his nephew, Ferreolus; so that at that time it
is pretty clear bishoprics had become the perquisites of members of
the great families of Gallo-Roman origin. When S. Firmin visited his
grandfather or his father, at Trèves, he was wont to retire to the
cave that bears his name, for reading and devotion. Possibly the
dampness of this grotto may have sowed the seeds of the disorder from
which he died. The cave runs deep into the mountain, and is adorned
with numerous white and graceful stalactites. But it is very damp;
notwithstanding this, prehistoric man occupied it, for in the first two
halls of the grotto have been found old hearths, remains of feasts,
broken and split bones, and fragments of badly burnt pottery.
About ninety feet above the Baume de S. Firmin is another cave
forming a great vault that is filled with water during heavy rains.
Nevertheless man inhabited it at a remote period; for thence also have
been excavated numerous fragments of vessels, which by their paste and
ornamentation show that they belonged to the age of polished stone.
How the men of that period must have suffered from rheumatism! And it
has been noticed that among the bones of prehistoric man, who was a
cave dweller, rheumatic swellings of the joints are common. Usually the
caves in limestone and chalk are tolerably dry. France must have teemed
with peoples at that early period, for not only on the Causse, but
also in the chalk districts of Dordogne and Lot, and in the sandstone
regions of Maine-et-Loire and Vienne, troglodite habitations abound.
After crossing the Col de la Pierre-Plantée, the road winds down into
the valley of the Dourbie, which wriggles along at a great depth below
between rocks of quartz and schist, then passes among chestnut trees,
and reaches S. Jean-du-Bruel, when we are in the valley of the Dourbie.
Here comes in the road from Saudières, where is a station on the line
from Le Vigan to the junction on the main line opposite Roquefort; and
the lower valley of the Dourbie can be visited from Le Vigan by taking
the train to Saudières and a carriage thence to Milau.
Nant, a little town on the left bank of the Dourbie, has a Celtic
name, very descriptive, for Nant signifies a valley or a river bottom.
Nantes in Brittany has the same derivation, as has also Devon in Welsh,
Dyffneint, the county of valleys. So also the Dourbie and the Durzon
proclaim that they were named by Celts, for _dour_ signifies water in
Welsh.
The church of S. Pierre of the twelfth century is all that remains of a
Benedictine abbey; the Romanesque chapel of S. Alban stands on a barren
rock 2,400 feet high. But the great attraction is the source of the
Durzon, as Reclus describes it:—
"A little river issuing from a deep _foux_ some six or seven
kilometres from Nant, near the Mas-de-Pommier, at the bottom of
a cirque where walls, which are those of the Larzac, rise above
the well to the height of 900 feet. There opens a great gulf,
_un dormant qui ne dort pas toujours_. A slight rain on Larzac
agitates it, and it begins to boil languidly in the centre of
the well; but after a long rain, a storm, or the melting of the
snows, the water rises in clashing floods like a cascade turned
upside down; it is no longer a murmuring stream, but a growling
torrent whose voice breaks the austere silence of the cirque."
Still descending the valley, we see perched high up on the right the
curious village of Cantobre, on a point of the Causse Bégon, shaded
by gigantic dolomitic mushrooms, and comprised within the walls of a
ruined castle that was destroyed in 1660, after its owner, Jean de
Fombesse, had been executed as a coiner.
But more curious even than Cantobre is the village of S. Veran,
plastered against the rocks which shoot up into needles. The ravine
opening behind it describes a circus bristling with pinnacles and rocks
scooped out and shaped into the most fantastic forms. The whole is
commanded by an immense wall of limestone on which, and intermingled
with which, are the artificial structures of a castle, the cradle of
the family of Montcalm, whose most illustrious member was the Marquess
who fell on the heights of Abraham, 14th September, 1759, in the
struggle over Quebec, that cost also the life of Wolfe. The inhabitants
of this poor hamlet, in a barren and waste land, are themselves
wretchedly poor. Some one said to one of them: "So, the Montcalms left
this place!" "Aye! and would to God we could leave it too," was the
reply.
Below this is La Roque, whence Roquesaltes may be visited, and the
Rajol, extraordinary groups of rocks little less curious than those
of Montpellier le Vieux, that are also reached from the valley of
the Dourbie. But these I have described elsewhere, and I am not so
garrulous that I care to repeat myself.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] Martel: _Les Cévennes_. Paris, 1891.