sharply divided by very narrow gorges into two or more level basins.
These level basins in the smaller valleys and on the high levels where
there is pasturage and no habitation are called “Jasses”; the large and
low ones are called “Plains” or “Plans”; but they are the same in their
essential feature, which is a level floor more or less wide, bounded
by the steep hills upon either side, and ending and beginning with a
rocky gate through which the valley stream cascades. The whole formation
suggests the former existence of great and small lakes, which burst their
way through the gorges at some remote time (as in plan I below).
[Illustration: PLAN I.]
These gorges are very rarely of any length, a point in which the Pyrenees
differ from the Alps. Here and there, especially in the limestone
formations, you do get long and difficult passages. One, the Cacouette
in the Western Pyrenees, in the upper waters of the Gave-de-Mauléon, is
not only very profound but absolutely impassable, like the Black Cañon
of Colorado, but it does not lead from one part of a valley to another.
It occupies the whole of the upper valley; and in general, you will not
find a Pyrenean stream running, as do the Alpine streams, for some miles
between precipices.
Each main valley has a clearly marked mouth where it debouches upon the
plain; by this I do not mean that perfectly flat land comes up to and
meets the hills in every case; on the contrary, at the mouth of most of
these valleys are moraines left by old glaciers, but I mean that the
character and aspect of the hills visibly and immediately changes, and
that each of the valleys has a distinct final “gate” where it meets the
lowlands, just as a river will meet the sea at a definite mouth. Now each
of these openings has its characteristic town. Mauléon, for instance, is
at the mouth of the last Basque valley, Oloron at the mouth of the Val
d’Aspe, Lourdes at the mouth of the valley of Argelès, etc.
Further, these towns at the mouths of the valleys have invariably chosen
for their site, whether they be prehistoric or mediæval, some rock on
which to build a citadel; and in every case a castle is still to be found
holding that rock. Lourdes, Foix, Mauléon are excellent examples of this.
Higher up the valley, the first plain above the mouth will, as a rule,
contain the first mountain town. Thus Argelès lies above Lourdes, Bédous
and Accous above Oloron, Laruns in the first flat of the Val d’Ossau, etc.
According to the length of the valley and the number and size of the
Jasses, there may be one or more such towns enclosed by the mountain
sides; thus in the valley of Lourdes we have Argelès, and above it Luz;
in the valley of Soule we have Tardets above Mauléon, and higher still
we have Licq. But all the valleys, whether they contain one or more of
these upland towns, have, just under the last watershed, a hamlet or
village usually giving its name to the Port or Col—that is _the Pass into
Spain_—above it, and the reason of this is evident enough; habitations
were necessary as a place of departure and arrival for the crossing of
the mountains. Of such are Gavarnie, Urdos, Morens, and the rest. These
high villages have least history, least wealth, and until recently had
the worst communications. For much the greater part of the year they are
lost in snow, and there was an interval between the making of the great
roads and the beginning of modern tourist travel when they were in peril
of destruction. The new great roads drew away wealth and visitors from
all but a very few, and but for the beginning of modern mountaineering
they had hopelessly decayed. Even so famous a place as Gavarnie, the
best known of all the valley heads, was dying in the middle of the
century. There are days now when it is at the other extreme: fine days
in August when, for the crowd of rich people, you might be at Tring or
at some reception of the late Whittaker Wright’s. Even to-day, one or
two of them, however clean or kindly, are odd in the way of poverty. I
have known one where they had no butter and never had had any butter, and
another where I was charged 8_d._ instead of 5_d._ for a bed because it
was the season.
The typical Spanish valley differs, in the centre of the Chain at least,
from the typical French valley. With the exception of Andorra (which
reminds one in all features of the French side; for it has the same
enclosed plain, the same steps and rocky gorges between, the same Jasses,
and the same arrangement of towns and villages) the greater part of the
valleys, whether Catalan or Aragonese, are not only broader and their
streams larger than on the French side, but their arrangement also is
different, most of them lack wide pasturages, nearly all of them lack
enclosed plains, and there has been no motive to penetrate them since the
building of the new roads, for travel upon this road is rare. The Spanish
valley, therefore, often many days’ walking in length, never direct,
and forming a sort of little province to itself, will have towns and
villages scattered in it, haphazard and thinly. Very often a considerable
town will be found at the very end of the valley, as Esterri in that of
the Noguera Pallaresa, or Venasque in that of the Esera. The lateral
communications from one Spanish valley to the next are usually more
difficult than those between the French valleys; for many months they
are impossible, and there is no such general arrangement of towns on the
plain holding the approaches to the valleys as in France, for the reason
that the whole plan of the mountains on the Spanish side is far more
troubled and irregular.
Thus the first town of the Aragon is Jaca; but Jaca is right in the
mountains, and nothing at the outlet of the hills 50 or 60 miles down the
valley makes a head town for Jaca. Jaca is a bishopric on its own. On the
Gallego there is nothing but a succession of villages of which Sallent
right up at the head of the valley is among the largest: it is almost a
little town and so is Biescas close by. The Cinca and the Esera have
indeed a town upon the plains at Barbastro, but the Noguera Ribagorzana
has none, nor has its sister the Noguera Pallaresa, while the Segre has
its bishopric and chief town right up in the highest hills at Urgel, and
there is nothing to compare with that town until you get to Balaguer.
* * * * *
The southern side of the watershed differs greatly in general structure
from the northern, and must be separately recorded.
There are indeed certain accidental similarities. The enclosed valley of
Andorra to the south recalls the enclosed valley of Bédous or Accous to
the north, and the very high first miles of the torrents, just under the
main range, do not differ much whether they are found on the north or on
the south side of the mountain. But the general plan and contour of the
range presents a great contrast on either side. The main feature of the
southern slope is, as I have said, a series of parallel ranges pushing
out like ramparts in front of the main heights. If you follow a French
valley (on the western part of the Pyrenees at least) you will find it
running fairly north and south to the point where it debouches upon the
plain some 20, or 25 miles at most, from the watershed.
A Spanish valley will at first appear to have the same character, but
just when you think you are in sight of the plains (for instance, just
after leaving Canfranc upon the banks of the Upper Aragon) you see—beyond
the first lines of flat country, and barring the view like a great
wall—another high range: in this case the Sierra de la Peña, the ridge of
rock which takes its name from the “Peña-de-Oroel,” a mountain with its
eastern end just above Jaca. Beyond this again you have the San Domingo
ridge, and to the east of it, another running also east and west, the
Sierra de Guara.
Pamplona again is situated at the mouth of a true Pyrenean valley (that
of the Arga), not very different from the valleys to the north. It stands
also on a plain, but immediately in front of it runs another range of
hills, and if you climb these, you find yet another, strictly parallel
and straight, standing before you and masking the approach to the Ebro.
This formation in parallel outliers continues as far east as the Segre
valley, that is for full three-quarters of the length of the Spanish
Pyrenees, and in a sense it continues even further east than the river
Segre; for the Sierra del Cadi, though it joins on to the main ridge
at one point, is essentially an outlier in slope and formation. This
parallel formation sometimes comes quite close to the central range,
as, for instance, in the Colorado peaks close to Sallent and Panticosa,
and the long ridge to the south of Vielsa and El Plan. Indeed the
characteristics of Sobrarbe, as this country-side is called, consist in
these long parallel ridges.
One result of this formation is, as I have said above, that the river
valleys do not run straight, as they do to the north of the range,
but are thrust round at right angles when they come up against these
ridges. Sometimes they will eat their way through a ridge, as do the two
Nogueras, and the Arga itself south of Pamplona; but the greater part of
the rivers on the Spanish side suffer the diversion of which I speak,
and none more than the river Aragon, which gives its name to the whole
central kingdom; for the Aragon, after having run south and straight for
a few miles, like any northern river, suddenly turns westward, and runs
under the foot to Sierra de la Peña for two days’ march. According to its
first direction, it should fall into the Ebro somewhere near Saragossa;
as a fact it does not come in until far above Tudela.
Another result of the formation is that the mountain tangle stretches
much further on the Spanish side than it does upon the French. If you
stand upon the Pass of Salau where the French have made, and the Spanish
are making, a high road, you have before you to the north, at a distance
of less than 10 miles, the railway and a fairly open valley. Fifteen
miles at the most, as the crow flies, you have the main line and the true
lowlands at St. Girons. But if you turn and look out in the opposite
direction over the valley of Esterri and the higher Noguera Pallaresa,
you are looking over 60 miles of mountain land. From the high ridge,
which is your standpoint, to the summit of El-Monsech, which is the final
rampart of the hills beyond the plains of Lerida, is more than 50 miles,
and the slopes of that rampart take you nearly another 10.
A further consequence of this formation is that communications are very
difficult to the south of the Pyrenees. The traveller naturally ascribes
the lack of communications to the character of Spanish government.
It is not wholly due to a moral, but partly to a material cause. The
main Spanish railway from Saragossa to Barcelona may be compared to
the main French railway from Toulouse to Bayonne, but the Spanish side
everywhere suffers from its great wide stretch of wild mountain land.
Toulouse itself is little more than 50 miles from the crest of the
mountains. Saragossa is half as much again. The Spanish Pyrenees push
out civilization, as it were, far from them. Lerida, a large town of the
plains, is quite 60 miles from the watershed in a straight line. Pau
or Tarbes are less than 30. The difficulty and expense with which the
civilization of the plains, and the things belonging to it, must reach
the remote upper Spanish valleys largely account for the curiously high
degree of their isolation from the world. Many thousands of men are born
and die in those high valleys, without ever seeing a wheeled vehicle, and
without knowing the gravest news of the outer world for two or three days
after the towns have known it.
It is not easy in such a system to establish general divisions. We saw
that this was simple enough upon the French side: eight main valleys
to the west of the “fault,” and two large sloping ones on the eastern
limb. In the Spanish Pyrenees, the nearest thing one can get to a
classification is _first_ to group together the Basque valleys of
Navarre, the streams of which all flow down to meet at last near Lumbier
and fall into the Aragon a few miles further south. _Next_ to take the
group of valleys along the mouths of which stands the great Sierra de la
Peña, of which the chief is the ravine of the Upper Aragon. These dales,
which have at their extremities the huge masses of the Garganta and the
Pic d’Anie, form the original stuff of Aragon. These few square miles
were the seat from whence that race proceeded which fought its way down
to the Ebro, and to the sources of the Tagus, and which can claim the
Cid Campeador for its historic type. _Next_ comes the group of valleys
beginning with the Gallego and ending with that of Venasque, which forms
the eastern limb of Aragon, and has borne for many centuries the title
of “Sobrarbe.” _Next_ to consider the two Nogueras as the Western, the
Cerdagne and Andorra as the Eastern Catalonian land.
[Illustration: PLAN J.]
It should be noted that the fine tenacity of Spain in general, and of
these hills in particular, has preserved with exactitude the ancient and
natural divisions of the land. The long unbroken ridge which encloses
the Basque valleys is also the frontier of Navarre. The unity of Aragon
survives in the present administrative division of Jaca. The eastern
valleys are still called the “Sobrarbe,” and the “fault,” or break
between the two main lines of the Pyrenees, still forms an historical
and racial break to the South as to the North of the chain. Beyond it
eastward begins the Catalan language, and the next group to consider are
the great Catalan valleys of the two Nogueras and of the Segre. The two
Nogueras ultimately fall into the Segre, but in the mountain regions
the three form three large parallel valleys, each with a character and
nourishment of its own and all Catalan. Of these three, the Segre is the
most striking; its upper waters are the centre of the flat valley of the
Cerdagne, the only natural passage from the North into Spain, and one of
its earliest tributaries nourishes the Republic of Andorra.
East of the Segre valley, and of the Sierra del Cadi which bounds it, no
classification is possible. It is a labyrinth of little valleys. A flat
welter of hills running down everywhere to the sea, and narrowing at the
extreme end into Cape Cerberus: these last crests, as I have said, take
the name of “Alberes.”
This contrast in structure between the northern and the southern side of
the range runs through many other aspects of the hills beyond structure
alone. We have seen that it affects the type of civilization, leaving the
deep but short French valleys far more open to the culture and influences
of the plains than were the Spanish just over the watershed. There is
much more.
The fall of the light is in itself a contrast. The slopes of the Spanish
mountains, and especially of the high mountains, look right at the
blazing sun. They are more bare of wood, much, than are the French
slopes. They are more burnt. Water is less plentiful. Insects are more
numerous, and there is less cultivation; but one cannot say that there
is, as a rule, a scantier population. Small villages and hamlets are
rarer in the remote gorges, but small towns a little lower down are
common, and apart from the population economically dependent upon summer
tourists in France, it might be doubted whether the Spanish side were
not as well garnished as the French; one might venture to imagine that
in the Dark, and early Middle, Ages, when the full effect of the natural
condition of the mountains could be felt, the population of either side
was sensibly the same.
The highest peaks are upon the Spanish side, but it does not show
splendid isolated masses of rock like the two Pics-du-Midi, or lonely
masses like the Canigou. On the other hand, the general character of the
rocks is more savage and more fantastic, and it is upon the south side
of the range that one most feels creeping over one that sentiment of
unreality or of a spell, which so many travellers in the Pyrenees have
been curious to note. The local names express it upon every side. There
are “The Mouth of Hell,” “The Accursed Mountain,” “The Lost Mountain,”
“The Peak of Hell,” “The Enchanted Hills” or “Encantados,” and hundreds
of other legendary titles that express, as well as do the mountain tunes,
the sense of an unquiet mystery.
* * * * *
The Spanish side is again remarkable for true rivers running in
considerable valleys everywhere east of Navarre. Though the rainfall
is less upon the southern side than upon the northern, yet, because
the catchment areas are broader, the streams running at the bottom of
the Spanish valleys are larger and more important. A glance at the map
will show upon the French side a whole series of parallel river valleys
running down from the summit into the plains to join the Adour or the
Gironde. Armagnac and Béarn are crowded with them. A man going eastward
from Bayonne to Pau, from Pau to Tarbes, from Tarbes to Toulouse, will
cross more than forty streams all spreading out like a fan from the
central axis of the Lannemezan Plain; a man going eastward below the
Spanish foot hills from Melida, let us say through Huesca to Lerida, will
find but half a dozen of such water crossings. Again, you have between
the Soule and the Labourd, between the Val d’Aspe and the Val d’Ossau,
between the Val d’Aure and the Garonne, distances of 8, 10, or at the
most 12 miles, but the distance between neighbouring Spanish valleys (if
we except the near approach of the Gallego and the Aragon), is always
much greater. Between the Noguera and the Segre, for instance, there is
at the nearest point, 20 miles; between the two Nogueras, another 20;
between the last of these two rivers and the Esera, quite 20 more. The
whole Spanish side with the exception of Navarre is thus built up of
considerable valleys, comparable to those of the Tet and the Ariège alone
upon the northern slope.
* * * * *
The details of Pyrenean structure will concern a man travelling on foot
more than do these general lines, though the whole aspect of the range
must be grasped before one can understand its details. The separate peaks
and valleys, the intimate structure of the range is remarkable everywhere
for its abruptness. It is this physical feature in the Pyrenees, coupled
with the absence of snow, which gives them the highly individual
character they bear.
Fantastic outlines are not to be discovered in these hills so frequently
as in the Dolomites, nor are wholly isolated hills common, though such
few as exist are very striking, but for day after day a man wandering
in the Pyrenees sees cliffs more regularly high, a greater succession
of rocks more precipitous, and a more permanent succession of connected
summits above him than in any other European range.
The absence of snow is a further sharp characteristic in the range. The
essential feature of an Alpine landscape is the snow; and it is not only
the essential feature of that landscape to the eye, it is the condition
which controls the lives of those who inhabit, and of those who visit,
the valleys. You can still wander a trifle in Switzerland. Even to-day
I have come to villages where foreigners were still thought comic, and
an ignorance of the German tongue was still thought amazing. But though
you can wander, your wandering is strictly limited. Above a certain line
you can go forward only with technical knowledge and in a special way.
You are upon ice or snow. All climbing in the Alps depends upon this,
and most of travel as well. A man may pass many days for instance in the
upper valley of the Rhone, and then pass many days more in the upper
valley of the Aar, but to go from one to the other he must take one of
two strictly defined paths, unless he is willing to undertake special
work requiring technical knowledge and particular aids. The hills between
the two valleys are not a field for his exploration; they are a great
mass of impassable and unapproachable land, all frozen, and diversified
only by very narrow valleys inhabitable nowhere but at their base. No
one could lose himself for many days upon the Wetterhorn, the Jungfrau,
or the Finsteraarhorn; you can approach these mountains for the glory
of the thing, but they are not a country-side. Now in the Pyrenees
almost all the surface of the mountains, say 250 miles by 60, is at your
disposal. It is this and a local custom of live and let live which make
the pleasure of them inexhaustible; and which, combined with certain
protective methods of their own, make it certain that the Pyrenees will
never be overcome or changed by men. They are too large.
This surface of some 15,000 square miles is diversified in a manner
fairly continuous throughout the chain. The valley floors are given up
to cultivation in their lower part, their upper parts consist of damp
close pastures, and between the two types of level are to be found, as we
shall presently see, sharp gates of rock through which the river saws its
way in a gorge. Above the valley floor, and at the end of it, where the
stream springs out below the watershed (such springs bubbling up suddenly
through the porous rock are called Jeous), steep banks of two, three
and four thousand feet, broken almost invariably here and there into
precipices, forbid the way; and these, in perhaps half their extent, are
covered with enormous woods of beech below (mixed often with oak) and of
pine above.
When you have climbed up these slopes through the forest or over the
naked rock, you come, in the last heights, either to large grassy spaces,
which often sweep right over the summit of a lateral ridge, and sometimes
extend over both sides, even, of the main watershed (as between the Val
d’Aran and Esterri) or else—more commonly—upon a jumble of jagged rocks
and smooth, perpendicular or overhanging slabs, which defend the final
secrets of the range.
The succession of these features is nearly universal. The only places
where they are modified are the two lower ends of the range. There the
rocks sink, the hills are rounded, the precipices disappear in the last
Basque valleys, while the Alberes at the other extremity of the chain
against the Mediterranean are at last mere toothed rocks. All between
(with the exception of the Cerdagne, which is a country to itself) is
built up in successive bands of valley floor, steep forest, or steep
rock, broken with limestone precipices, and finally on the highest ridge
sweeps of grass or jagged edges of stone.
It is this character in the last ridge of the Pyrenees that determines
the nature of a passage over them, and since a passage from valley to
valley is the chief business of the day when one is exploring the range,
I will next describe these crossings, for the method of them is very
different from that of other mountains, and has largely determined the
history and customs of their inhabitants.
In other high mountains you will either find snow above a certain level
and covering for most of the year most of the passes, some of the passes
for all the year, or, as you go further south, you will commonly find
many gaps which long years of weathering have reduced to easy slopes, or
you will find great differences in slope between the one and the other
side of the range; as, for instance, the difference between the long
valleys that lead up eastward into the Californian Sierras, and the sharp
escarpment which falls eastward upon the desert side of those heights.
In all other ranges that I have seen or read of, save the Pyrenees,
there is at least great diversity in the opportunities of crossing,
whether natural or artificial. There is great diversity, as a rule,
in the natural crossings; some are quite easy ascents and descents on
either side (as the Brenner Pass over the Alps); some, though difficult,
are notably lower than the average height of the range (as the Mont
Genèvre from the Durance into Piedmont); some, these more rare, are deep
gorges cleft right through the range (as the Danube gorge through the
Carpathians).
Now it is characteristic of the Pyrenees that in the main part of their
length no such diversities appear, save that there are two kinds of
summit surfaces on the high cols, rock and grass: the grass the rarer.