the old track took before the modern road was made, he will agree that
it is a pass which, though steep, had no “edge” to it, so to speak. The
grass would take any kind of traffic. The same is true of course of the
Cerdagne, the only broad valley across the Pyrenees. But the Somport is
well to the west end of the range; the Cerdagne is well to the east end.
All the main part between could take no vehicle, and has crossings of a
kind which I shall presently describe: sharp, the escalade difficult, the
first descent upon the far side, or the last ascent upon the near side,
steep.
There is perhaps an exception to be found in the case of the Bonaigo, but
this pass also presents difficulties to wheels upon its western side, and
in the lower valley at the gorge.
In general the crossings of the Pyrenees everywhere display certain
characters rare or absent in other ranges, which are _first_ that they
are very numerous (a feature due to the absence of snow), _secondly_,
that they are very high, _thirdly_, that they hardly ever involve any
true climbing, and _fourthly_, that they nearly always involve some
considerable care on the part of the wayfarer and are somewhere dangerous
either upon the northern or the southern side.
This can be well illustrated by a particular example in the few miles
between the Pic D’Anéu and the Canal Roya. Here there is a range no part
of which descends much below 2100 metres nor rises much above 2300. There
are two distinct saddles where a man can cross on foot, and neither is
appreciably lower than the peaks of the range, which are but lumps of
rock a little higher than the grassy ridges from which they spring. Any
man knowing the country and with a fairly good head could trust himself
to half a dozen places westward of the two which I have mentioned (which
are called the Col D’Anéu and the Port of Peyreget). Nevertheless the
easiest of them, the Port de Puymaret, easy as it is upon the French
side, gives some pause upon the Spanish. The traveller finds himself,
once over the crest, within a few yards of a rocky edge, beyond which
there is apparently nothing but air, and, thousands of feet beyond,
the precipices of the Negras. If he will approach that rocky edge he
will see that everything below it is easily negotiable, and when he has
once reached the floor of the Spanish valley beneath he will perhaps
wonder why it seemed so difficult from above. In truth it is not really
difficult at all, but the scramble looks dangerous, and it is one which
most men, other than regular climbers, would think twice about when they
first saw it from above. If all this is true of the Peyreget, it is still
more true of the other crossings in its neighbourhood to the right and to
the left.
Were the Pyrenees surmountable at comparatively few passages, these would
have been so thought out and perhaps improved as to make them regular and
well-known passes, which the traveller could easily deal with. It is the
very number of the crossings which add to their difficulties. The people
who live upon either side are indifferent in their choice among so many
difficult passages, and with the exception of one or two quite modern
made roads with which I shall presently deal, there are some hundreds
of Cols and Ports all having in common a character of difficulty, and
few naturally so much more easy than their neighbours as to concentrate
travel upon them.
This feature may be summed up in the expression that the crest of the
Pyrenees is rather one long ridge slightly serrated than (as in the case
of most other ranges) a succession of high mountain groups separated by
low saddles.
Of all the accidents that strike one in connexion with the crossing of
these hills nothing strikes one more than the accident of time. A Port is
always a day and a long day. Here and there quite exceptionally there may
be food and shelter upon either side within six or seven hours one from
the other; but as a rule if you propose to sleep under cover upon either
side, your effort will demand a long summer’s day, and it is best to look
forward to a night camp upon the further side of the range.
Before continuing the description of these passages, or any rules by
which one should be guided in attempting them, it may be well to speak
for a moment of the few practised and conventional tracks.
First of these come, of course, the high roads. At present, over the
frontier, these are but four in number (for the low passes to the east of
the Canigou may be neglected), Roncesvalles, the Somport, the Pourtalet,
and the Cerdagne. Of these the Pourtalet has been but recently opened,
and was just before the war still in process of being widened upon the
French side. Moreover, it is so nearly neighbouring to the Somport (there
is but 8 miles between them), that it hardly affords a true alternative
crossing. A fifth high road across the watershed is that which crosses
it at Porté from the valley of the Ariège into the Cerdagne, but this
road is essentially a lateral one. It lies wholly in French territory, it
joins the French road through the Cerdagne, and you cannot go by it down
the valley of the Segre. It only crosses the watershed on account of an
accidental divergence of this to the south, in the upper valley of the
Ariège.
These four carriage roads are all that lead, at present, over the
political boundary of the Pyrenees. Another is in construction over the
Port of Salau, but it is not finished upon the Spanish side. The French
desire several others to go over by the Macadou, Gavarnie, etc., but
their own preparations are not completed and the Spanish are not even
begun.
Apart, however, from these high roads, which are carefully graded,
possess an excellent surface, and are traversable by any vehicle, there
are a certain number of crossings which travel has rendered familiar,
and whose facility is well known. Thus, the Embalire from the Hospitalet
on the upper Ariège into the upper Segre in Andorra is a perfectly easy
slope of grass, though high. Again, the Bonaigo, though there have been
natural difficulties in the lower valley to be surmounted, and though
there is not even a track across it, is a perfectly easy roll of grassy
land barely 6000 feet high. A high road leads as far as Esterri on the
Spanish side; another goes from France on the northern side, right up the
valley of the Garonne, beyond Biella, to the paths at the very foot of
the pass, so that the gap between the two highways is but a few miles in
length.
The Port de Venasque again, though but a mule track, is constantly
used, and, though steep and high (close upon 8000 feet), presents no
difficulties at all, and is almost a highway between the two countries.
The Port de Gavarnie is similarly constantly used and may be taken like
any other mountain path. Certain other passes form an intermediate
category. They present no difficulties to one who is acquainted with
the neighbourhood, but either the whole path is difficult to trace or
its last and highest portion is dangerous, or there are precipices upon
its lower slope, or in one way and another they cannot be regarded as
constant and regular communications of international travel, though the
inhabitants use them continually. Of such a kind is the Port d’Ourdayte;
of such a kind are the passages from the Aston into Andorra, and of
such a kind are most of the passages just west of the Port de Venasque.
If one applied the test of asking where the Pyrenees could be crossed
in doubtful weather, not half a dozen places could be found beyond the
four high roads; and even if one were to ask in what spots they could
certainly be crossed by a stranger without chance of failure, the number
of passages would prove less than a score. All the rest of the ridge from
the Sierra del Cadi to the Basque mountains is the rocky wall I have
described, with innumerable notches more or less practicable, but all
difficult, and nearly all requiring a detailed knowledge of either slope.
There are one or two other features needing explanation before I close
this introduction to a physical knowledge of the range; thus the reader
should be acquainted with the many groups of lakes and tarns which stand
just under the highest peaks and ridges in groups: they are highly
characteristic of the Pyrenees. There is a cluster of half a dozen at
the western base of the Pic du Midi d’Ossau, another cluster surrounding
the neighbourhood of Panticosa, another in the summit of the Encantados
between the Maladetta group and the valley of the Noguera, another very
famous one well known to fishermen high up in the knot of mountains
whose summit is the Carlitte, and there are many isolated small lakes
which the map discovers. But whether in groups or isolated, one feature
is common to all these lakes of the Pyrenees—first, that none is of any
size; secondly, that all, or very nearly all, are quite in the highest
parts of the hills immediately under the last escarpment; and thirdly, as
a consequence, that it is rare to find a lake which the presence of wood
and the neighbourhood of habitation render suitable for camping.
It is worth remembering that, unlike most mountain systems, the Pyrenees
do not, even in sudden storms, endanger one as a rule by a rapid increase
in size of the torrents; one has not to fear spates so much as one might
imagine from the multiplicity of the streams on the northern side or
the large area of the valleys on the southern. This truth, of course,
must not be exaggerated nor too much advantage taken of it. That part
of a stream which will be just traversable after several fine days may
become just too violent to cross after a few hours of rain, but I have
never seen those sudden changes of level from a rivulet to a considerable
torrent which one may so often see in British mountains, which are common
enough in Scandinavia and even in the Alps, and which are a regular
condition of travel in the Rockies.
Why this should be so it would be difficult to say. The great area of
forest upon the north might account for regularity upon that slope, but
it would not account for it upon the Spanish side. And one would imagine
that snow in large masses, which is lacking in the Pyrenees and present
in the Alps, would rather tend to regulate the flow of rivers; but
whatever be the cause, the evenness of level is what one used to other
ranges will first remark when he has to cross and recross under different
conditions the higher streams of this chain in summer.
There should lastly be noted the absence of any important glaciers, a
feature due to the absence of snow-fields. On the summit of the Cirque de
Gavarnie, on the summits of the Pic d’Enfer and the neighbourhood, on the
summits of the Maladetta group, and in one or two other parts, there are
small glaciers, but they form no general feature in the landscape of the
Pyrenees, and have no effect upon travel.
Lastly, the climate of these mountains should be noted: it is a very
important part of the conditions which determine travel upon them.
The rain-bearing winds blow from the Atlantic eastward, and if the
Pyrenees stood upon either slope equally accessible to the sea, it is
possible that the Spanish side would be the more deeply wooded and the
best watered. The sudden trend westward of the Spanish coast, however,
at the corner of the Bay of Biscay, causes the wet winds from the Ocean
to lose most of their moisture to Galicia and the Asturias, before
they can strike the Pyrenees themselves from the south, while the same
winds, coming around the range from the north, come upon the Pyrenees
immediately after leaving the sea. The result of this is that the French
side is throughout its length more heavily watered than the Spanish
side; but on either side there are three zones which, though not sharply
distinguishable one from the other, are sufficiently remarkable.
The first is that of heavy rains, and, what is more important for
purposes of travel, of continuous rain and frequent mist. It stretches
all along the western end of the range, and only begins perceptibly to
change with the heights of the Pic d’Anie and the precipitous barrier
of the upper valley of the Aspe. West of this line—that is, in all the
Basque-speaking country—you have deep pastures upon either side of the
range, and all the marks of the damp in the timber and the mode of
building, the vegetable growth and the animals of the place. Snow falls
later here than in the other parts of the Pyrenees, for the double reason
that the neighbourhood of the sea makes the climate milder and that the
hills are less high. In most places, for instance, communication is not
cut off between the north and south valleys of the Basques, and men can
usually cross from Ste. Engrace to Isaba at all seasons.
The next zone (the eastern frontier of which is very vague) may be said
to stretch, according to the year and the accident of weather, certainly
as far as the Catalans and the valley of the Noguera on the east, and
sometimes as far as the valley of the Segre itself. In all this central
part of the range (which may normally be said to include more than half
its length) the French or northern side is densely wooded and heavily
watered, the Spanish side more dry and bare; but even the French side
slowly shows a change of climate as one goes eastward, the forests remain
as dense, the rivers as full, but the days are certainly finer and mist
less frequent. On the Spanish side the change as one goes eastward is
less striking, because the whole climate is drier. It is to be remarked
that if mist gathers upon the northern side of the hills when one is
attempting a pass, one may fairly count upon its disappearance upon the
Spanish side in this section; and, in general, the whole of the southern
slope, from the valley of the Aragon to that of the Noguera, is of a dry
and equal nature, somewhat barren and burnt, not only from the lack of
moisture, but also from exposure to the sun.
The lack of moisture on the central Spanish slope, by the way, is not a
little aided by the curious formation of the frontier of Navarre, and
the separation between the Basques and the Aragonese; this consists in a
long ridge of high land, the upper part of which is known as the Sierra
Longa, which runs south and a little west from the Pic d’Anie. The effect
of this lack of moisture and excess of heat upon the central Spanish
side is not only felt on the heights of the mountain, but also and more
particularly when one approaches the Plains. These in France are northern
in type, full of greenery, and amply watered. In Spain, on the contrary,
they are quite arid, and if one comes in to Huesca by train upon a
September evening, and looks out the next morning over the flats that
run up to the Sierra de Guara, one has all the impressions of a desert,
though these lands are heavy corn-bearing lands in the summer.
Finally, the third, or eastern, section of the hills is Mediterranean
in character throughout. The Canigou is much more heavily watered than
the Sierra del Cadi, its corresponding Spanish height. But the olives
on the lower slopes, the carpet of vineyards on the flats, the presence
everywhere of bright insects, the quality of the light and the aridity
of everything which does not happen to be planted with trees, give to
this eastern corner of the Pyrenees the same aspect that you may notice
on the Mediterranean hills of Southern France, Liguria, or Algeria or
the Balearic Islands, for all these landscapes are of one kind, and
binding them all together is not only their burnt red look, but also that
tideless intense blue of the Mediterranean, the hot white towns, and
everywhere the lateen sail upon the coasts.
These differences of climate also determine the seasons in which the
mountains may best be visited, for the Basque district is at your service
(especially in its western part) from the spring to the late autumn of
the year; the central valleys can be everywhere travelled in only from
late June to mid-September; the eastern end, again, from the Segre and
beyond it, is open to you from spring to autumn.
[Illustration]
II
THE POLITICAL CHARACTER OF THE PYRENEES
[Illustration]
The Political character of the Pyrenees corresponds to the Physical
character which has been described. The high crest is the bond and
division, from the beginning, between two societies which are connected
by such common social habits as mountains impose—which therefore fall
under similar local customs, which have a common jealousy of the
civilized power on the plains below them, and which support each other
in a tacit way against the stranger, yet which, from the beginning, have
different governments and (especially in the high central part) deal with
different corporate traditions—to the north the Béarnese, to the south
Aragon. The easier passes to the west and the east of the chain permit a
more or less homogeneous community to straddle across either end of the
mountains, and to hold upon both slopes the sea roads that pass along the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The people thus astraddle of the eastern
end have come to be called the _Catalans_. That astraddle of the western,
a highly distinct group of men with language, traditions, and physical
characteristics wholly their own, has always been known by some title
closely resembling their modern name of _Basques_.
The foundation, therefore, upon which Pyrenean History is built, or
(to use another metaphor), the germ from which it has developed and
which explains its course, is a tripartite division of the inhabitants,
corresponding, as I shall presently show, to the physical features of the
chain: an eastern or Catalan, a western or Basque, and a central group
whose characteristic it is to subdivide according to the deep valleys
into which it is separated, but which falls into two main societies, the
one north of the chain which becomes the group of French counties whose
typical government is Béarn, the other south of the chain, which assumes
at last for its title “The Kingdom of Aragon.”
The first matter to be noticed with regard to this tripartite division is
the exactitude of its boundaries. One might imagine that the language,
the habits, and the clear characteristics of any group would merge easily
into those of its neighbours upon either side. This is not the case. The
Basque type—much the most particular—ceases abruptly upon the watershed
between the Gave d’Oloron and the Gave d’Aspe to the north of the range,
upon the watershed between the Veral and the Esca to the south of it. The
Catalans, with a dialect, mind, and dress wholly their own, are found
to the _north_ from the sea up to the Col de Puymorens, and everywhere
east of the Carlitte mountains; in the Ariège valley and just over these
heights, and on the further side of that Col, they are changed. To the
_south_ of the range they extend everywhere from the sea to the valley
of the Ribagorza. Cross westward from that Catalan valley to the Esera.
There, after hours of scrambling, down by the rocks and deserted tarns,
you may towards evening find a man; that man will show the slow gestures,
the silence, and the elaborate courtesy of Aragon.
The mountain ridges which divide these various peoples are sufficient
to mark their boundaries; but they do not suffice to explain why the
Catalan, the Basque, the Aragonese, the Béarnais should cease suddenly
here or there. True, the high lateral ridges which are so striking a
peculiarity of the Pyrenees form barriers with difficulty passed, but
these barriers are found just as high and just as precipitous and savage
between two valleys of the same speech and nation as between two of
different allegiance. Thus the wild jumble of mountains, “the Enchanted
Range,” cuts off the Catalans of Esterri from the Catalans of the
Ribagorzana. To pass them is something of a feat for anyone not of these
hills—for much of the year they are closed to the native inhabitants.
Their passage is hardly more of a task or more precipitous than the
passage from Aragonese Venasque to Aragonese Bielsa, or from Béarnais
Gabas, in the Val d’Ossau, to Béarnais Urdos, in the Val d’Aspe.
An explanation of the unity which rules over each group, Basque, Central
and Catalan, can only be given by referring each to the plains at the
mouths of the valleys. It is the towns at the entry of these plains
that form the markets and rallying places of the mountaineers and that
determine their groupings. Oloron is the link between the two Béarnais
valleys I have mentioned. Urgel binds Catalan Andorra to Catalan
Esterri. Why, however, the groups should lie exactly where they do it
is impossible to determine, for no records reach beyond the Romans. All
we can say is that the Pic d’Anie, the first high peak eastward from
the Mediterranean, forms the boundary stone of the Basques, as it does
the chief physical mark dividing the high central ridge from the easier
western passes; that the tangle of difficult and impossible peaks just
eastward of the Maladetta are the boundary of Catalan south of the range,
the similar but less abrupt tangle of the Carlitte, their boundary upon
the north. How these nations arose, whence they wandered, whether their
differentiation has arisen upon the spot out of an earlier homogeneity or
is due to the conflict of invaders—of all this we know nothing.
The place names of the Pyrenees, like those of all Spain, and half
Gascony, do indeed afford a curious speculation which arises from the
high proportion of names that are certainly _Basque_, though out of
Basque territory. Of this language I shall write later: for my present
purpose the point I would desire the reader to note is the sharp contrast
which exists between that idiom and the idioms around it. There is no
mistaking a Basque word, and yet these are found in all the Pyrenean
range and to the north and south of them in a hundred place names,
attached to hills, rivers and towns where Basque has been unknown
throughout all recorded history. It is even plausibly suggested that the
Latin “Vascones,” the French “Gascon” is equivalent to “Basque,” and
the late Mr. York Powell, the Regius Professor of History at Oxford,
would say in speaking upon this matter that “Gascon was Latin spoken
by Basques.” He possessed that type of education, rare or unknown
in our universities, which made him capable of individual judgment
in departments of living knowledge where his colleagues could but
repeat words taught them from a book. This quality reposed upon a wide
acquaintance with all matters of European interest. His diverse reading
and considerable travel enabled him to balance human evidence in a way
hopeless to his less fortunate neighbours in the University, and his
conclusion on this important detail of history has always recurred to
me when I have examined some new point in the early history of these
mountains. There must, however, be set against the general conclusion
that the Basques are the remnant of a people once universal from the
Garonne to the Pyrenees, and throughout the Iberian Peninsula, the fact
that they present a marked physical type utterly distinct from others
upon every side. That a race of such a character, vigorous, attached to
the soil, in no way nomadic, should have abandoned a large territory is
difficult to believe; moreover, there is no case in all the recorded
history of Western Europe of one people ousting another, and the process
is manifestly physically impossible, save among nomads. Jews or Arabs
could propagate and even believe such a theory. To Europeans it is
laughable: the peasants and cities of Europe never have been, nor ever
can be, largely displaced.
All we know is that these place names exist throughout Spain and all
over the Pyrenees, and that the million or so who speak the language
whence such names are derived now occupy a tiny corner only of the vast
territory over which those names are spread. The rest is guesswork.