dates, the receding wave will be found in general to follow curves that
lead, like the main features of the land, from the north-east downwards
towards the Atlantic.
[Illustration]
This main character in the geography and history of Spain, the
south-westerly trend of the mountain ridges, largely determined the
fortunes of those fighting bands of mountaineers who ceaselessly pressed
southward until they had wholly driven out the invader and reconstituted
the unity of Europe. It determined the first advance to be, not from the
Pyrenees, but from the Asturias, and the first captain connected with the
Christian resistance after the overwhelming of all that civilization,
_Pelayo_ (from whose blood Leon, Castille, Aragon, and Navarre descend)
had his stronghold, not in the Pyrenees, but a week’s march to the west,
along the Biscayan coast at Cangas. Within the decade of the invasion he
had checked the invader in his own hills at Covadonga.
All the eighth century is full of that successful spirit in the
north-west—but nowhere else. Alfonso, the husband of Pelayo’s daughter,
struck the note with his boast, “No pact with the infidel,” and the
tradition or prophecy that Christendom would regain the south, springs
from him. He conquered down to the Douro, over what is to-day the
mountain frontier of Portugal; he began those long cavalry raids into the
heart of Moorish land. He rode into Astorga, into Zamora, into Segovia
itself—within sight of the central range of the Guadarama: riding back
with booty, harassed and harassing, nowhere permanently fixing himself
save in the towns of the west, upon the Lower Douro, but building on the
ridges of his defence, those block-houses, the “Castille” from which,
long after, the frontier province began to take its name.
All the ninth century that spirit grew. The body of St. James was found
under the Star at Compostella—its shrine became the national sacrament
as it were, a perpetual refreshment for arms, and a symbol, in its
wild isolation among the rocks of Galicia, of the impregnable places
from which the Reconquista drew its ardour. The advance continued. The
frontier counties consolidated and were named.
Leon was permanently held, Burgos was founded. If one takes for a date
the opening years of the tenth century, just after Alfred had saved
England also from the pagan, and just after the Counts of Paris had saved
northern Gaul, there is a full Spanish kingdom standing up against the
Mohammedan power, a king has been crowned in Leon and has died in peace
at Zamora. The cavalry raids have pushed—once at least—to Toledo. All
the north-west lay permanently Christian beyond a line that ran from
the corner of Gaul to the Douro and down the Douro to the sea; and this
united triangle of Roman land formed a base from which the pushing back
of the alien could proceed.
* * * * *
How did this disposition of forces affect the Pyrenees? Let it first
be noted that the newly organized Christian country lay wholly to the
west of the range. In the Pyrenees themselves the Mohammedan flood had
washed every valley. The crest had been traversed and retraversed; both
slopes were for a moment held by the invaders. Abd-ur-Rahman had sent or
led his thousands by the Roman roads of Roncesvalles and Urdos and over
the Ostondo and the lower passes of the west. The mule tracks of these
rocks had been twice crowded with the white cloaks of the Arabs. In the
east, Narbonne was held for fifty years, and with it all the Catalans.
Even in the high centre of the chain, where there is no passing between
the Somport and the Cerdagne, wherever there was something to rob or
to destroy, the invaders had penetrated. There was not here, as in the
Asturias, untouched land.
When the crest of the wave retreated, when the Mohammedan came back
defeated from Gaul, the high valleys attained—it may be guessed—a savage
independence.
Jaca has legends of its battle at the very beginning of the Independence,
before Charlemagne had come to the rescue, and from all the valleys
of the Sobrarbe, bands of men must have been perpetually volunteering
for skirmishes down into the plains. Navarre was the natural leader of
the movement, the largest and the most fertile belt of Christian land,
but the little lordship upon the Aragon, fighting down south and east
towards the Ebro, the western count of the Asturias fighting down south
and west, cut off the advance of the Basques; and though Navarre in the
period of birth and turmoil which is that of Gregory VII’s reform of the
Papacy, of the establishment in England and in Sicily of Norman power,
and of preparation for the Crusade, was the head of all the southern
Pyrenees and called itself an “Empire,” it was blocked by the double
line of advance, and the Basques, upon the foundation of whose tenacity
and courage, as upon a pivot, the Reconquest had proceeded, took little
more part in the wars; but the Basque strip of Navarre gave its first
king to Aragon, and the son of that first king, Sancho, raided so far as
Huesca and was killed beneath its walls; his son again, Peter, took the
town two years later just as the hosts of Europe were gathering for that
first great march upon Jerusalem which threw open the curtain of the
Middle Ages; and _his_ son, Alfonso (who had united in one crown Leon and
Aragon), went forward under his great name of the Batallador, and twenty
years later (1119) swept into Saragossa, the last of the Mohammedan
strongholds in the north.
Thus were the west and the centre of the Spanish slope recovered for our
race and civilization.
Meanwhile Catalonia upon the east had been since Charlemagne, since
the early ninth century, a march of Christendom; but it was not until
the same creative period which had brought forth the leadership of
Navarre and the advance from Aragon, the Normans, Hildebrand, and the
resurrection of Europe, that Catalonia began to go forward. Its first
true monarch was Berenguer the Old, who lived round and about the date
of Hastings, and was first master of the whole province. He also founded
and maintained the Cortes of Barcelona. His son, for a moment, raided
the Balearics, and when he died Catalonia and Aragon, united under one
crown, saw the alien finally driven from these mountains. All the plain
from far beyond the base of the hills was now permanently held by strong
and united kingships which pressed forward to the Ebro valley, and
finally saved all the Spanish province of Europe. A lifetime later, the
last of the foreign armies had been broken at Navas de Tolosa. Far off
in the south Islam lingered, tolerated and on sufferance, but Spain was
reconquered. For just 500 years Spain, a quarter of all that makes up our
civilization, had lain in peril between our religion and the other.
I have said that with the thirteenth century, the Albigensian crusade
upon the north, the destruction of Islam upon the south (the two
successes were contemporaneous), the Pyrenees ceased for ever to be a
march between two civilizations, and became a mere political boundary
between two provinces of Europe; and I have said that the nature of that
boundary was finally fixed in the seventeenth century, or rather during a
period which stretches from the close of the sixteenth to just after the
middle of the seventeenth.
[Illustration: PLAN K.]
If that political boundary be examined to-day it will be found to
coincide with the watershed, save at certain particular points, the
character of which merits examination.
I take for my boundaries, as throughout this book, Mount Urtioga on
the west, and the beginning of the Alberes on the east, which may
conveniently be placed at the Couloum.
In this distance, there is a slight discrepancy between the political
boundary and the watershed here and there in the Basque valleys. Mount
Urtioga itself, though upon the watershed, is entirely in Spain, and the
sources of the torrents which feed the valley of Baigorry all rise a
mile or so beyond the political frontier, which is here composed of two
straight conventional lines.
The head waters of the Nive are wholly in Spain also, as is all the
left bank of that river to a point four miles below Val Carlos. The
right bank, however, is French, so far as the torrent Garratono. Thence
forward from the sources of that torrent (that is, upon the Atheta) the
frontier now follows the watershed, now leaves the very head-springs
of the torrents in Spain until, a few miles further east, it makes a
considerable invasion of Spanish territory, not because the frontier
itself bends, but because the watershed here goes northward in a half
circle. All the upper valley of the Iraty is politically in France;
but from the Pic d’Orhy, where a definite ridge begins, it follows the
frontier strictly for mile after mile (with the exception of a curious
little enclave which gives Spain two or three hundred yards of the
head-waters of the Aspe), and there is no further exception throughout
all the high Pyrenees until one strikes the curious anomaly of the _Val
d’Aran_.
I have said in describing the physical structure of the Pyrenees that
the two main axes of those mountains were joined by a sort of fault, a
serpentine bridge of high land which united them from the Sabouredo to
a point ten miles northward, the Pic de l’Homme overhanging the Pass
of Bonaigo. The valley caught on the French side of this twist is the
Val d’Aran, containing the upper waters of the French river Garonne.
Geographically of course it is French, but politically it is Spanish so
far as a certain gorge where is a bridge called the King’s Bridge, and
where the Garonne pours through a narrow gate of rock into its lower
valley. The story goes that when the Treaty of the Pyrenees was in act
of negotiation someone said diplomatically and casually to the French
negotiators, “The Val d’Aran of course you regard as Spanish,” and
they, knowing no more of these mountains than of the mountains of the
moon, said, “Of course.” The true reason is rather that the gate in the
mountains cuts off this upper valley from the lower gorges of the river
much more than the low, easy, and grassy saddle of the Bonaigo cuts it
off from the Spanish valley of Eneou just to the east of it: and though
the Val d’Aran may be geographically or rather hydrographically French,
it is topographically Spanish, which is as though one were to say that
Almighty God made it so.
Another exception and a big one to the rule that the frontier follows the
watershed, is, of course, to be found in the French Cerdagne. The true
watershed here is coincident with the frontier as far as the Pic de la
Cabanette in latitude 42° 35′ 30″. The watershed then goes on over the
Port de Saldeu, along the crest of the Port d’Embalire to the Pic Nègre,
and there it turns to the east along the ridge across the saddle of which
goes the high road over the Col called Puymorens. It follows that ridge,
_not_ to the summit of the Carlitte, but to a lower peak called the
Madides, three miles to the north-east, runs along two miles of a high
rocky ledge to the Pic de la Madge and then there follows a difficult
sort of hydrographical No Man’s Land, the centre of which is the great
marsh of Pouillouse, nor can you tell exactly where the watershed is for
some miles in the forest below that marsh, for the same damp flat ground
sends water into the valley of the Tet and into the valley of the Segre.
Three miles to the south-west, however, it is clearly defined again in a
low rounded lump of wooded land, it passes over the flat Col de la Perche
and then follows the crest still going south-west up to the Pic d’Eyne,
where again it becomes the frontier, and the frontier it remains until it
reaches the Mediterranean.
From the Pic de la Cabanette, all the way to the Pic d’Eyne, France and
Mazarin politically took in by the Treaty of the Pyrenees a belt to the
south of the watershed and extending down to a conventional line which
left Bourg-Madame French and Puigcerdá Spanish; an exception in this is
a small strip beyond the Pic de la Cabanette, on the left bank of the
Ariège, which, though geographically French, was given to Andorra, so
that Andorra might smuggle more comfortably over the passes.
The causes of this annexation of the French Cerdagne by Mazarin are clear
enough when one remembers that the Roussillon (which is geographically
French) passed to France by the same treaty. There is no way from the
valley of the Ariège into the Roussillon except by going round this
corner of the Cerdagne, at least no practicable carriage way; the
only other way is the difficult and high short cut described later in
this book. If the frontier be carefully noted, it will be seen that
it is designed merely to preserve a right of passage over this road.
Jurisdiction was only claimed by France over the villages, and Llivia,
being a town, stands in an island of Spanish territory in the midst of
the French Cerdagne, as will be seen later when I speak of this district
in detail.
Such is the present political aspect of the Pyrenees, with Toulouse
for their great French town in the plains, 60 miles away to the north,
Saragossa for their great Spanish town in the plains, 100 miles away to
the south, a string of towns just at their feet (Bayonne, Pau, Tarbes,
St. Girons, etc.) on the northern side; on the south a rarer and less
connected group (Pamplona, Huesca, Barbastro, Lerida, etc.); and against
the Mediterranean the district of Gerona, shut in by the Sierra del Cadi
(with its outposts) and the Alberes upon the Spanish side, the town of
Gerona its capital; the Roussillon, with Perpignan for its capital, shut
in between the Alberes and the Corbieres on the French side.
[Illustration]
III
MAPS
One of the first ideas that come to a man when he thinks of wandering
about an unknown bit of country is that it will be more fun if he does
not take a map. There are places of which this is true: you discover for
yourself, and it is more exciting. But it is not true of the Pyrenees.
So little is it true of the Pyrenees that those who have no maps, that
is, the local peasantry, never traverse a country until they know it
well, and when they get into new country learn all they can from its
inhabitants, get themselves accompanied if possible, and keep to a path.
You will find that the hunters who know the mountains are always local
men. The Pyrenees are built in such a fashion and on such a scale that
you not only can, but must, lose yourself in the course of any long
wandering unless you have some sort of guide to your hand. There is only
one kind of travel off the road which you can possibly undertake without
a map, and that will be pottering about one small district with a porter,
a friend, or a mule to carry a tent and plenty of provisions; but if you
are attempting several crossings of the ridges, and especially if you are
attempting such a task on foot, a map is absolutely necessary to you.
Whatever kind of map you take with you into the hills, you must also
take with you a small compass, and that is why I mention that toy later
in talking of equipment. You are perpetually asking yourself, as you
compare the map with the landscape, which peak is which, and it is often
essential to get the right one on the right bearings. Nothing is easier
than to mistake one part of a ridge for another.
If you are in bad weather or in the dark or enclosed, the compass gives
you a general direction, as for instance upon the track I describe later
in the great wood going to Formiguères, and the compass further tells
you at what point your valley begins to turn in a certain direction. Now
a bend of this sort is very often the only indication you have for the
exact place in which to branch off for a port, or to look for a cabane.
Remember the variation, which is on the average for this range about
14 degrees, that is, the true north is 14 degrees to the right of the
direction the needle points to.
A map or maps, then, you must determine to take, and it next remains to
examine what sort of maps are available for the whole range.
There are but three of the greater countries in the whole world (to my
knowledge, at least) which have sufficient and numerous maps, these are
England, France, and Germany. I can imagine what reproach and criticism
such a statement may bring from those who know the admirable work done in
India, and the special but laborious surveys of Italy and of the United
States. But I do say (as far as my travels extend) that maps valuable for
the purposes of a man on foot and covering a whole country are confined
to these three among the greater states. To tell the truth, there is
but one large country that possesses perfect ones, and that is our own.
Nowhere else in the world (to my knowledge, at least) has a complete
survey of every detail of the soil been made, as it has been made under
the Crown of the United Kingdom. And if foreigners judge, as they are apt
to judge, of our cartography by the excellent one-inch scale map alone,
they should remember that we also possess the six-inch, and in some cases
the twenty-five inch to supplement it. Neither France nor Germany can
boast of such a survey.
Now let me abandon this digression and discuss what maps are valuable in
the Pyrenees.
First, upon the Spanish side, there is nothing. Every one who tries to
get a good cartographical indication of the approaches to the Pyrenees
upon the Spanish side is baffled. Outside of my own experience, I have
heard of many attempts and they have all failed. There is indeed a legend
of a wonderful military map in Madrid or elsewhere, but I have never
seen it, nor have I ever seen anyone who has seen it. There is a good
contour map extending outwards from Madrid in various sections, but it
does not get anywhere near the Pyrenees. There is a geological map of
Spain upon which some people fall back in despair, but it tells you very
little about Spain except the geology. It is on an extremely large scale,
1/400,000 if I remember right, and it is horrible to have to use it even
for the most general purposes of travel.
There is a large general map of Spain, drawn in Germany, which is equally
useless for the pedestrian; it comprises the whole country within a space
that could easily be hung over the chimney-piece of a small room.
In a word, there is no map of Spain for the foot traveller upon the
Spanish side. Everything of that kind which exists so far is (I again
qualify the statement by adding “to my knowledge”) of French workmanship.
It is therefore the French maps which the traveller must consider, and I
will detail these in their order with their respective advantages.
It must first be remarked that these maps are to be regarded as official
and unofficial; the official ones should be divided into those proceeding
from the French War Office and those proceeding from the French Home
Office. The importance of this will appear in a moment.
Of the unofficial maps (which are very numerous) the most important by
far is that published and printed by Schrader, and this is important only
because it gives contours (at rather large intervals, it is true) on the
Spanish side as well as upon the French.
The map can be ordered of Messrs. Sifton & Praed, The Map House, St.
James’s Street, and costs (pre-war) twelve shillings for the six sheets.
Its value consists in giving the traveller details of all the difficult
central bit between Sallent and the Encantados. The French contours, as
will immediately appear, are easily obtainable elsewhere; but to know
the Spanish side, the difficulties of the way between Panticosa (for
instance) and Bielsa, Schrader’s map is a great advantage; it is final
on the heights, the steepness, and the changes in direction of the way.
The official maps consist _first_ of the War Office maps, the scale of
which is 1/80,000 and 1/320,000.
The first thing to appreciate with regard to the French maps, is that
all of them, whether from the Home Office or from the War Office (and
in a country such as France the work of these two departments is very
different), are based upon the 1/80,000 survey. It was this survey,
undertaken by the General Staff in the course of the nineteenth century,
which formed the basis of every other map that Frenchmen use. Certain of
its early details were slightly inaccurate, as the heights of the Pelvoux
group in Savoy, which Mr. Whymper, when he climbed those mountains,
corrected. It is, however, the best monument of cartography left by
the nineteenth century. Nothing has since appeared to rival it in any
country upon the same scale. We must except of course the highly detailed
large-scale survey of special districts, which may happen to be, by a
political accident, autonomous and wealthy. Belgium has a far better map,
upon which indeed all modern work upon the Belgian battlefields is based.
Switzerland also has a better map. But no such large area as that of the
French Republic has upon so small a scale (much less than one inch to the
mile), so complete a record of every track, wood, habitation, height, and
watercourse.
The 1/320,000 is merely a reduction of this map; it is of service to
people who motor or bicycle, to anyone who uses the high road, and who
wishes to be able occasionally to wander into by-paths; but for little
local details and difficulties it should not be consulted. It is useful
advice to anyone who desires to know the Pyrenees that he should consult
before leaving home a map of the whole range upon the 1/320,000 scale,
but travel in the hills with the 1/80,000 scale.
The disadvantage, however, of the military map, accurate though it is,
and full of detail though it is, lies in two points inseparable from
the early conditions under which it was produced; the first of these is
the use of one colour, that of printers’ ink, so that the line marking
a stream, a wall, or a path are similar; the second derives from this,
and is the confusion of so many small details, all in _one_ colour and
in black. There are no contour lines. The hatching, though bold, does
not give exact heights, save where such heights are marked in figures,
and what with the lines marking the paths in mountainous districts, the
water-courses, the roads, the marks indicating the rocks, habitations,
etc., the 1/80,000 map tends (though it still remains the best map for a
very careful student, e.g., for a soldier on manœuvres) to be somewhat
crowded and confused.
An appreciation of the demerits of these maps, and perhaps a certain
rivalry between the two departments, led the French Home Office to
undertake an Ordnance Map of its own. This map is in various scales, of
which the sheets showing the Pyrenees—the only ones that concern us—are
in 1/100,000 and 1/200,000. Let me explain the general qualities of both
and the advantages and disadvantages attaching to either of these.
Both are in colours, giving water-courses and lakes in blue, woods
in green, roads in red, etc., and that is an enormous and immediate
simplification upon the old-fashioned black map.
Both are brought up to date with more care than the military map; both
are less crowded with detail, and both indicate such civilian necessities
as the telephone, telegraph, post-office, etc. On the other hand, neither
contains hatching—the only true way of representing a country-side to the
eye—and neither give that minute and exact multiplicity of markings which
it is the boast of the military map to afford. The civil map is more
practical, the military map more full of duty and more accurate.
It must finally be remembered that the scale of the civil maps, even of
1/100,000 is so small as to impede the setting down of details such as
we have on a one-inch Ordnance Map. It is three to four times smaller
superficially than our official map in England. Nevertheless, for reasons
that I shall presently show, it is on the whole the best map to carry in
the Pyrenees.