that it was quite a little detail that might have betrayed us into a
very nasty situation. I knew the Canal Roya, and acting on the strength
of that knowledge, my companion and I decided late one summer evening
not to camp in the valley but to push on over the pass at the head of
it, for immediately beyond this pass we knew to lie the good new modern
high road which leads down to Sallent. The pass was marked on the map
in the clearest possible fashion, the valley was of a very particular
and decisive shape, and the pass lay straight over the end of it. Now
at that end was a sweep of high land, and rising up from it two rocky
peaks. The map and the general trend of the land made it certain that
the pass would go to the right or to the left of the lowest of these two
rocky peaks. There was no difficulty of approach, and one unacquainted
with the Pyrenees might have thought that it mattered little which side
of the peak one took, but we both knew enough about the mountains to be
sure that there was one way and only one way across; smooth and easy as
the approach appeared from our side, all the chances were that somewhere
upon the other side there would be precipices. The sun was getting low,
and the path which we had been following was suddenly obliterated under
a new-fallen mass of scree. Neither of us can to-day ascribe what we did
to anything but luck. We looked at the peak carefully and determined that
a certain little notch upon the _right_ of it, was the port. We were
fatigued after nearly 20 miles of walking (which had already included
one Col) and we wearily began the last ascent. It so happened that as we
painfully toiled up over and round the loose boulders, the surface to
the _left_ of the peak became more and more inviting. Our doubts as we
surveyed it were like the conflict which goes on in daily life between
instinct and reason. Every bit of thought out reasoning put the port at
the little notch on the _right_, but every temptation which could assail
two tired men, made us hope and wish against reason that it lay over the
smooth grass to the _left_; at last in a cowardly and (as it turned out)
salutary moment, we broke for the grass. We tried to persuade ourselves
that if that smooth round sward was a cheat, and betrayed (as such
enticements often betray in the Pyrenees) nasty limestone cliffs on the
further side we still had daylight and strength enough to come down again
and to go up to the rugged notch to which reason and duty pointed. We
reached the grass and there found two things, first, the path which had
been lost on the stones and the scree suddenly reappeared _there_, and
secondly, the descent on the further side towards Sallent was as easy as
walking down an English hill.
The reason of this apparent error in the map we soon discovered. Out of
sight, beyond the Col, was yet another rocky mass, to the left. The scale
of the map was not sufficient to indicate every mass of rock, upon this
ridge, but the map, as a fact, did indicate this peak which had been
hidden from the valley and was unable specially to indicate the other
peak which had been more prominent to us as we walked up from below.
The adventure ended well for we got on to the main road before dark and
to Sallent before nine, having covered in that accidentally successful
day close upon 30 miles. But it might have ended, and should in reason
have ended, very differently. For when we looked at the Sallent side of
the range the next morning we saw that this notch on which we had first
directed ourselves would have led to a perfectly impossible fall of rocks
upon the further side. It would have been equally impossible to have gone
back in the dark. We should have spent the night on a high stony ledge,
without a fire and without shelter and without food, and the next day we
should have had no choice but to come down again into the Canal Roya,
utterly exhausted, certainly without the strength to climb up again by
way of experiment upon other issues, but bound to make our way, if we
could, to Canfranc, miles away down the Aragon Valley. It is not certain
that we should have had the strength to do this. These examples and many
more that one might give, prove the inadvisability of any plan that does
not allow for a wide margin of delay: and, as I have said, a margin of
three days is not too ample.
Not only a misjudgment of topography, to which these hills particularly
lend themselves, may put one into a hole of this sort, but mist may do
it, or worse still, a sprained ankle. Or one may find oneself cut off by
marshy ground, or 20 or 30 feet of sheer cliff, too small for the map
to mark, may take one an hour out of one’s way. In general, allow three
days’ provision for any task, and never plan single days in the Pyrenees
unless you are following a high road.
A second rule is to take the first part of the day slowly and yet without
halting. It is the morning usually that gives you your best chance
upon the heights, and such examples of mist as have endangered any of
my excursions have fallen usually from mid-day onwards. Apart from the
danger of mist, if you break the back of the day by ten or eleven, before
the first meal, you are safe for the end of it; and breaking the back of
the day usually means getting over a port.
A third rule is, stick to the _path_, and if the path seems lost, cast
about for it with as much anxiety as you would for a scent.
I have already said in speaking of the use of maps in the Pyrenees, that
the great advantage of the 1/100,000 map was the clear way in which it
marked the _paths_. The idea of paths does not fit in very well with the
wild life which the Pyrenees promise one as one reads of them at home,
and it is of importance to know what a Pyrenean “Path” is, and why such
tracks are essential to travel in these mountains.
It is perfectly true that if you are going to camp and fish, or
ramble about certain small districts for your pleasure, the point is
unimportant, but if you are making a journey from one place to another,
upon a set itinerary, a very little experience in the mountains will show
you that a “path” must be known and followed, nor do the inhabitants
of these hills, whose experience is based upon so many centuries,
underestimate the value of these slight and _sometimes imperceptible_
tracks. On the contrary, you will hear one of the mountaineers carefully
indicating to some fellow of his, who has not yet made a particular
crossing, how to find and keep the _path_. You do not hear him giving
general indications of scenery, nor distant landmarks, but particular
directions as to how the path may be made out in passages where it is
difficult to trace.
The reason that these tracks are essential to Pyrenean travel lies in
that formation of the hills which I have already often mentioned, a
formation which causes them to be broken everywhere with sharp descents
of rock down which no man can trust himself, and many of which are
overhanging precipices. It also lies in the peculiar complexity of the
tangled ridges so that not even with a good map and a compass can you be
certain of guessing your way from one high valley into another.
Now the interest of these paths is that they are not, as the mention of
them suggests to one unacquainted with these mountains, definite and
continuous. Even the most frequented of them have difficulties of two
kinds. The first difficulty is the crossing and multiplicity of tracks as
one approaches a pasture, the second is the loss of the way over certain
kinds of soil.
Wherever people go to cut wood, or to lead their flocks on to enclosed
fields known to them, a divergent path appears and it is often difficult
to tell the main path from the branch one. Save over very well-known
ports these paths are not made-ways; they are never mended or laid
down, they are but the marks left by travel which is sometimes that of
but one man on foot in a week, and that man shod in soft and yielding
sandals that leave little impress. For many months in the year these
faint traces are covered with snow, and in early summer they are soaked
in the melting of it. No money is voted for them, and if here and there
the crossing a rivulet or the getting past a difficult corner of rock has
been artificially strengthened, this will only be upon the main ways and
usually only near the villages. A Pyrenean path is the vaguest of things:
it is a patch of trodden soil here and there, a few worn surfaces of
rock, then perhaps a long stretch with no indication whatsoever. Yet upon
this chain of faint indications with only occasional lengths marked, your
life depends; and the finding and picking of it up has the same sort of
interest and excitement as the following of a scent or a spoor.
There are three kinds of soil over which the path is almost invariably
lost. The first is swampy land, the second is any broad stretch of clean
grass, the third is scree.
Loss in swampy land is rare, for the simple reason that the path avoids
such land; loss on scree is often made good towards the end of the summer
by the passage of men and animals whose treading down of the loose
stones can be noticed from place to place, but intervals of grass are
most baffling. The native knows where to pick up the track again upon
the further side; the foreigner has no chance but to guess, from the
last direction it took, where he is likely to find it again. He will
almost invariably be wrong, and then he must cast about in circles until
he finds it upon the further side of the pasture, entering a wood or
picking its way between gaps of rock. There is a lacuna of this sort on
the perfectly easy way up the Peyréguet, and it cost me last year three
valuable hours; for easy as the Peyréguet is—and it is little more than
a plain walk—if you get too much to the right of it, there is a slope on
the further side that a goat could not get down.
So much for the importance of _Paths_ in the Pyrenees. It is a point
very difficult to make in print, but one which the reader, if he intend
to walk there, will do well to take on faith. Make the 1/100,000 map
your infallible authority, don’t expect to find on the black line it
gives—especially if it is a dotted line—more than the merest string of
indications, often separated by very wide gaps, and regard the discovery
and continuity of these indications as vital to your safety.
I now turn to equipment.
The first question asked by an Englishman about to attempt fresh journeys
will be what things he must take with him from England. My answer is.
Two things only, his woollen clothing and a pannikin. With regard to
this last, the best form is one which I myself get from the Army and
Navy Stores, and which is of the following character. The handle is
double-hinged, and curved, so that it fits to the outside curve of the
pannikin. A spirit-lamp is sold which just fits into the interior,
and with it, a curved metal receptacle for methylated spirit which
also fits into the interior. The whole is bound together by a strap,
passing through staples upon the sides, and through one upon the cover.
The advantage of carrying this sort of pannikin lies entirely in its
compactness. Weight counts. Every ounce counts when you are knocked out
upon the third day; and the third day—the forty-eighth hour of losing
your way and of missing human succour—may happen to you oftener than you
think.
Weight counts even upon the first day, after the first few miles. Weight
counts all the time. Now it so happens (why, I cannot tell) that when
things are packed in a close compass they weary a man less than when they
are loose and straggling, and there is the further recommendation that
when they are closely packed, there is less chance of knocking them about
and hurting them. So this is the kind of pannikin I recommend. Note, that
the people who know most about these hills, the inhabitants of them,
carry no provision for cooking. But there is a reason for this which
does not apply to the traveller I have in view. The inhabitants of these
valleys walk from a house to a house, with the chance of one night at
most in the mountains; they carry with them, bread, cold meat and wine,
and for the night they make a great fire for warmth but not for cooking.
A person exploring at random, and liable to pass several nights in the
open, must have the chance of getting a warm meal, and that opportunity
will make all the difference if ever he finds himself, as he probably
will very frequently, in a tight place. As to the woollen clothing, no
one needs to hear the merit of that, and nowhere can it be got so good
or so cheap as in England. Everything upon you should be of wool, except
your boots. The differences of temperature are excessive, you are certain
to be frequently wet, you will not have a change; good wool is, moreover,
the substance that will wear least in the rough-and-tumble of your going.
In this connexion I must speak of socks. Those who know most about
marching, wear none, and for marching along roads it is a sound rule
(startling and unusual as that rule may sound) to have the skin of the
human foot up against the animal skin of the boot, that boot being well
soaked in oil and pliable. There is no form of foot covering within the
boot that does not chafe and tear and therefore blister the skin, if
one goes a long way at a time, and for many days of continual tramping
on end. That is the general rule, and in the French service it is
universally recognized in the infantry. Now, to the particular kind of
going which these mountains involve that rule does not apply, because, as
we will see in a moment, boots are not what one commonly wears. You must
therefore take woollen socks—two pairs.
If woollen clothing and the pannikin I have described are to be purchased
in England, where are you to get the rest of your kit, and of what kind
will it be?
You must purchase it in any one of the towns of the foothills, and the
nearer to the mountains you buy it, the better for you, since the further
out you are upon the plains, the more they look upon you, with justice,
as a fool who will buy bad or useless material at too dear a rate, and
lose, waste, or destroy it in a very few days, a mere tourist to be
fleeced. Buy at St. Jean Pied-de-Port, at Tardets (admirable town!),
at Bédous, at Laruns (where the people are hard-hearted), at Argelès
(where they are too used to tourists), or at Ax. Buy, if you can, _in the
fairs_: to these the mountaineers come down to sell their wares and one
can bargain, and as for bargaining, I will tell you the prices of things
as I proceed. But of all things do not put off purchasing till you are
_deep_ in the range. Do not buy south of Ax, for instance, nor north of
Jaca. The materials grow scanty and bad.
The things you will need are four: first you will need a gourd, next
sandals, next a sack, and lastly a blanket.
[Illustration]
As to the gourd. The gourd is the universal vessel used throughout these
mountains, and its use extends from an indefinite distance upon the
Spanish side (where it is universal) to the towns of the plains upon
the French side: to Oloron that is, Mauléon, Foix, St. Girons, and the
rest. It is a leather bottle of an oval shape, made in all sizes from a
quart to a gallon, and this picture represents the structure. It is in
three parts: the oval leather case (_a_), which is made of goat’s skin
with the hair inside; the top (_d_), which is made of goat’s horn, with
a mouth from an inch to half an inch across, and the nozzle (_e_), which
screws on to this top and is pierced by a tiny hole (_g_), through which
one drinks, also made of goat’s horn. There is a fourth part if you will,
the little stopper (_h_), which screws on to the nozzle, and is made of
the same material and tied by a string to the mouth of the gourd for fear
of losing it. On the inner edge of the leather bottle are two leather
loops through which to pass the string, by which the whole thing is
carried over the shoulder.
Remember that the name for this invaluable instrument (one has a right
to call it invaluable, for it saves the lives of men) is _Gourde_ on the
French side, and _Bota_ upon the Spanish. This detail is not unimportant,
for in many French villages they have never heard of a _Bota_, and
certainly in no Spanish villages have they ever heard of a _Gourde_.
It is in this convenience that one carries one’s supply of wine. The
horn nozzle on top (_g_) screws off, the wine is poured into the mouth
(_d_) through a funnel, until the gourd is completely full; one then
screws the top (_g_) on again, and the little stopper (_h_) into that.
When one wants the wine to pour into one’s mouth or into one’s mug, one
screws off no more than the little stopper which protects the hole in the
nozzle. If you can learn the proper way of drinking out of the small hole
pierced in the horn-work, do so. It saves an infinity of delays, and it
is the universal method of drinking throughout the Pyrenees. Here is one
of those practical things in the trade which you can never get by book
learning, and which one can only learn by doing them, nevertheless I will
describe it.
Unscrew the little stopper (_h_) and let it hang by its string; take the
double horn top piece (_d_ and _g_) in the left hand, and grasp with
your right the bottom of the leather bottle; tilt the whole up, squeeze
slightly with your right hand, held high in the air, and let the thin
straight stream of wine from the little hole (_g_) go straight into your
open mouth; then (to paraphrase Talleyrand’s famous phrase to the Maker
of Religions), “if you can possibly manage it,” let it go down without
swallowing; if you swallow you are lost.
For Talleyrand well said to the Maker of Religions, after having
described to him how, to found a religion, he should first suffer
obloquy: how he should be ready to stand alone and the rest of it,
then added, “If you can possibly manage it,” work a few miracles: and
this kind of drinking also seems at first miraculous. But it can be
accomplished; all it needs is faith, and that strength of will which
overcomes the subconscious reactions of the body.
Do not swallow. When you think enough has poured down your throat, do
three things all at the same time: relax the pressure of your right hand,
tilt the gourd that you are holding upright, and put the forefinger of
your left hand smartly down upon the hole in the nozzle. For the first
few hundred times you will spill upon yourself a little wine, but in the
long run you will learn, and you will drink as neatly and as cleanly as
any Basque or Catalan.
If you do not learn to use this instrument thus, you will be compelled
to carry a glass, which is not only difficult but dangerous; and if you
compromise by using the gourd, but pouring the wine into a cup, it would
either take you infinite time through the nozzle, or else you will have
to unscrew the main top piece (_e_) of the gourd, and if you do that too
often it will certainly leak.
These are the elements of the use of the gourd, but, like all things
noble, the gourd has many subtleties besides. For instance, it is
designed by Heaven to prevent any man abusing God’s great gift of wine;
for the goat’s hair inside gives to wine so appalling a taste that a man
will only take of it exactly what is necessary for his needs. This defect
or virtue cannot be wholly avoided, but there is a trick for making it
less violent, a trick advisable with an old gourd, when one is starting
out on one’s journey, and absolutely essential with a new one. This
trick consists of pouring into the gourd somewhat over half a pint of
brandy and shaking it well up and down, and after that carrying it for
a few hours, jolting about and irrigating all the hairy inwards of the
bottle as one goes. But do not imagine that the brandy so used can be
drunk; when you have thus used it for a few hours it must all be poured
away, for it is wholly spoilt. By the way, if you can get an old gourd
second-hand that does not leak, it is far preferable to a new one; all
things really worth having are better old than new. As to the price of a
gourd, you will not get a small one of a quart or two for less than 8 to
10 francs, nor a large one from a quarter to a half gallon or upwards at
less than an extra 3 or 4 francs for every quart. Gourds are not things
to haggle about. Satisfy yourself that it does not leak and be grateful
to get a sound one. It will last you all your life. As to weight, a
gallon is ten pounds: a quart is two pounds and a half.
Further, you will find very often that when your gourd is empty,
especially if you have carried it empty upon a cold and misty morning,
the inside sticks together, and when you try to blow it out through the
mouth (as is advisable, before pouring in the wine), no effort of yours
can swell it; the trick is to put it before a fire and warm it gently;
after it has warmed about ten minutes, it will swell easily.
As to the sack, nothing is more difficult than to advise upon this
matter. Some men to be happy must carry a block, and pencils, and
colours, and brushes. Others cannot live without combs. Nothing is really
necessary besides bread and meat. Each traveller must decide his own
minimum, but I can give advice both as to the shape and the weight of the
sack. The people of the hills, when they carry a sack, carry a light bag
slung by a strap over the shoulder, and for a light weight, up, say, to
seven or eight pounds, that is the most practical equipment: thus what
we call in England a satchel, and what the French call a Havresac does
very well. For anything heavier a knapsack is often advised; but there
are disadvantages in the knapsack: it is complicated, one cannot get at
it without taking it off, and it is hot to the back. If you will be at
the pains of a knapsack, always have one that is watertight in material,
with a large overhanging flap, and never burden yourself with a knapsack
which has outside pockets. The value of a knapsack for heavy carriage
is that the weight of it comes right down on to the build of the body.
Weight is quite a different thing, when it sags, backward or sideways,
from what it is when it presses right down upon the framework of a
man’s bones. That is why all those used to carrying very heavy weights
habitually carry them upon the head or the shoulders, the human body is
built for taking a strain in this way down the length of the bones. Now
if you carry the haversack by a strap over the shoulder, any appreciable
weight, even one so small as ten kilos, becomes a grievous burden after
a short distance. Light weights, under that amount, can be so borne, but
directly _upon_ the shoulders weights up to forty pounds can be carried
without destroying a man’s marching power, and indeed both French and
English armies have often repeatedly climbed the mule tracks of these
very hills carrying such weights in this fashion.
It must, however, be remarked in connexion with the knapsack that it will
not save you fatigue unless the weight bears right down upon the crest of
the shoulder blades, and in order to ensure this, make certain of three
things. First, that the shoulder straps come well down the knapsack, so
that a good part of the weight is above the point where they are sewn
on; secondly, that your knapsack is so packed that the weight is at the
top, that no heavy things sag towards the bottom; and thirdly, that you
have strings or straps going from the shoulder straps in front to a belt
round your middle, whereby you can brace up the knapsack whenever it
begins to lean away backwards. Every soldier knows the difference between
a knapsack fitting close to the back and coming well above the shoulder,
and one that drags away backwards.
To have said so much about the knapsack may mislead some of my readers.
I would not advise it; it is only necessary if for some reason or other
you want to carry weight. If you are wise, and content to take only
the necessary, a haversack slung at the side from the shoulder will do
perfectly well, and it has the advantage of being get-at-able at any
moment. You may balance the weight of it by carrying the gourd slung over
the other shoulder.