of it, we have seen to be called the Soule. It is also Basque, though
it is Basque spoken with a different accent, and with certain verbal
differences as well. The way from one to the other lies through wilder
and more likely land for camping than is to be found in Baztan, Baigorry,
or Roncesvalles. It is a good plan, if one has the leisure, to approach
the Soule on foot by way of St. Jean, though the more ordinary way is to
go round through the plains by train to Mauléon (which is the capital of
the Soule).
If one goes on foot directly across from the Labourd into the Soule, he
strikes that valley in its higher reaches, and well above Mauléon.
The shortest line, if one does not mind sleeping in a mountain village,
is to take the high road from St. Jean Pied-de-Port to Lecumberry, and
to follow that way up the valley of the Laurhibar until the high road
comes to an end. It did so abruptly two miles or so beyond Laurhibar,
some years ago, but as it is being continued, one may follow it every
year further up the dale. The high road ends (or ended) about 10 miles
from St. Jean; and Lecumberry is the last _village_ still, however far
the road may have progressed up the valley. When the road ceases one must
continue up the valley by a path on the left bank of the stream. One
soon finds on this left bank a series of precipitous cliffs; one must
there cross over to the path upon the right bank. It is also possible to
keep to the right bank all the way—there is a track on either side—but
I speak of the usual way. Henceforward the path remains quite clear and
runs close alongside the stream, with steep cliffs upon the further
shore, until, in the last mile or two, before the head of the valley,
one enters a wood, and it is here that, if you are not very careful, you
will lose your way. The contours are complicated, the valleys numerous,
and the alternation of wood and open land most confusing. But if you will
go _due east_ by your compass from the point where you entered the wood
(abandoning the path where it crosses the stream and goes over to the
south), and if you will remember always to turn any precipice or ledge of
rock by descending to the _left_ of it, and always to _descend_ after you
have made the first high open space, you will come upon a clear track not
quite three miles from the point where the path enters the wood.
It sounds but a vague indication, but it is a sufficient one, because bad
precipices prevent you from going too much to the right, and the natural
tendency of man to go downhill when he can will prevent you from going
up on to the ledge upon your left. You will find yourself shepherded—if
you always go as due east as is possible, and always turn a ledge of rock
to the _left_—into a track which runs all along the high lands above the
slopes that dominate the Brook Aphours; a little way down, that track
falls into a high road, and a few miles further the road reaches Tardets,
the central town in the valley of the Soule, half-way between Mauléon and
the highest summits. The whole journey from St. Jean thus described is
a big distance, nearer 40 miles than 30, with windings all the way, and
you must be prepared if you become fatigued or have bad luck with your
weather, either to camp out in the woods at the summit of the pass, or to
sleep in the first hamlet upon the eastern side.
There is, indeed, a short cut which strikes the valley much higher, but
it is difficult to make and involves the climbing of two cols. For this
short cut the directions are as for the last, until your path along the
Laurhibar has struck the wood; there, instead of leaving it when it turns
south, and instead of going east (as above), you must keep to the track.
It will cross the stream, still going due south, wind up between an open
space through the woods, and will point before you lose it to the climb
over the shoulder of the Pic d’Escoliers; it is a stiff climb of nearly
2000 feet from the point where you crossed the stream and very steep.
The 2000 feet or so are climbed in under two miles. When you get to the
shoulder of the peak a steep southern slope lies before you, diversified
and made perilous by rocks, and separating plainly into an eastern and
a western valley. Between you and the eastern valley (which is that you
must descend) are steep rocks; they can be turned, however, by going to
the _right_ of them, but the whole place is precipitous and difficult.
The advantage appears when once you are down on the floor of the valley
(which is but 1000 feet from the peak), for you come within a mile to
a clear path, and once you have come to this, you are in another two
miles, at the village of Larrau, which is the terminus of the great
national road, and stands in the last upper waters of the valley.
If you approach the Soule by the more ordinary way you will come by train
through Puyoo, change there, and take the train for Mauléon; and Mauléon,
as I have said, is the capital of the Soule. But the true mountain town
is Tardets, half-way up the valley. Tardets is the market town for all
the Basques of the hills, and you can never have enough of it, both
of its heavenly hotel, of which I shall speak when I come to speak of
hotels, and for its universal shops, and for its kindly people. It stands
in an opening of the lower hills, just before the valley narrows and
enters the high mountains, and you may reach it from Mauléon by a tramway
which runs up the river as far as Tardets and then turns off to the left
and goes round to Oloron.
If you approach the Soule in this manner, making Tardets your
starting-point, you will do well to equip yourself in that town and then
to continue up the valley some five miles past Licq, until you come
to the fork of the river. It is an unmistakable point, because a very
definite rocky ridge comes down and separates the two sources of the
river Saison, which is the river of the Soule. The branch to the right
(as you go southward) leads up the valley to Larrau, of which I have just
spoken, and the high road follows it; the one to the left (which is the
main stream and is called the Chaitza) has no main road along it, but a
good mule track, very clear and plain, and leading at last to the village
of Ste Engrace, which lies at the extreme end of the valley and gives the
whole district its name.
Ste Engrace was a saint of the persecution of Diocletian. She was
martyred in Saragossa, and the name of the village is one of the many
examples of the way in which the southern influence overlaps these hills.
I have said that the Spanish sandal is used to the very foot of the
French Pyrenees, and so is the wine-skin which is common to all Spain,
and so is the Spanish mule. Here you may see the Spanish saints as well
reaching beyond the summits.
From where you leave the main road and go up the Chaitza valley to Ste
Engrace is a distance of 8 or 9 miles, and in this valley, in its upper
waters, is to be found one of the wonders of the Pyrenees, and also one
of the main passages into Spain.
The wonder is the gorge of the Cacouette; the passage is the twin passage
of the Port d’Ourdayte and the Port Ste Engrace, and near them to the
west are two easier ports.
The Cacouette is a cut through the limestone such as you might make with
a knife into clay or cheese, with immense steep precipices on either
side, and apart from the track above the cliffs there is some sort of
tourist’s way along the cavernous ravine for those who admire such
things. Of the two ports, the one path goes up the western side of that
cleft in the limestone (which drops 1500 feet into the earth), and the
other goes up the eastern side. To take the road up the western side,
you leave the Ste Engrace road 3 miles after leaving the great highway,
by a lane which goes off to the right and drops down into the valley; it
is quite plain, and is the only road so leaving the main track, so that
it cannot be mistaken. It climbs the opposing hill, and if you follow it
through all its windings it will take you to the Port Belhay, or to the
Port Bambilette, both under a mountain called Otxogorrigagne, and both
easy. But if you continue just above the limestone precipice, you will
come into a very striking circus of rock just under the watershed, up
which your path perilously climbs to the summit and the frontier; this is
the Port d’Ourdayte.
The Port Ste Engrace, though not half a mile distant from it, is reached
in quite a different manner, and the separation between the two is due to
this limestone gorge, which cuts off one path from the other.
If you are going to try to cross by Ste Engrace, sleep at the village
before starting. There is a good comfortable inn kept by people of the
same name as those who keep the inn at Elizondo, Jarégui. It is so steep
and difficult a bit that if you were to attempt to do it in one day,
without sleeping at Ste Engrace, you would hardly succeed unless you
already knew the mountain well, and mist, which is the fatal difficulty
of these western Pyrenees, will more commonly catch you in the early
afternoon than at any other time in the day, so that you had better make
your ascent before noon. When you have slept at Ste Engrace you will find
the path the next morning winding round through the woods, at the base
of the hill opposite the village. One must ask the way to the start of
this path, and it is not always clear after the first two miles; one has
now and then to cast about for it a little, but at last it emerges upon
a high grassy slope, which runs all the way to the crest of the hill
and the frontier. The path does not follow the straight ascent of the
hill, it curves nearer and nearer to a precipice which is the same as
that climbed by the neighbouring paths of the Port d’Ourdayte; for ten
dangerous yards it runs on a tiny platform right along the gulf and makes
over the crest into the further Spanish Basque valley, whose capital is
Isaba.
Of this valley I can say nothing, for I have not succeeded in crossing
the Ste Engrace, though I have twice tried, but I am told that Isaba is
among the best of these little mountain Basque villages or towns for
entertainment and for cleanliness, and all Basque villages and towns are
cleanly. There is a good posada. From Isaba also a high road runs into
the higher valleys of Navarre and to Pamplona.
Near this territory of the Soule, and partly included in it, are two
great districts where a man may spend many days at his ease in camp
there. The first is the great forest of the Tigra, which stretches to the
west of Tardets and is full of rocks, rivers, and adventure. You may take
it at its greatest width, counting one or two open spaces, to be 8 or 9
miles, and at its greatest length, from the Peak of the Vultures to St.
Just, to be much the same. Its high places, some of which are bare peaks,
some clothed with woods, range for the most part round about 3000 feet,
but the highest point—of which I have never heard the name, and which is
on the very south of the forest, just passes 4000 feet. Tardets is always
at hand on the one hand, St. Jean Pied-de-Port rather further on the
other; from both one may re-provision oneself.
Another and still larger district lies on the further side of the valley
to the north and east of Ste Engrace itself. It is the great mass of
wood, mainly beech, which stretches all over the hills between this last
Basque valley and the Val d’Aspe, next to the east, which is the frontier
valley of Béarn. These woods have no common name, they are intersected by
clear spaces, notably round the higher peaks of the forest, but they make
a district of their own stretching eastward and westward from Lourdios
to Licq, northward and southward from the frontier nearly to Lanne, and
thus measuring not much less than 10 miles every way, in French territory
alone.
There is no forest in which it is easier to lose one’s way than this
great stretch of upland. This is especially true in the Souscousse
district, due east of Ste Engrace; there is here a labyrinth of
complicated valleys, and what seems on the map so easy a passage from the
Soule into the Val d’Aspe is in practice nearly impossible to find. To
camp in and to explore, this forest is even better than the Tigra; for
its summits are higher, and its views more unexpected and remarkable.
There are points in it which are more than 6000 feet in height, and the
great Pic d’Anie, the first of the really high mountains of the chain,
stands high above them, just beyond the southern limit of the trees.
[Illustration: THE BASQUE VALLEYS]
II. THE FOUR VALLEYS (BÉARN AND ARAGON)
[Illustration]
Four valleys in the Pyrenees count together in travel upon foot. They are
the Val d’Aspe and the Val d’Oussau on the French side, and the valleys
of the rivers Aragon and Gallego on the Spanish side.
These four form a unity for the reason that in one place (which is just
to the south of the watershed) they are, without too much difficulty,
approachable one from another.
Many historical accidents have also served to unite these four valleys.
One pair of them made the platform for that great Roman road to which
allusion has so often been made in this book, and which ran from the
French plains over what is now called the pass of the Somport, right
down through Jaca to Saragossa. The parallel pair of valleys just to
the east, the Val d’Ossau and the valley of the Gallego, on the Spanish
side, though no highway ran along them until quite recently, had a
similar historical unity which bound them both together, and bound a
pair of them to the two sister valleys upon the west. For the eastern
part of what later became the kingdom of Aragon, the county of Sobrarbe,
stretched from the valley of the Gallego eastward, and was a natural line
of defence southward against the Mahommedans; while the Val d’Ossau to
the north of it was reached by an easy pass and must have formed—though
we have no exact historical record of it—a good road for the parallel
advance of armies.
It must never be forgotten that when an army is advancing in great
numbers it is of paramount importance for it that the host should be able
to concentrate before action. But roads, especially roads over mountains,
compel men to march in long strings, so that the head of the column will
have arrived at a particular point hours before the tail of it; and what
is more, the deployment of the column, that is the getting of it all into
a front perpendicular to its line of advance, takes time in proportion to
the length which the column had before it began to deploy. This accident
it was, for instance, which destroyed the French and their allies at
Crécy, for though they greatly outnumbered the English they had come up
in columns too long to deploy in time. Now it evidently follows from this
principle that armies on the march, even under the rudest conditions,
will attempt to follow parallel roads. To find two roads parallel to
one another and leading to the same field of action is to halve the
difficulties of transport and of deployment. But it is very difficult
(under primitive conditions) to find two parallel roads which are near
to one another, and unless the lines by which the army advances are near
to one another the advantage of the alternative routes will disappear in
proportion to their distance one from the other. In mountain regions it
is especially difficult to find two passages parallel to each other and
yet in close neighbourhood. This is precisely the advantage afforded by
the trench of the Gallego continued in the Val d’Ossau to the east, and
in the trench of the Aragon continued in the Val d’Aspe to the west. Two
hosts using the old mule paths could leave Sallent on the Gallego and
Canfranc on the Aragon at dawn of one day, and both would meet at Oloron
in the French plains before the evening of the morrow; on the southward
march a host could assemble in the plains of Béarn, separate to use these
two easy passes, and meet at Jaca at the end of the second day.
It is fairly certain therefore—much more certain than a thousand of the
historical guesses that are put down as truths in our textbooks—that
the easy pass between the Gallego Valley and the Val d’Ossau was twin
throughout the Dark Ages to the great Somport pass not 8 miles westward
of it. Abd-ur-Rahman must have used both and so must the Christian
knights when they came so often to the relief of Aragon in the heavy and
successful fighting against Islam which marked the tenth and eleventh
centuries.
To appreciate how close these two parallel tracks were to each other one
has but to remember that the gap between the Val d’Aspe and the next easy
pass westward—right away at Roncesvalles—there is a matter of 40 miles.
Between the Val d’Ossau and the next easy pass eastward there is a gap of
indeterminate length according to the definition of the term “easy,” but
there is at any rate no notch over which one could take any armed force
until one gets to the Bonaigo, quite 60 miles away. All between is the
mass of the highest and most rugged ridges of the Pyrenees, over which
certain paths have always existed, indeed, and over which, in two places
at least, at Gavarnie and at Macadou, the French propose to drive roads,
but no gap in which was ever passable in the Dark and Middle Ages for a
great number of men.
I have said that these two parallel trenches were not only twin in
history for the use of armies, but were also communicable one from the
other just south of the watershed. North of it, indeed, the Val d’Aspe
and the Val d’Ossau, though one can be reached from the other, only
communicate by very high and rocky ridges, the easiest of which is the
Col des Moines. But on the south side there is one accidental easy
passage. You may go all the way from the Somport to Jaca and find nothing
but the most difficult mountains on your left, and all the way from the
Pourtalet (which is the pass at the top of the Val d’Ossau corresponding
to the Somport) down to Sandinies and find nothing but difficult
mountains on the right, save just at the beginning of the descent where
this accident of which I speak occurs. Its feature is a lateral valley
called the Canal Roya which takes its name from the streak of intense red
scoring the side of its principal peak.
This lateral valley points right away eastward from the trench of the
Aragon, it is nowhere precipitous along its stream (a rare advantage in
the Pyrenees) save in one spot where a quite low precipice is easily
outflanked along the grassy slopes above it. And the end of that valley
consists in a sort of semi-circular ridge of grassy steep banks in three
places of which ridge, at least, a man or a beast can walk over without
difficulty or danger. These three places are the Port de Peyréguet,
the Port d’Anéou, and the col of the Canal Roya. This last is the
principal one, the easiest and the lowest. Each is within half a mile of
its neighbour, and on the further side one comes down quite easily by
large steep slopes of meadow to the valley of the Gallego. The Port de
Peyréguet and the Port d’Anéou bring one down just on the north of the
flat dip of the pass, the col of the Canal Roya just on the south of it;
but whether one comes down just north or south of the flat Pourtalet pass
is an indifferent matter. The travelling in all three cases is little
more than a walk.
These “gates” up the Canal Roya from the Val d’Aragon into the parallel
valley of the Gallego knit the whole four valleys into one system,
and to this day their customs and their inhabitants have very much in
common, and the two valleys, which were the core and heart of Aragon and
the origins of its crusade southward against the Mahommedans, count in
history and in local geography with the two valleys which were the heart
and origin of Béarn up to the north.
The Val d’Aspe, which is the most important of the four, is that valley
in the Pyrenees where the characteristics of the range are most strongly
marked. It might serve as the type of all the others. You cannot see the
opening of it southward from Oloron without appreciating that you are
approaching something distinctive and singular in landscape. It is so
clean-cut and so obviously an invitation to the crossing of the hills.
The gorges which divide into separate flat steps every Pyrenean valley,
are nowhere more marked than here. The village of Asasp which stands at
the first of them is singularly characteristic of such an entry; the gap
through which the old lake broke is so clear, the walls through which
the Gave runs are so perfect.
Somewhat further on when yet another gorge has been passed there opens
out one of those circular and isolated spaces of which Andorra is
the historical example, and which in greater or less perfection are
characteristic of all these hills.
This plain, which still recalls in its contours the old lake which
created it, and of which it is the floor, is more regular and more
complete than any of the many _jasses_ and “_plans_” which distinguish
the other vales. It is even more striking than that of Andorra.
It nourishes five villages which might easily (had not the great
international road run through them for 2000 years) have federated
to form an independent commonwealth as the eight villages of Andorra
federated to form one. Indeed this circus, surrounded by almost
impassable hills which meet at either end in narrow Thermopylæ, was
very nearly independent at the close of the Middle Ages, and when it
appealed against the king for the preservation of its customs, these were
preserved by the authority of the king’s court.
Of the small towns or large villages which this little secluded corner
of the world contains, Bédous is that which will seem the capital to the
wayfarer, for it is the only one which stands upon the main road; it
is the terminus of a railway which will soon be finished, and of which
nearly all the track is already made. Bédous, by this time, must also
have more population, as it certainly has more wealth than any of the
surrounding places. But Accous is the true capital of the five, and it
is pleasurable to hear with what reverence the villagers of the farms
around speak of Accous as though it were an Andorra-viella or a Toulouse.
All this wonderful and silent plain is marked with long lines of poplars
which enhance by their straight lines the immensity of the heights around
them.
If one will pass some days in this singular valley it forms an excellent
place from which to explore the high passes into the Val d’Ossau, and
the bases of the two great mountains which, to the east and to the
west, neither visible from the floor of the valley, are, as it were, its
guardians: the Pic d’Anie and the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. The man who does
not desire to cover much ground but who wants thoroughly to know some
very Pyrenean part of the Pyrenees will do well to stop at the Hotel
de la Poste at Bédous, and thence climb at his leisure up on to the
platforms from which spring these isolated and dominant masses of rock.
The Pic du Midi remains in one’s mind more perhaps than any of the
isolated mountains of Europe. It is quite savage and alone, and you must
fatigue yourself to reach it. There is no common knowledge of it and yet
it is as much itself as is the Matterhorn. The Pic d’Anie, though it
is less isolated, stands even more alone and has this quality that it
dominates the whole of the seaward side of the Pyrenees for it is much
higher than anything westward of it. Also it is the boundary beyond which
the Basques and their language have not gone.
Beyond this plain of Bédous, when you have passed the southern “gate” of
it, you come into a long, deep and winding gorge which leads you at last
to Urdos, and Urdos is and has been since history began the outpost of
the French in these hills. It was the Roman outpost and the mediæval one,
and it was the outpost through the Revolutionary wars.
Napoleon, who in everything recognized and imitated the example of Rome,
and who, for that matter, caused the Empire to rise again from the dead,
determined that a modern road should go again where the old Roman road
had gone. He determined this in connexion with his Spanish wars, and
decreed in 1808 that a way for artillery should cross where the legions
had gone. But Europe, as we all know, would not upon any matter accept in
the rush of a few years the constructive desire of Napoleon and of the
Revolution. It has taken more than three generations to do not half the
vast work they planned, and this road, which like almost every good road
over the Alps and the Pyrenees has Napoleon and the Revolution for its
origin, waited till past the middle of the nineteenth century before it
reached so much as the summit of the port.