covering it may be an area of two or three hundred square miles, and
terminating abruptly on every side in mighty ravines, or ending in
precipitous cliffs, that look down on wide and fertile valleys, frown
on smiling plains. This is what the word Causse stands for, and the
wonder is that folk should be content to live in dreary little
villages high up on these stony fields, when a thousand feet and more
in the plains and valleys below rich and fruitful soil invites the
husbandman. But so it is, and in this region of France we have the
strange circumstance of two peoples, differing in many essentials of
character, living within a day's walk of each other, and mingling but
little in the intercourse of life. As you thread your way through the
valleys of the Tarn, the Dourbie, or any of the other streams that
follow the rifts between the Causses, you realise that up there among
the clouds live people who have small commerce with their fellows in
the valleys, and in such a town as Millau, whose inhabitants must look
each day of their lives at the giant walls of the Causse Noir and the
Larzac, upreared to the immediate east of their own paved streets,
there are thousands who have never scaled these heights.
Mr. Crockett gives us this graphic word-picture of the Larzac:
"The surface of the Causse--once Yvette had attained to the higher
levels--spread out before her, plain as the palm of a hand, save for
those curiously characteristic rocks, which, apparently without
connection with the underlying limestone, stand out like icebergs out
of the sea, irregular, pinnacled, the debris of temples destroyed or
ever foot of man trod there--spires, gargoyles, hideous monsters, all
dejected in some unutterable catastrophe, and become more horrible in
the moonlight, or, on the other hand, modified to the divine calm of
the Bhudda himself, by some effect of illumination or trick of cloud
umbration....
"A wonderful land, this of the Causses, where the rain never comes to
stay. Indeed, it might as well rain on a vast dry sponge, thirty miles
across and four or five thousand feet in height. The sheep up there
never drink. They only eat the sparse tender grass when the dew is
upon it. Yet from their milk the curious cheese called Roquefort is
made, which, being kept long in cool limestone cellars--the cellules
of the stony sponge--puts on something of the flavour of the rock
plants--thyme, juniper, dwarf birch, honeysweet heath--from which it
was distilled."
IV.
A country better adapted to the exigencies of defence against an
attacking army from the plains could not be imagined, for, as the
novelist says in another passage, "It seemed impossible for any living
thing to descend those frowning precipices. Even in broad daylight the
task appeared more suited to goats than to men." The roads which now
connect these great uplands with the lower country are marvels of
engineering, and you can count as many as twenty or thirty "elbows"
in the track, from the point at which it leaves the valley until it
disappears over the edge of the table-land, the entire length of it
being in view at one stroke of the eye. The task of ascending is
laborious in the extreme, and much sitting at cafés, which is the
habit of the townsfolk, does not equip them for the undertaking. Few
wayfarers are encountered, and when the summit of the Causse is gained
the signs of life are still meagre. The roads, now flat and dusty, lie
like bright ribbons on a dull and melancholy stretch of earth. Here
and there a lonely shepherd is seen tending a flock of shabby-looking
sheep, that crop the sparse herbage in fields where stones are more
plentiful than grass.
Miss M. Betham-Edwards is one of the few writers who have visited this
little-known corner of France, and in the following passage she refers
to what is perhaps its most curious feature:
[Illustration: THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC
(_From a Photograph by_ Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)]
"Another striking feature of the arid, waterless upper region is the
_aven_, or yawning chasm, subject of superstitious awe and terror
among the country people. Wherever you go you find the _aven_; in the
midst of a field--for parts of this sterile soil have been laid under
cultivation--on the side of a vertical cliff, of divers shapes and
sizes: these mysterious openings are locally known as 'Trous
d'enfer' (mouths of hell). Alike, fact and legend have increased the
popular dread. It was known that many an unfortunate sheep or goat had
fallen into some abyss, never, of course, to be heard of after. It was
said that a jealous seigneur of these regions had been seen thus to
get rid of his young wife--one tradition out of many. According to the
country-folk of Padirac, the devil, hurrying away with a captured
soul, was overtaken by St. Martin on horseback. A struggle, amid
savage scenery, ensued for possession of the soul. 'Accursed saint,'
cried Satan, 'thou wilt hardly leap my ditch'--with a tap of his heel
opening the rock before them, splitting it in two--the enormous chasm,
as he thought, making pursuit impossible. But St. Martin's steed
leaped it at a bound, the soul was rescued, and the prince of
darkness, instead of the saint, sent below."
Many of the _avens_ have been explored by M. E. A. Martel, and his
adventures in these underground tunnels and caves have rarely been
equalled in modern exploration.
V.
The scene of _Flower-o'-the-Corn_, so far as it is laid in the
Cevennes, occupies but a small part of that splendid chain of
mountains, but it is perhaps the most picturesque part. Much of the
action is centred in the little Camisard town of La Cavalerie, situate
at an altitude of nearly 2,500 feet on the lonely plateau of the
Larzac, some ten miles along the main road from Millau, a beautiful
and important cathedral town in the valley of the Tarn. To-day, as in
the past, the innkeeper is usually the man of most importance in these
mountain towns, but I have visited no _auberge_ that would compare, in
romantic situation, with that so graphically described by Mr. Crockett
under the style of "le Bon Chrétien" at La Cavalerie:
"To those unacquainted with the plan of such southern houses, it might
have been remarkable how quickly the remembrance of the strange
entrance-hall beneath was blotted out. At the first turn of the
staircase the ammoniacal stable smell was suddenly left behind. At the
second, there, in front of the ascending guest, was a fringed mat
lying on the little landing. At the third Maurice found himself in a
wide hall, lighted from the front, with an outlook upon an inner
courtyard in which was a Judas-tree in full leaf, with seats of wicker
and rustic branches set out. Here and there in the shade stood small
round tables, pleasantly retired, all evidencing a degree of
refinement to which Maurice had been a stranger ever since he left
those inns upon the post-roads of England, which were justly held to
be the wonder of the world."
One fears that the "good old times" have disappeared from the Causses,
as most of the inns, built, like many of the houses, in sunk positions
by the roadside, so that one enters on the top flat, sometimes by way
of a crazy wooden bridge, are sad advertisements of poverty. The
houses are often like that in which Mr. Crockett's heroine lodged in
the little Camisard town of St. Vernan, in the valley of the Dourbie,
"built out like a swallow's nest over the abyss." For it is noteworthy
that most of these highland villages cluster along the river courses,
as though the hill-folk were fain to have the sound of the glad waters
in their ears. In the valley of the Jonte I marvelled often at these
"swallows' nests." Many of the cottages have a scrap of garden,
surrounded by a wall not higher than three feet, from the base of
which the cliff sweeps down at an acute angle to the river bed, six
hundred feet below. Children play in these tiny eeries with as little
concern as youngsters in a city court.
Not all the surface of these great table-lands lies flat and
stone-strewn; one will often come on dark forests of pines, and
sometimes the woodman has a better return for his labour than the
shepherd. But on every hand the conditions of life are primitive
beyond anything in our own land. Here, more frequently than in his
native Normandy, may we find the sullen clod depicted by Millet in the
"Man with the Hoe." "Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox," as
Markham has described him in his powerful poem. It is, indeed,
difficult to realise that among these crumbling villages and beggarly
fields we are in the heart of fair France.
VI.
There is little to choose between the Catholic and Protestant
villages; all are more or less in a state of dilapidation, all have
poverty written on their walls; but to mingle with the people and
discuss affairs with them, quite apart from all questions of religion,
is a sure and ready way to discover how great is the difference
between the two classes. The one is usually a sullen and unintelligent
mortal, tied neck and crop to the stony soil on which he has been
born; the other bright, receptive of ideas, quick with life and hope,
and, if he be old, happy in the knowledge that his sons have gone
forth from this bare land equipped by the liberal training of the
Protestant schools to take dignified part in the great life of the
Republic. For you will find that even in the veritable strongholds
of a debased and superstitious Catholicism all the important officials
are Protestants.
[Illustration: MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR]
[Illustration: ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC]
The Protestants of to-day are no unworthy descendants of the men whom
Cavalier led against the forces of civil and religious tyranny, and
though these lonely mountains shelter also many who are still willing
slaves of the yoke which the sturdy "Sons of God" endeavoured to shake
off for ever, the Camisards of two centuries ago did not fight and die
in vain; their children's children are to-day the little leaven that
may yet "leaven the whole lump."
The Wonderland of France
I.
"Whatever you do, you must not miss the valley of the Tarn--the finest
scenery in Europe." Thus wrote a celebrated novelist and traveller to
me when sending some hints on my projected tour in the Cevennes, a
district which to Mr. S. R. Crockett is almost as familiar as his own
romantic Galloway. I have good reason to be grateful for his advice,
as the river Tarn is the waterway through what I shall venture to call
the Wonderland of France. A clever writer has observed that "there are
landscapes which are insane," and truly in this little-known corner of
southern France nature has performed some of her maddest, most
fantastic freaks. Here she is seen in a mood more sensational than the
weird imaginings of a Gustave Doré; there is no scenery that I have
looked upon or read about in any other part of Europe comparable with
this of the Tarn. In the old world at least it is unique, and we have
to go for comparison to the renowned cañons of the Colorado.
Not the least curious feature of the story of the Tarn, its awesome
gorges and wondrous caverns, is the fact that less than thirty years
ago the region was "discovered" to France by M. E. A. Martel, the
celebrated grottologist, with as much éclat as it had been an island
in an unknown sea. Of course, the whole district, like every other
part of France, had long ago taken its place in history and romance;
but although many a generation of peasant folk and monkish
fraternities had lived out their lives in these southern fastnesses,
the Tarn country-side had not before been explored by one in search of
the picturesque or the wonders of Nature. Thus, in every sense of the
word, M. Martel is to be reckoned a discoverer, and the surprise is
that, despite a somewhat tiresome journey, there are so few English
tourists who find their way to this enchanted land. The journey is no
more fatiguing than that to Geneva or Lucerne, which in the summer
months swarm with English visitors, and, for all their beauties,
possess nothing to equal the natural glories of the Tarn.
[Illustration: ON THE TARN
"One sits as in a cockle shell on the Enchanted Sea, gliding along
magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour."]
There are several ways of reaching this little-known corner of France,
but the best is undoubtedly by way of Mende, a fine town 434 miles
south of Paris, "chief place" of the Department of the Lozère. Mende,
although one of the cleanest and brightest of the French towns, with a
population of less than 10,000, and pleasantly situated in a wide
green valley, with low and sparsely-timbered hills billowing on every
side under a sky so blue and in atmosphere so clear that the eye seems
to acquire an unusual power of vision, would scarcely be worth the
journey for itself alone. But it is the real starting-place for the
descent of the Tarn gorges, and it possesses many excellent hotels and
an ample service of coaches for the journey across the great plateau
of the Causse de Sauveterre to Ste. Enimie, a distance of about
eighteen miles. This would be the most convenient route for the
traveller who depended upon the train and coach for his locomotion,
but those who, like the writer, make use of the bicycle, would be well
advised to make Florac their starting-point, as not the least
beautiful part of the river scenery lies between that pretty little
town and Ste. Enimie.
II.
It fitted well with my plans one summer to explore a much longer reach
of the Tarn than most visitors are in the habit of following, and I
should have been sorry indeed to have missed any part of the journey.
In company with another friend of the wheel, I struck eastward from
Mende along the lovely valley of the Lot, and crossing the great
mountain range that gives its name to the Department of the Lozère we
first came upon the Tarn at Pont de Montvert, some fourteen miles
north-east of Florac, at which point R. L. Stevenson began his
acquaintance with the river. From this sleepy old town the river runs
through a deep and narrow valley, the slopes thick with mighty
chestnut trees, and the scenery in parts somewhat reminiscent of our
Scottish Highlands, and totally unlike those reaches which, in its
south-westerly course, render it unique among the rivers of Europe.
For a few miles beyond Florac the aspect of the country is somewhat
similar in kind, but on a more massive scale, the valley wider and
more pastoral; but when one has reached the little town of Ispagnac,
which sits snugly amid its fruitful orchards, the real character of
the Tarn begins to reveal itself.
It was after sunset when we had come thus far on our journey to Ste.
Enimie, a distance of about seven miles from Florac, and never am I
likely to forget the weird and thrilling impression of our passage
from Ispagnac to Ste. Enimie, a matter of fifteen miles. The night
comes quickly in that latitude, and as we advanced along the
well-made road that follows the sinuous course of the river, at first
mounting steadily until the noise of the water is heard but faintly
far below, and then for mile upon mile gradually tending downward, the
gloaming deepened into dark, and the gorge of the river, at all times
awe-inspiring, took on in many a strange and mysterious shadow of the
night a moving touch of Dantesque grandeur. We had left behind us all
the tree-bearing slopes, and the river now ran in a great chasm of
volcanic cliffs, shooting their fantastic pinnacles a thousand feet
into the darkling sky, and presenting many an outline that might have
been mistaken for the towers and bastions of some eerie stronghold.
Not a soul was passed on all the miles of road, no sound was heard but
the varying noise of the water, nothing moved in our path except an
occasional bat, that zigzagged its noiseless flight across the road.
One sat on the saddle with a tight hold on the handle bars, and kept
as close as possible to the uprising rock, for towards the river was a
sheer drop of some 500 feet, and only a low coping stood between us
and disaster. So tortuous was the road, that, being at one time some
little distance in advance of my companion, I awaited his approach,
and could see the light of his lamp shoot out like a will-o'-the-wisp
into the middle of an abyss, and then disappear in a hollow of the
rocks, only to emerge again and flash upon an uncanny bridge across
some gaping gully. For a considerable time we gazed enraptured on
Venus, which is here seen with a radiance seldom witnessed in England,
and seemed to lie like a glittering gem on the very brow of a mighty
cliff. Presently summer lightning began to play along the riven lips
of the valley, and continued at thrilling intervals to add a touch of
dramatic intensity to a scene already sensational enough.
The only place of habitation through which we passed was the little
village of Prades, where the lighted window of a café with noise of
merriment within, and the solemn gruntling of oxen in an open stable,
gave one a little human encouragement though the street lay void and
black. As you may suppose, it was with no small satisfaction that we
at length wheeled into Ste. Enimie at half-past nine o'clock, and
found mine host of the Hôtel de Paris delighted to welcome two belated
voyagers.
III.
Ste. Enimie, which has a population of 1,000, is the chief town of its
canton, and is cosily tucked away close by the river side in a great
amphitheatre of hills and cliffs, the meeting-place of three important
highways: that by which we had come, and the road across the
Sauveterre from La Canourgue, and that across the other mighty
plateau, the Causse Méjan. The town is of great antiquity, and is said
to owe its origin to a certain princess named Enimie, daughter of
Clotaire II., who, being tainted with leprosy, was cured by some
waters at this place, and founded a monastery here at the close of the
sixth century. This religious house became one of the richest in all
Gévaudan, but was suppressed, like so many of its kind, at the time of
the great Revolution. The remains of the building are still an
interesting feature of the place, and high on the cliff above is the
hermitage of the saint, a little chapel built about the cave in which
she is supposed to have slept. The river is here crossed by a splendid
bridge, which the builders were busy improving at the time of our
visit.
[Illustration: A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN
_Showing the mass of the Causse Méjan rising on the left_]
[Illustration: IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN
"The river roars between precipices, that rise sheer and stupendous
from its brink."]
While the mistress of the hotel was preparing what we later pronounced
a most excellent meal, mine host was telling me surprising things in
the dining-room, to which one gained access through a fine
old-fashioned kitchen. With one of Taride's large scale maps before
me, whereon was shown a "national road" right through the gorges of
the Tarn to Millau, I asked for some particulars of the route, and was
smilingly informed that it did not yet exist.
"But it is here, shown by a thick red line, on this map."
"Quite so, m'sieu; many cyclists come here with a map like that and
think they can cycle all the way. But there is no road as yet, though
in five years or six there will be one. The only way to descend the
Tarn from here to Le Rozier is in a barque."
Now, experience has made me doubtful of anything a hotel-keeper in a
tourist resort will tell you about boats and coaches, for you never
know to what extent he is financially interested in the matter, and he
of the Hôtel de Paris was avowedly the agent of the company to whom
belong the boats used for the descent of the river. Although his hotel
had a modern and well-appointed annexe--token of the growing
popularity of the place where hotels are rapidly increasing--in person
he resembled a brigand grown stout with easeful days, and one
naturally grew more suspicious when he protested that it would not
make the difference of a sou to him whether we went by boat or toiled
ourselves to death across the mountains. A good friend at Florac--none
other than the Free Church minister--had also assured us there was no
road beyond Ste. Enimie, but that the boat charges were not dear. "Nor
are they," said the hotel-keeper; "it is only thirty-six francs
(thirty shillings) all the way, which is very cheap." We were unable
to see eye to eye with him then, but subsequently came round to his
opinion when we knew how much labour and skill could be purchased for
this modest outlay.
IV.
You must know that the Tarn and its ways are not to be measured by the
ordinary experiences of holiday travel. At seven o'clock in the
morning you wake and breakfast without loss of time, in order to set
out without delay and reach Le Rozier, thirty miles to the south, in
time for six o'clock dinner. On the beach, close by the hotel, lie a
number of flat-bottomed barques, rudely constructed affairs, exactly
similar to fishing-punts used in shallow English waters. A plank of
wood with a back to it, and covered with a loose cushion, is laid
athwart the primitive craft, and here you take your seat. It is
possible, I believe, for six passengers to be carried, but personally
I should be loath to trust myself in such a boat with more than four,
for two boatmen are necessary to each punt. The charge is for the boat
irrespective of numbers, so that we might have had two more in ours
without adding to the cost, but our bicycles helped us to square
matters. Our boatmen were rough, half-shaven fellows, and he who took
his place at the stern seemed to have been drinking unnecessarily
early in the morning. But both knew their business thoroughly, and
were alive to every current and whirlpool in the river.
Their system of navigation is at once simple and effective, the only
possible method of using the water-way. Armed with a strong pole, they
stand, the one in front and the other behind, and allow the barque to
glide down the swift current of the river, which runs, as I should
judge, at six or eight miles an hour. Its course is broken up by
innumerable gravel beds and rocky snags, and while we seem to be on
the very instant of dashing into a seething whirlpool one of the
boatmen will, with admirable precision, jab his pole into a hidden
gravel bank and thrust the boat once more into the main current.
Beautiful was it to watch how skilfully the men made use of this
current, and that, guiding the frail craft straight into what seemed a
perilous swirl of breakers, only that they might avail themselves of a
different current resulting therefrom, and pilot us into a quiet pool
by the beach on the very lip of a thundering weir.
[Illustration: THE CHATEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN
"One of the most beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by the
ancient Castle of La Caze, which occupies a sheltered corner in a bend
of the river."]
It is indeed difficult to convey any adequate idea of the sensation of
such a journey, where the water itself is at once the element and the
cause of the progress. One sits as in a cockle shell on the enchanted
sea, gliding along magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour;
but, alas! the bronzed youth at the prow and the hairy wine-bibber at
the stern are no creatures of fairyland, but the very serviceable
mortals without whose aid the wonders of the Tarn would have remained
to this day as distant as the realms of faëry.
The panorama, which seems to pass us slowly on both sides of the
river--for the absence of mechanical propulsion gives one the illusion
of sitting still while the cliffs on each hand move past the boat--is
of ceaseless change. For a time the hills reach up, green and
carefully cultivated, to the higher basaltic cliffs, that rise
perpendicular to the edge of the plateau, a thousand feet or more
above our level, and then as they suddenly narrow, with never a
foothold for the tiniest of creatures, the river roars between
precipices that soar sheer and stupendous from its water, or in some
cases lean forward so that at a little distance both sides seem to
meet and form an arch across the stream. And the whole is rich in
colour, the prevailing grey of the rocks being varied by great masses
in which warm reds and browns occur, while every crevice is picked out
with greenery, and wherever the foot of venturesome man can scramble
there have been those bold enough to terrace patches of the slopes
where vines and even tiny crops of wheat contrive to grow. One of the
most beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by the ancient
castle of La Caze, which occupies a sheltered corner in a bend of the
river, where above it the cliffs uprear with great hollows and
rotundities, illustrating how in the unknown ages the water has eaten
its way down from the upper level to its present bed.