time of flood, it offers every facility for this kind of fishing. The
flat-bottomed boat glides along with the current; the fish, dazzled by
the sudden light, sink at once to the bottom, and lie there stupefied
until they are either speared or the cause of their bewilderment
passes on. The spear head used is a small trident. When the moon is
up, the fish are not to be fascinated by artificial light;
consequently the darkest nights are chosen for this kind of poaching.
The two gendarmes, then, had been looking for poachers, and, not
liking the weather, they had been unable to resist the auberge light
that beckoned them indoors. While they were talking, in walked the
most hardened and skilful poacher of the place, whose acquaintance I
had made earlier in the day, and who made no secret to me of his
business. So far from being abashed by the presence of the gendarmes,
he gave them a genial salutation, and, sitting down beside them,
talked to them as if he had been on the pleasantest terms with them
for years. He was a man of about fifty, who boasted to me that he had
been a poacher from the age of fifteen, and had never been caught. He
was therefore an artful old fox, and one very difficult to run down.
He made the most of his opportunities in all seasons, and laughed at
those who troubled their heads about the months which were open or
closed. His coolness in the presence of the gendarmes was charming. He
actually offered to furnish the brigadier with a dish of trout at any
time on a day's notice, and argued that they had no right to seize a
net wherever found, because the meshes were not of the lawful size.
'If you doubt it,' said the brigadier, 'just show me yours.' Then he
added with a grin: 'I shall pinch you some day, _mon vieux_.' The
other did not seem to believe it, and I am inclined to think that no
one will 'pinch' him but Death.
Of the few really attractive callings left, that of the poacher must
be given a prominent place, especially in France, where the law is not
too severe upon a man who tries to make an honest living by breaking
the law so far as it relates to fish and game. The excitement of
catching wild creatures must be greatly increased by the risk that the
hunter or fisher runs of being caught himself. A poacher is by no
means looked down upon in France. He is considered a useful member of
society, especially by hotel-keepers. I know a very respectable beadle
of a singularly pious parish who is an inveterate poacher. On
week-days he is slinking about the woods and rocks with his gun, and
has generally a hare or a partridge in his bag; but on Sundays he
wears a cocked hat, a gold-laced coat with a sword at his side, and he
brings down his staff upon the church pavement with a thundering crack
at those moments when the wool-gathering mind has to be hurried back
and fixed upon the sacredness of the ritual. He is a well-knit, agile
fellow, who knows every inch of his ground, and he has led the
gendarmes who have surprised him such dances over rocks, and placed
them in such unpleasant positions, that they have come to treat him
with the respect and consideration due to a man of his talent and
resource. The French poacher must not be judged by the same ethics as
the English poacher. Generally speaking, game is not preserved in
France. There are extensive tracts everywhere where anybody can shoot,
provided that he has satisfied the license formality and observes the
regulations with regard to the seasons. The poacher is a man who
thinks it waste of money to pay for a gun-license, and a waste of
opportunities to respect the breeding season. If he is a fisher, he
not only scoffs at the close time, but uses illegal means to achieve
his purpose, such as nets with meshes smaller than they should be, and
the three-pronged spear. In the Tarn and other French rivers the fish
have been destroyed in a woeful manner by poison and dynamite, but it
is the rock-blaster and the navvy, not the regular poacher, who is
chiefly to be blamed for this. Men who have the constant handling of
dynamite, and who move from place to place, are rapidly destroying the
life of the rivers and streams. Having noted a good pool, they return
by night and drop into it a dynamite cartridge, the explosion of which
brings every fish, big and small, to the surface. With these
destructive causes, which do not belong to the natural order of
things, should be mentioned another that does, namely, the frequency
of floods in the season when the trout are spawning. But for this
drawback, and the unfair methods of fishing, the Upper Tarn would be
one of the finest trout streams in the world. As it is, an expert
angler would find plenty of sport on the banks of the river above Le
Rozier, and as all anglers are said to be lovers of nature, he would
never be dull in the midst of such entrancing scenery as is to be
found here.
The storm having spent its fury, the gendarmes and the poacher left,
and I was again alone. Although it was not yet ten o'clock, there was
the quietude of midnight around me. The village was asleep, and I
should have thought Nature asleep had I not heard the harsh scream of
an owl as I entered my bedroom and threw open the window. The clouds
had broken up, and the moon was shining above the great rocks at the
foot of which I knew that the owl was flying silently and searching
with glowing eyes for the happy, unsuspecting mouse or young hare
amidst the thyme and bracken. Can Nature never rest? Is there no peace
without bloodshed under the sun and moon, no respite from ravin even
when the night is hooded like a dead monk?
I turned from the moonlit clouds, the rushing dark water, the long
white reach of pebbles, and made a little journey round my room. The
people who owned this inn may not have been very prosperous, but they
were evidently rich in faith. The walls were ornamented with rosaries
yards long--probably from Lourdes--and religious pictures. There were
also statuettes of sacred figures, a large crucifix, and close by the
bed a holy-water stoup. The inhabitants of the Lozère, like those of
the Aveyron, are not only believing, they are zealous, and in their
homes they surround themselves with the emblems of their faith. These
are the only works of art which the villagers possess--almost their
only books.
At seven the next morning I had left Les Vignes, and was making my way
up the gorge, whose rocky walls drew closer together, became more
stupendous, fantastic, and savagely naked. All cultivation
disappeared. A rock of immense size, pointing to the sky, but leaning
towards the gorge, soon attracted my notice, as it must that of any
traveller who comes within view of it. This monolith, over 200 feet in
height, has its base about 500 feet above the stream, but it is only a
jutting fragment of the prodigious wall. It has received the name of
L'Aiguille, from its needle-like shape. Below this, and partly in the
bed of the stream, is another prodigious block of dolomite called La
Sourde, and here the channel is so obstructed by the number and size
of the rocks which have fallen into it, that the river has forced a
passage beneath them, and does not reappear until the obstacle is
passed. But although the water vanishes, its muffled groan arises from
mysterious depths. This, together with the monstrous masses of
dolomite, wrinkled, white and honeycombed, the narrowness and gloomy
depth of the gorge, the fury of the water as it descends amongst the
blocks to leap into its gulf, makes the imagination ask if something
supernatural has not happened here. But the geologist says that this
chaos of tumbled-down rocks is simply the result of a 'fault' in the
stratification, and that, the foundations having given way, the masses
of dolomite fell where they now lie.
In the Middle Ages, however, geology was an undiscovered science, and
the human mind was compelled--perhaps with much advantage to
itself--to seek supernatural causes in order to explain the mysterious
phenomena of nature, many of which, so far as subsidiary causes are
concerned, have ceased to be mysterious. This spot--called the Pas de
Souci--has, therefore, its poetic and miraculous legend. St. Enimie,
when she established her convent near the fountain of Burlats, higher
up the Tarn, interfered with the calculations of the devil, who had
found the numerous orifices in this region communicating with the
infernal kingdom exceedingly convenient for his terrestrial
enterprises. He therefore lost no time in entering upon a tug-of-war
with the saintly interloper. But she was more than a match for him.
Her nuns, however, were of weaker flesh, and so he tried his wiles
upon them. Their devotions and good resolutions were so much troubled
by the infernal teaser of frail humanity that St. Enimie, realizing
the great danger, rose to the occasion. One day or night she caught
the devil unawares in the convent and tried to chain him up; but he
was too strong or too crafty for the innocent virgin, and made his
escape down the gorge of the Tarn, intending to reach his own fortress
by the hole down which the stream plunges at the Pas de Souci, and
which the peasant believes existed from the beginning of the world.
St. Enimie followed at his heels as closely as she could, and he led
her a wild scamper over the rocks. She hoped that St. Ilère, her
confessor, who lived in a cavern of the gorge, would stop the fiend in
his flight, but the saint was so busy praying that he did not notice
the arch-enemy as he sped on his frantic course. St. Enimie was quite
out of breath and ready to drop from exhaustion when she drew near the
Pas de Souci, a little in the rear of the tormentor of souls, and he
was just about to plunge into the gulf. The saint threw herself upon
her knees, and exclaimed: 'Help me, O ye mountains and crags! Stop
him, fall upon him!' Thereupon there was a great commotion of the
ancient rocks far above under the calm sky, and they fell, one after
the other, with a frightful crash. It was, however, the immense block,
since named La Sourde, that stopped the devil; the others he shook off
as if they had been pebbles. When La Sourde struck him it was more
than he could contend with, and it flattened him out. The Needle Rock
was just about to tumble, when La Sourde cried out: 'Hold on, my
sister! You need not trouble yourself; I have him fast!' This explains
why the Needle Rock has ever since looked so undecided. For centuries
La Sourde bore the impress of a sanguinary hand, left upon it by Satan
in his frantic efforts to get free, but some years ago it was washed
away by an exceptionally high flood.
A little beyond this impressive and legendary spot, the gorge,
widening, displays an immense concavity on the left, nearly
semicircular. Here among the spur-like rocks which jut out from its
steep sides--much clothed, however, with vegetation--was the hermitage
of St. Ilère, and the spot where it is supposed to have been is a
place of pilgrimage. Here, too, are numerous caverns, in some of which
many implements of the Stone Age have been found, as well as the bones
of extinct animals and others which disappeared from Europe before the
historic period. To those who have the special knowledge that is
requisite, the caverns of the Causses de Sauveterre and Méjan offer
great enticement, for only a few of their secrets, covered by the
darkness of incalculable ages, have yet been brought to light.
Again the cliffs draw closer together, and the tower-like masses on
the brink of each precipice lift their inaccessible ramparts higher
and higher in the blue air. Gray-white or ochre-stained layers and
monoliths shine like incandescent coals in the unmitigated radiance of
the sun. I pass a little group of houses in the hollow of overhanging
rocks, splashed by the shadow of the wild fig-tree's leaves. One side
of the gorge is all luminous with sunbeams, down to the lathy poplars
leaning in every direction by the edge of the torrent, their leaves
still wet with last night's rain. Another boat is being tugged
laboriously up the rapids, a mule taking the first place at the end of
the rope. The impetuous water looks strong enough to carry the beast
off his legs; but he, like the boatman, is used to the work, and has
good nerves. The path--if path it can be called, when it has lost all
trace of one--now leads over large pebbles which are not pleasant to
walk upon; but presently the way along the water-side is absolutely
closed by vertical rocks some hundred feet high.
To enter the mad torrent in order to get beyond these terrible rocks,
forming a narrow strait, was an undertaking only to be thought of if
the case were desperate. I believed that there must be a path
somewhere running up the cliff, and after going back a little I found
one. It led me four or five hundred feet up the side of the gorge; but
on looking down the distance seemed much less, because the rocks rose
a thousand feet higher. I was gazing at the loftiest peak on the
opposite side, when two eagles suddenly appeared in the air above it;
and so long as I remained did they continue to circle over it without
any apparent movement of their wings. The eyrie upon this needle-like
point is well known; according to the popular belief, it has always
been there.
It was in vain, however, that I searched the horizon for the vultures,
whose principal stronghold--a long ledge of rock, protected from above
by an overhanging cornice, and beyond the range of a fowling-piece
from below--is immediately over the river in this part of the gorge.
Had I left Les Vignes before daybreak, I might have seen them start
off all together, the brown vultures and their black cousins, the
arians, in quest of carrion; but now there was not one to be seen. As
the vulture has become a rare bird in France, inhabiting only a few
localities where there are very high and inaccessible rocks, and where
man is crestfallen in the presence of nature, it is to be hoped that
they will not be driven from the great gorge of the Tarn by being too
frequently shot at in the breeding season, when they are obliged to
show themselves at all hours of the day. No peasant would think of
wasting a cartridge upon them; but the sharpshooting tourist, armed
with a rifle, may be tempted to do so. He would probably fire many
bullets before he succeeded in striking a bird five or six hundred
feet above him; and even if the shot took effect, there would be very
small chance of the vulture falling where it could be picked up. The
bombardment would do them little damage; but it might, if often
repeated, prove too trying to their nerves, and, notwithstanding their
conservative principles, they might be driven at length to quit these
rocks inhabited by their ancestors for centuries. To the naturalist
this district is of fascinating interest, on account of the large
number of carnivorous birds of various species by which it is still
haunted. Besides the common brown eagle, three kinds of vulture,
several species of falcons, hawks, and owls, the raven family appears
to be fully represented, with the exception of the jackdaw, which
possibly finds itself too weak and too slow of flight to live in the
midst of such strong and ferocious air-robbers as those which have
established themselves in these grand solitudes. Among smaller birds
of different habits, the red partridge and the water-ousel are
frequently seen. The rock-partridge, or _bartavelle_, is also found,
but is rare. The four-legged fauna is not represented by the wolf or
the boar, the forests being too scanty to afford them sufficient
cover, and the largest wild quadrupeds are the badger and the fox.
Descending the path by steps cut in the rock, I again reached the
margin of the Tarn. Gradually the gorge opened, slopes appeared, and
upon these were almond-trees and vines planted on terraces. Flowers,
too, which had little courage to bloom in the dim depths where the
cliffs seemed ready to join again, and the sunbeam vanished before it
dried the dew, now took heart under the broader sky. Great purple
snapdragons hung from clefts in the rocks, inula flashed gorgeously
yellow, white melilot raised its graceful drooping blossoms, and
hemp-agrimony made the bees sing a drowsy song of the brimming cup of
summer.
Some vestiges of a castle appeared upon a high-jutting craggy mass,
marking the site of the Château de Montesquieu, one of the strongest
fortresses of the gorge in the Middle Ages.
I guessed rightly by the vines and almonds that La Malène was not far
off. Soon came that sight, ever welcome to the wayfarer--the village
where he intends to seek rest and refreshment. The inn here was as
unpretentious as the one at Les Vignes; but with hare, _en civet_, a
dish of trout, and a bottle of the wine grown upon the sunny terrace
above the houses, I had as good a meal as any hungry tramp has a right
to expect. As for myself, I never expect anything so sumptuous, and in
this way I let luck have a chance of giving me now and then a pleasant
surprise. The trout in the Upper Tarn do not often reach a large size,
because by growing they become too conspicuous in such clear water;
but their flesh obtains that firmness which is the gift of mountain
streams. The wine grown upon the slopes of the gorge is a _petit vin_
with a sparkle in it, and it comes as a delightful change to those who
have been drinking the tasteless, deep-coloured wines of the Béziers
and Narbonne region, with which the South of France has been flooded
since the new vineyards upon the plains and slopes of the
Mediterranean have been yielding torrents of juice. The fruit of no
plant is so dependent upon the soil for its flavour as that of the
vine. Chalk produces champagne, and some of the best wines of Southern
France are grown upon calcareous soils where the eye perceives nothing
but stones. The plant loves to get its roots down into the crevices of
a rock. I now drank the fragrant light wine of the Gévaudan--the
calcareous district of the Upper Tarn--with a pleasure not unmixed
with sorrow; for the phylloxera had found its way up the gorge, and
the vineyards were already sick unto death. The pest had come some
years later here than in districts nearer the plains; but it had too
surely come, and the fear of poverty was gnawing the hearts of the
poor men--many of them old--who had been bending their backs such a
number of years, and their fathers before them, upon those terraces
which had been won from the desert at the price of such long labour.
Before continuing my journey up the gorge, I climbed to the little
church overlooking the village, and which stands in the midst of the
rough burying-ground where the dead must lie very near the solid rock.
It is a plain Romanesque building, presenting the peculiarity not
often seen of exterior steps leading to the belfry. Against an inner
wall is a tablet, which tells of certain men of Florac who 'pro Deo et
rege legitime certantes coronati sunt, die II mensis Junii, anni
1793.' They were guillotined by the Revolutionists at Florac.
I passed the Château de la Caze, a small but well-preserved castle,
showing the transition from the feudal to the Renaissance style, and
still surrounded by its moat. It has five towers, and is a picturesque
building; but I thought it gloomy in the deep shade of the gorge and
the surrounding trees. It must be gloomier still at night when the
owls shriek and hoot. If it is not haunted, it must be because there
are so many abandoned solitary great houses in this part of France
that the ghosts have become rather spoilt and hard to please.
What is the pale yellow flame that I see burning by the river where a
slanted beam strikes down from a crenellated bastion of ruddy rock?
Reaching the spot, I find two pale-yellow flames, one hanging from the
bank, the other trembling upon the stream. The evening primrose has
lit its lamp from the sunbeam.
More rocks there are to climb, for the river again rushes between
upright walls. The path goes along the edge of a horrid precipice,
then descends abruptly by steps cut in the rock.
At a very poor hamlet, clinging to the side of the gorge at a
sufficient height to be safe from the floods, I ask a woman if anybody
there sells wine. 'Yes,' she replies, 'he does,' pointing at the same
time to a tall old white-haired man, who beckons me to follow him. He
hobbles along with a stick, dragging one leg, and leads the way into
his house under a rock. It is a mere hovel, but it has a wooden floor,
and there are signs of personal dignity--what is known in England as
'respectability'--struggling with poverty. Perhaps the ancient clock,
whose worm-eaten case reaches from the floor to the ceiling, and whose
muffled but cheery tick-tack is like the voice of an old friend,
impressed me in favour of this poor home as soon as I entered.
The crippled man, having given me his best chair, disappeared into his
cellar scooped out of the rock, and presently returned with a bottle
of wine. Then he brought out a great loaf of very dark bread, which he
placed upon the table with the wine, and a plateful of green almonds.
The French peasants observe the wholesome rule of never drinking red
wine without 'breaking a crust' at the same time. I made my new
acquaintance break a crust with me and share the contents of the
bottle. Then he talked freely of the cares that weighed upon him. He
told me that he and others who lived in the gorge had always depended
upon their wine to buy bread.
'And are the vines in a very bad way?' 'The year after next will see
the last of them.'
Many persons, he added, would be obliged to leave the district because
it would become impossible for them to live there. While we were
talking two or three little barefooted boys, whose clothes had been
patched over and over again, but still showed gaping places, watched
and listened in the open doorway with round-eyed attention. They were
robust children with health and happiness in their faces, in spite of
the hard times, for the mountain air fed them, and their troubles were
yet to come. They were the old man's grandchildren, and I suppose I
was looking at them more keenly than I should have had I reflected,
for he made excuses for their neglected appearance with an expression
of pain. Then, changing the subject suddenly, he said:
'What country do you belong to?'
'To England.'
'Ah, c'est un riche pays!'
I told him that it was rich and poor like other countries, and that
the people there had no vines at all to help them. 'It is a rich
country all the same,' repeated the old man, for the impression had
somehow become deeply fixed in his mind. There I see him still seated
at the rough table, and behind his broad bent back the wide fireplace
against the bare rock blackened with smoke.
I had left this hamlet, and was on the bank of the Tarn, when I heard
the patter of bare feet upon the pebbles behind me. Turning round, I
saw the eldest of the boys who had been watching me in the doorway. He
had an idea that I should go wrong, and followed stealthily to see. He
now told me that if I continued by the water I should soon be stopped
by rocks, and I accepted his offer to show me the way up the cliff.
His recklessness in running over the sharp stones made me ask him if
they did not hurt his feet. 'Oh no!' he replied; 'they are used to
it.' It is indeed astonishing what feet are able to get used to. The
boy's joy at the few sous which I gave him was almost ecstatic. He had
hardly thanked me when he set off running homeward to show how he had
been rewarded--for his sharpness in thinking that I should lose my
way, and allowing me to do so before saying a word.