this lonely pool for ever silently overflowing, and so deep that
nobody as yet has been able to find the bottom. On the side of the
stony hill close by are some ruined walls of a church and convent,
said to have been built by St. Mamphaise. The peasants of the district
have an extraordinary story with regard to this convent, which is
either the cause or the consequence of the superstitious awe in which
they hold the Gouffre de Lantouy. This legend is to the effect that
the conventual building was once inhabited by women who ate children,
and that a certain mother, whose baby they had kidnapped and eaten,
cursed them so heartily and to such purpose that the _gouffre_ was
formed, and their convent, or the greater part of it, was
supernaturally carried down the hill and plunged into the bottomless
water. The legend also says that those who stand by the pool on St.
John's Eve will hear the convent bell ringing. It not being St. John's
Eve when I was there I was unable to test the truth of this part of
the legend. What I did hear was a raven croaking from the ruin, and
the sound harmonized well with the air of mystery and gloom hanging
over the spot.
There is some historic reason for believing that the convent at
Lantouy was founded by Charlemagne. Very near this spot are the
remains of some ancient fortified works, and the locality is known as
'La domaine de Waïffier.' This name is evidently the same as Waïfré.
There is reason to believe that the last of the sovereign Dukes of
Aquitaine made a stand here when pursued by his implacable enemy Pepin
le Bref. The people pronounce the word 'Waïffier' as though it
commenced with a 'G.'
Towards evening I recrossed the Lot and entered Cajarc. Passing
through the little town, which is not in itself very interesting, I
took a path winding up the side of the hill, at the base of which lies
the burg. I wished to see a cascade that has a local reputation for
beauty. I reached the foot of a high, fantastic rock, from the ledges
of which masses of ivy hung woven together like a veritable tapestry
of nature. A small stream descended from the uppermost ridge upon a
rock covered with moss showing every hue of green, and then into a
dark pool below. The hillside above the cascade has been extensively
tunnelled for phosphate. An Englishman discovered the value of the
site, and dug a fortune out of it. There are several phosphate-mines
in this district, all more or less connected with British enterprise.
Phosphate inspires respect for Englishmen here, for it has been the
means of giving a great deal of employment and rendering petty
proprietors, who could barely get a living out of their thankless
soil, comparatively rich. The inhabitants, therefore, consider English
speculators in the light of public benefactors, and such they have
really proved, although the motive that brought them here was scarcely
a philanthropic one. Neither the French nor the British public has any
conception of the extent to which the mineral resources of France are
worked by the English.
Cajarc, although it looks like a village to-day, was once a fortified
town of considerable importance in the Quercy. Its inhabitants offered
an obstinate resistance to the English on several occasions. In 1290
they refused to swear fealty to the King of England until their lord,
the Bishop of Cahors, gave them the order to do so in the name of the
King of France. Subsequently in the same and the following century,
when the Ouercynois were again in arms against the English, various
attempts to take the town by surprise failed through the vigilance and
courage of the burghers. To punish them, the English, in 1368,
destroyed their bridge across the Lot, of which some remnants may
still be seen.
After leaving Cajarc in the morning I was soon alone with Nature on
the right bank of the river. Autumn was there in a gusty mood, blowing
yellow leaves down from the hills upon the water and driving them
towards the sea over the rippled, gray surface lit up with cold,
steel-like gleams of sunshine struggling through the vapour. The
wilderness of herbs and under-shrubs along the banks was no longer
aflame with flowers. Dead thistles, whose feathered seeds had drifted
far away upon the wind to found new colonies, and a multitude of
withered spikes and racemes, told the old story of the summer's life
passing into the death or sleep of winter. Yet the river-banks were
not without flowers. A rose, very like the 'monthly rose' of English
gardens, was still blooming there, together with hawkweed, wild
reseda, and a mint with lilac-coloured blossoms which one sees on
every bit of waste ground throughout this region.
A rock rising from the river's bank carried the ruin of an ancient
chapel. Only the apse was left. It contained one narrow deeply-splayed
Romanesque window, and a piscina where the priest washed his hands.
The altar-stone lay upon the ground where the altar must have stood,
and behind it a rough wooden cross had been piously raised to remind
the passer-by that the spot was hallowed.
The road now ran under high red rocks or steep stony slopes, where, on
neglected terraces overgrown with weeds, the dead or dying vines
repeated the monotonous tale of the phylloxera.
I passed through the village of Lannagol, mostly built upon rocks
overlooking the bed of its dried-up stream, and was soon again under
the desert hills, where the fiery maple flashed amid the sombre
foliage of the box. The next village or hamlet was a very curious one.
Rows of little houses, some of them mere huts, were built against the
side of the rock under the shelter of huge masses of oolite or lias
projecting like the stories of mediaeval dwellings. People climbed to
their habitations, like goats, up very steep paths winding amongst the
rocks. The overleaning walls were blackened to a great height by the
smoke from the chimneys.
It was dusk when I crossed a bridge leading to the village of
Cénevières, where I intended to pass the night. There was a very fair
inn here, less picturesque than many of the auberges of the country,
but cleaner, perhaps, for this reason. The aubergiste was suspicious
of me at first, as he afterwards admitted, for like others he had
turned over in his mind the question, Is he a German spy? Judging from
my own experience in this part of France, I should say that a German
tourist would not spend a very happy holiday here. The sentiment of
the Parisians towards the Teuton is fraternal love compared to that of
the Southern French. These people proved themselves to be thorough
going haters in the religious wars, and the old character is still
strong in them.
Although the Germans in 1870-71 did not show themselves in Guyenne,
the resentment of the inhabitants towards them is intense, and it is
the vivacity of this feeling that renders them so suspicious of
foreigners. I noticed, however, that as I went farther down the Lot
the people became more genial, so that the long evenings in the rural
inns generally passed very pleasantly. Dinner over, I usually took
possession of a chimney-corner, the only place where one can be really
warm on autumnal nights, and while satisfying the curiosity of the
rustic intelligence concerning the English and their ways I gathered
much information that was useful to me respecting local customs and
the caverns, castles and legends of the district where I happened to
be. By nine o'clock everybody was yawning, and if the village
blacksmith, the postman, and the bell-ringer had not left by that
time, they were in an unusually dissipated frame of mind. By ten
o'clock the great kitchen was dark, and the mice were making up a
quadrille upon the hearth, supposing no cat to be looking on.
Early the next morning I was climbing the hill towards the Castle of
Cénevières. This building is a most picturesque jumble of the
castellated styles of the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries. The oldest part of the structure--and it is very
considerable--is that of a frowning feudal fortress of great strength,
built upon a rock, which on the side of the Lot is a perpendicular
wall some 200 feet high. The inhabitants agree in saying that the
feudal walls are the work of the English, but they are probably in
error. The original castle belonged to Waïfré. It afterwards passed to
the Gourdon family, who doubtless rebuilt it upon the old foundations.
The last descendant of this family was one of the most ardent
Huguenots in the Quercy. The late Gothic superstructure, which is
still inhabited, has a very high-pitched roof, with dormer windows
covered by high gables with elaborate carvings. Very near this castle,
in the side of the cliff, is a fortified cavern, which for centuries
has gone by the name of La Grotte des Anglais. It must have been in
communication with the castle, of which it may have served as an
outwork or a place of refuge in the last extremity. I might have
passed the whole day trying to find it but for the help of a peasant,
who led the way down the rocks, hanging on to bushes of box. The
remains of a small tower, pierced with loopholes on one side of the
opening, and the other ruined masonry, leave no doubt as to the
defensive use to which this cavern was at one time put.
Having left Cénevières, I recrossed the Lot and passed through
Saint-Martin, a village of little interest, but the point from which
it is most convenient to reach a certain cave where animals of the
prehistoric ages were obliging enough to die, so that their skeletons
might be preserved for the delight and instruction of the modern
scientific bone-hunter. This is not one of the celebrated caves in the
department, consequently the visitor with thoughts fixed on bones may
carry away a sackful if he has the patience to grub for them. If the
cavern were near Paris it would give rise to a fierce competition
between the palaeontologist and the _chiffonnier_, but placed where it
is the soil has not yet been much disturbed. I went in search of it up
a very steep, stony hill, and there had the good fortune to meet an
old woman who was coming down over the rocks with surprising
nimbleness. She knew at once what I wanted. Although she spoke French
with great difficulty, three words out of every five being _patois_,
she made me understand that her house was just in front of the cave,
and that it was not to be visited without her consent and guidance.
She therefore began to reascend the 'mountain,' as she called the
hill, making signs to me to follow. There was certainly nothing wrong
with the old woman's lungs, for it was as much as I could do to keep
pace with her, especially when she led the way up almost naked rock.
At length we reached the brow of the hill, where a cottage showed
itself in a desert of limestone, but where a little garden, by dint of
long labour, had been formed upon a natural terrace on which the sun's
rays fell warmly.
The woman left me in the cottage while she went to find her daughter.
It was composed of one small room, in which there were two beds, an
old worm-eaten walnut buffet, an eight-day clock after the pattern of
Sir Humphrey's, a hearth covered with white wood-ashes, a large
wheel-shaped loaf of black bread in a rack, onions, grapes, garlic,
and balls of twisted hemp hanging from the beams; baskets of maize and
chestnuts, and a great copper swing-pot, only a little less imposing
than the one out of which the scullion fished the fowls for Sancho
Pança. I afterwards learned that two couples slept in the two
beds--the old pair and the young pair.
Presently the old woman reappeared, followed by a much younger one,
carrying upon her head a copper water-pot, that glowed in the sun like
a wind-blown brand. Having set down her pot, the daughter, a rather
wild-looking person with sun-baked face and large gleaming eyes, took
an old-fashioned brass dish-lamp--a deformed and vulgar descendant of
the agate lamp held in the hand of the antique priestess--and, after
bringing the wick towards the lip, lighted it. I lit the candle I had
brought with me, and, followed by the old woman, we entered the
cavern, near the mouth of which was a fig-tree. The entrance was so
small that it was almost necessary to crawl for some distance; but it
must have been much larger at one time if the story that the younger
woman told me about the bones of a mastodon having been discovered
inside was well founded. As we proceeded, the roof rose rapidly, so
that the rocks overhead could not presently be seen by the light of
the candle and lamp. Farther in, the roof became lower, and it was
connected with the ground in places by natural columns of vast size,
formed in the course of ages by the calcareous deposit of the dropping
water. Near the end of the cavern, at about 100 yards from the
entrance, various holes dug in the yellow soil showed where the
bone-searchers had been at work. I had ample encouragement, for I had
only to stir the earth a little to find bones half turned to stone. I
selected two or three teeth with the hope that a scientific friend
would say they were a mastodon's or a mammoth's. If I had liked the
prospect of carrying a bag of bones on my back down the valley of the
Lot, I might have taken away many very large specimens. I called to
mind, however, an experience of early days which prevented me from
being again a martyr to science. I had found a quantity of bones in a
newly-dug gravel-pit, and fully believing that they belonged to some
animal that flourished before the flood, I carried them twelve miles
with infinite labour and suffering, and then learned that they were
part of the anatomy of a very modern cow. Since that adventure I have
left bones for those who understand them.
I had ample leisure for studying the river after leaving Saint-Martin,
for I stood upon the bank waiting for a ferryman until I lost all the
patience I had brought with me. He was taking a couple of oxen
harnessed to a cart across the stream, and the strong wind that was
blowing sent the great flat boat far out of its course.
Every day I noticed a larger fleet of floating leaves upon the water,
hurrying through the ever-curving valley, drifting over the golden
reflections of other leaves that waited for the gust to cast them too
upon the water; passing into the deep shadow of bridges whose arches
resounded with mournful murmurs, riding the white foam of the weirs,
whirling in the dark eddies beyond, gliding in the brown shade of
vine-clad hills and under the beetling brows of solemn rocks, now
mingling with the imaged dovecot with pigeons perched upon the
red-tiled roof, now with the tracery of Gothic gables or the grim
blackness of feudal walls splashed with fern and pellitory, now in a
warm glow of dying summer, and now in the melancholy gray of wintry
clouds heavy with rain. Away they went, the multitudinous
leaves--children of the poplar, the willow, the fig-tree, and vine;
some broad and clumsy like rafts or barges, others slender and
graceful like little skiffs; all stained with some brilliant colour of
autumn.
I had reckoned upon getting a mid-day meal at a village called Crégols
on the opposite bank, but when I at length reached it I had another
trial. The only place of public entertainment was an exceedingly dirty
hovel that called itself a _café_, and the woman who kept it declared
that she had no victuals of any sort in the house. This, of course,
was not true, but it was a polite way of saying that she did not wish
to be bothered with me. The wayfarer in the little-travelled districts
of France must not expect to find in all his stopping-places a fowl
ready to be placed on the spit for him. Had I obtained a meal at
Crégols, I should have looked for some dolmens said to be in the
neighbourhood, but failure in one respect spoilt my zeal in the other.
I am afraid, moreover, that I only half appreciated the grandeur of
some prodigious walls of rock which I passed in my rapid walk to the
little town of Saint-Cirq-la-Popie. It is deplorable to think how much
the mind is influenced by internal circumstances which ought to have
nothing to do with the spirit.
After climbing a steep wood where there were unripe medlars, I came in
sight of a small burg, lying high above the Lot in a hollow of the
hill. A fortress-like church towered far above the closely-packed
red-tiled roofs sprinkled with dormer windows, and upon a still higher
rock were the ruined walls of a castle. This was Saint-Cirq-la-Popie,
a place no less quaint than its name. I was presently seated in a
dimly-lighted back-room of an auberge, whose walls--built apparently
for eternity--dated from the Middle Ages. The hostess, who, as I
entered, was gossiping with some cronies in the dark doorway, while
she pretended to twist the wool that she carried upon the most rustic
of distaffs--a common forked stick--laid this down, and, blowing up
the embers on the hearth, proceeded to cook some eggs _sur le plat_.
This with bread, goat-cheese and walnuts, and an excellent wine of the
district--the new vintage--made my lunch. The fact that there was no
meat in the auberge reminded me that it was Friday.
Speaking generally, the inhabitants of the Lot are practising
Catholics. The churches are well filled, and the clergy are as
comfortably off as French priests can expect to be in these days. It
is no uncommon thing for a _curé_ to keep his trap. I have several
times met priests on horseback in the Quercy, but never without
thinking that they would look better if they used side-saddles.
The early Gothic Church of Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, to judge by its high
massive walls and round tower, was raised more with the idea of
defence than ornament. In the interior there is still the feeling of
Romanesque repose; nothing of the animation of the Pointed style--no
vine-leaf or other foliage breaks the severity of the lines. I
ascended the tower with the bell-ringer's boy. In the bell-loft, with
other lumber, was an old 'stretcher,' very much less luxurious than
the _brancard_ that is used in Paris for carrying the sick and
wounded. It was composed of two poles, with cross-pieces and a railing
down the sides. I ascertained that this piece of village carpentry was
used within the memory of people still living for carrying the dead to
the cemetery merely wrapped in their shrouds. They were buried without
coffins, not because wood was difficult to obtain, but because the
four boards had not yet come into fashion at Saint-Cirq-la-Popie. To
bury a person in such a manner even there would nowadays cause great
scandal, but sixty or seventy years ago it was considered folly to put
good wood into a grave. A homespun sheet was thought to be all that
was needed to break the harshness of the falling clay. And there are
people who call this age that gives coffins even to the poorest dead
utilitarian!
Among other curious things I saw in this ancient out-of-the-way burg
were two mediaeval corn-measures forming part of a heap of stones in a
street corner. They had much the appearance of very primitive
holy-water stoups, such as are to be seen in some rural churches, for
they were blocks of stone rounded and hollowed out with the chisel.
Each of these measures, however, had a hole in the side near the
bottom for the corn to run through, and irons to which a little
flap-door was once affixed in front of this hole. The commune treated
these stones as rubbish until some accidental visitor offered 500
francs for them; now it clings to them tightly, hoping, no doubt, that
the price will go up. Prowling curiosity-hunters are destined to
destroy much of the archaeological interest of these old towns. They
are doing to them what Lord Elgin did to the Parthenon. Fantastic
corbel-heads and other sculptured details disappear every year from
the Gothic houses, and find their way into private museums.
As I was taking leave of the bellringer's boy--a lad of about
fifteen--he put his hand under his blouse and, pulling out a
snuff-box, offered me a pinch. I had met plenty of boys who chewed
tobacco--they abound along the coast of Brittany--but never one who
carried a snuff-box before.
The castle whose ruins are to be seen on the bluff above the church
received Henry IV. as a guest after his memorable exploit at Cahors.
A man who was laying eel-lines across the Lot consented to take me to
the other side in his boat, and there I struck the road to Cahors,
which closely borders the river all along this valley. In several
places it is tunnelled through the rock, where the buttresses of the
cliffs could not be conveniently shattered with dynamite. All this has
been the work of late years. Previously the passage between the river
and the rocks was about as bad as it could be. The English fortified
several of the caverns in the cliffs commanding the passage, to which
the name of _Le Défilé des Anglais_ was consequently given. Now the
term is applied by the country people to the caves themselves,
wherever these have been walled up for defence.
I soon reached one of these caverns, the embattled wall being a
conspicuous object from the road below. Having fallen into ruin, it
had lately been repaired at the expense of the commune. To an
Englishman the spot could not be otherwise than strangely interesting.
I imagined my own language being spoken there five or six centuries
ago, and speculated as to whether the accent was Cockney or
Lancashire, or West of England.
Several fig-trees grew beside the walled-up cavern, and I was picking
the ripest of the fruit when I heard a voice from the road below
calling upon me to come down. Peering through the boughs, I saw a man
seated in the smallest and most gimcrack of donkey-carts. It was
something like a grocer's box on wheels. The owner gave violent smacks
to the plank on which he was sitting, to let me understand that there
was room for another person. I did not think there could be, but I
left the figs and came down the rocks.
'If you are going to Saint-Géry,' said the man, 'I can take you about
five kilomètres on the road.'
'But the donkey,' I urged, 'will lie down and roll.'
'What, the little beast! Not he! he will go along like an arrow.'
I accepted the invitation, and away went the donkey, making himself as
much like an arrow on the wing as any ass could. My companion, who was
a handsome fellow, with a moustache that one would expect to see upon
the face of a Sicilian brigand, was a cantonnier, and as he scraped
out the ditches and mended the roads, his donkey browsed upon what he
could find along the wayside. In summer and winter they were
inseparable companions, and had come to thoroughly understand one
another. The cantonnier confided to me that he was formerly employed
in the phosphate quarries, and that he had closed his experience in
this line by working three months without wages for an Englishman
whose speculation turned out a failure. Phosphate then lost its charm
upon the proprietor of the donkey-cart, for it had caused him to 'eat
all his economies,' and he resigned himself to the wages of a
road-mender, which were small but sure. It was getting dusk when we
parted. My next companion on the road was a poor bent-backed,
shambling, idiotic youth, who was driving home two long-tailed sheep
and a lamb, and who had just enough intelligence for this work. He
kept at my side for a mile or two, flourishing a long stick over the
backs of the sheep and uttering melancholy cries. His presence was not
cheering, but I had to put up with it, for when I walked fast he ran.
He likewise left me at length to continue my way alone, and his wild
cries became fainter and fainter. Then, in the deepening dusk, two
churches, one on each side of the river, began to sound the angelus. A
gleam of yellow light lingered in the western sky between two dark
hills, but the clouds above and the river below were of the colour of
slate. Suddenly a bright blaze flashed across the dim and misty valley
from a cottage hearth where a woman had just thrown on a faggot to
boil the evening soup, and the gloom of nature was at once filled with
the sentiment of home.
It was quite dark when I reached Saint-Géry. The narrow passage
leading to the best inn was illumined by the red glare of a forge, and
was rich in odours ancient and modern. Some twenty geese tightly
packed in a pen close to the hostelry door announced my arrival with
shrieks of derision. They said: 'It's Friday; no goose for you
to-night!' Those who suppose that geese cannot laugh have not studied
bucolic poetry from nature. The forge was attached to the inn, a very
common arrangement here, and one that enables the traveller who has
hope of sleep at daybreak--because the fleas are then thinking of rest
after labour--to enjoy the melody of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith'
without the help of Handel.