GAVARNIE.
Alps frown on alps, or rushing hideous down,
As if old Chaos was again returned,
Wide rend the deep and shake the solid pole.--Thomson.
In returning to St. Sauveur, we saw the mountains, in whose breast it rests, as they ought to be seen to know them in their greatest magnificence. It was about half-past two, and the sun shone in such a manner as to cast a kind of blue airy indistinctness over the whole, hiding all the minuter parts, and leaving them in grand dark masses, marked decidedly upon the bright sunshiny sky. Although we had risen considerably from Luz, the sun was already hidden by the mountains to the south-west, and all the valley was in shadow. As I have before remarked, when the hills are seen covered with fields half-way to the top, scattered all over with trees, or broken into separate masses of rock, the multitude of objects prevents the eye from estimating their height justly; but it is when they are thus thrown together, in one uniformity of shade, that they appear in their true grandeur.
But as I have got upon my hands a long journey to the most splendid of nature's works, I must proceed on my way as quickly as possible. It would be tedious to describe the journey from St. Sauveur to Gedre, as it is little better than a repetition of that from Pierrefitte to Luz on a smaller scale. The passes are narrower, the basins more circumscribed, and the mountains rise higher and more perpendicularly on each side. The road, which soon becomes unfit for a carriage, sometimes sinks to a level with the Gave, and sometimes rises high on the sides of the mountain; and as my horse had a talent for stumbling, together with a peculiar predilection for the edge of the precipice, the insurance upon my neck would have been somewhat hazardous. Of course during a twelve miles' ride through that part of the country, we found a great many spots of peculiar beauty, but if I were to tell all I saw, I should never have done with the long stories of lovely hamlets nested in the wood that overhangs the stream, and marble bridges that carry the road across it, and rugged mountain heads that hide it from the sun.
At Gedre there is a famous grotto which every one talks about a great deal more than it deserves. A deep cleft in the rock overhung with woods, amidst the Gave de Héas to the valley, where it joins the other river. There is a great degree of soft quiet and stillness in the sound of the waterfall, and the deep shade of the wood hanging down and dipping its branches in the clear pools formed at the foot of the rock. The whole is certainly very beautiful, but not meriting the extravagant praises which have been bestowed upon it.
At this village, Gedre, is the last general bureau of the French douanes, and here we were obliged to take out a kind of passport for our horses, that they might be allowed to return, Here also I engaged a guide, named Rondo, to conduct me the next morning to the Brèche de Roland: and we then proceeded on our way, skirting along the foot of Mount Comelie, till we arrived at a spot called the Chaos or Payrada, which seems as if a mountain had been violently overthrown, and strewed the valley with its enormous ruins. Blocks of granite containing from ten to a hundred thousand cubic feet, scattered at large, or piled one upon another, fill up a space of nearly half a mile. No tree, no vegetation is to be seen; all is death, and desolation, and silence, except where the Gave rushes angrily through the rocks, and seems to hasten its progress to escape from such a wilderness of destruction.
About a mile more brought us to the village of Gavernie, wildly situated in the midst of flowers, and snows, soft fields, and tremendous mountains.