THE CASCADE OF GAVARNIE.
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum. --Horat. Epist.
The village of Gavarnie once belonged to the order of the Temple, and we were shown the little church, said to have been erected by those military monks. There is nothing peculiar in the building, and the only thing which pretends to interest, is a collection of skulls, said to be those of eight knights who were beheaded on the little green, at the time of the barbarous extermination of their order. I believe, that as far as any truth goes, they might just as well call them the heads of eight Roman emperors. But it is no great matter--could every Templar come back and swear to his own, they would be the only persons concerned after all; and till that can be the case, one head does quite as well as another.
After visiting the church, we followed the course of the river towards the famous Cirque de Gavarnie. On setting out from the village, it seemed as if we could touch it; but it fled before us, and shortly a thick cloud came over it like a veil. We walked on, however, crossing several large basins, which had formerly been filled with water, and arrived at last in the midst of that gigantic amphitheatre, to which all other of nature's works appear but faint essays of her power. The whole was at first filled with the cloud, and we could scarcely distinguish any of the objects around; but gradually the vapour rose and passed away, and we found ourselves standing in the midst of the semi-circle of black marble, rising abruptly fourteen hundred feet in height, round an area of nearly a league. There is no describing it; the soul is lost in the vastness that it contemplates, and it is long before the eye can comprehend the grandeur of the objects before it. High above the amphitheatre lies the mountain, pile upon pile, to the very sky, like gigantic steps carpeted, with snow. Nine or ten small streams are continually pouring over the edge of the precipice, and tracing a long white line upon its dark surface; but a river far more considerable than the rest, shoots over the eastern side of the amphitheatre, from a height of twelve hundred and sixty feet, forming the famous cascade of Gavarnie.
There was still a line of heavy cloud drawn across the very summit of the fall, and below, it separated into dense thick mist, while the stream itself continued for ever pouring silently on between the two, like time between two indistinct eternities. At the same time, the sun had long, long sunk to us, and the world below was all in shadow, while far above the cloud, glittering in a kind of golden splendour, rose the icy summits of a far higher mountain, beaming with an airy unearthly light, like the faint glimpse of some more brilliant world.
Description can do nothing for it, imagination can do little. It must be seen and felt.
Although such towering heights still remained above us, we had already risen so far, that we found the snows lying at the foot of the amphitheatre, and were told that they never melt. After falling from the height, the river collects in a small basin below, and forcing its passage under the snow, forms the famous Pont de Neige[[22]] of Gavarnie.
Far above the Cirque de Gavarnie, and the snows and the ices which hang upon its edge, appears another perpendicular wall of rock, running along nearly from east to west, and forming a barrier between France and Spain; and nearly in the centre of this, appears a deep cleft like an embrasure--the famous Brèche de Roland. For here it is said that the Paladin Orlando, or Roland, as he is called in France, pursuing the army of the Moors, cleft the rock of three hundred feet in height, with one blow of his enchanted sword, and opened a passage into Spain. The story goes on to say, that Orlando was on horseback.
I looked in vain to see the footpath that was to conduct me the next day to the breach. I could discover nothing but one perpendicular precipice, and returned to Gavarnie, puzzling myself how it was to be accomplished.