XIX.
We went forward into the country of the Camisards along a well-made road which gangs of labourers were leisurely repairing. So good are these mountain roads, and so diligently tended, that one is inclined to think they are used chiefly for the transit of stones to keep them in repair. That on which we travelled has been made since Modestine and her driver footed it through this same valley. In less than a mile from the baraque it begins to sweep swiftly downward. Stevenson thus describes his descent: "A sort of track appeared and began to go down a breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley through falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of descent, and the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet. The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere."
"CLARISSE"
The Waitress at the Hôtel des Cevennes, from a photograph supplied by the Pasteur at Pont de Montvert
"The features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride."—R. L. S.
If his descent was thus, how much more so ours on our whirling wheels? We encountered numerous cattle-drovers, whose herds spread themselves across the path and rendered our progress somewhat perilous, as neither hedge nor stone stood between us and the abyss. There is but little population in the valley, and that centred in two small hamlets, though we observed a number of deserted cabins which Stevenson also notes. The river, too, as it nears the larger Tarn was all his magic pen had pictured; here it "foamed awhile in desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot with watery browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so changeful and delicate a hue: crystal was not more clear, the meadows were not by half so green."
Our road brought us at length to Pont de Montvert "of bloody memory," which lies in a green and rocky hollow among the hills. To Stevenson "the place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an indescribable air of the south." Why so, he was unable to say; as he justly observes, it would be difficult to tell in what particulars it differed from Monastier or Langogne or even Bleymard. One of the first buildings that the traveller encounters is the little Protestant temple perched on the rocky bank of the river, and perhaps it was again the Protestant education of R. L. S. that led him to note a higher degree of intelligence among the inhabitants than he had found in the purely Catholic villages. For my part, with the best will to mark the difference, I found little to choose between the Catholic and Camisard townships, unless it were a more obvious effort after cleanliness in some of the latter.