CHAPTER XVI
Nîmes and the Pont du Gard
The surpassing charm of Nîmes is provided by its waters, which are the chief feature of a garden as beautiful of its kind as is to be seen anywhere. But these waters were considered too sacred for common use in Roman times, and in order to provide this quite unimportant colonial town, which is not even mentioned by classical writers, with pure drinking water, an aqueduct was built to convey to it the waters of the springs five and twenty miles away; and the remains of this aqueduct are one of the wonders of the world. We will take the Pont du Gard first, as I did on this expedition, walking from Remoulins, and then back again by the other side of the river, and on to Nîmes.
It was a bright, hot, spring day, and the first view I had of the famous aqueduct was through a haze of foliage which later on would have been thick enough to hide it until one was almost underneath its soaring arches. Taking this road to the left, which is the usual and the shorter one, the huge structure comes as a sudden surprise; but I am not sure that it does not provide a more interesting sight seen over miles of olive gardens from the other road.
No detailed description of this mere fragment of a monumental and enduring work is necessary, as I am able to give an excellent photograph of it from a point of view that is not usually taken. But I doubt if its immensity can be gauged from any photograph that it is possible to take. It rises a hundred and eighty feet from the level of the river. The huge blocks of which it is composed are put together, and have held together, without any mortar. It has lasted for close upon two thousand years, and looks as if it would last till the end of the world, without much trouble being taken to keep it in repair. Its effect, indeed, as one lingers about it, and looks at it now from the hills above, now from the road below, now from a distance across the plain, and tries to get some definite outstanding impression, is of a work on such a scale that it rivals that of nature herself. It is huge and yet it is light; it is regular in design, but irregular in detail; its use is gone, yet it has life.
It stands in majestic solitude. The blue river with its sandy bars flows between rocky, wooded hills, and the white road keeps it company, but seems to be little used. There is some sort of a café near it, but it is hidden by the trees. I had the place all to myself during the hour or so that I stayed there. The impression of something belonging to nature more than to the art of man deepened.
