Wanderings by Southern Waters, Eastern Aquitaine

by Edward Harrison Barker

I was parched with thirst, for the sun had been broiling me for hours; therefore, when I saw this village on the hillside, I hurried towards it with the impatience of a traveller who sees the palm-trees over a well in the sands of Africa. In a place that could give so much attention to colour there must surely be an auberge, I thought. And I judged rightly, for there were two little inns. I found the door of the first one closed, and learnt that the people were out harvesting. I walked on to the next, and found that likewise closed, and was again informed that all the family were out in the fields. The whole village was nearly deserted; almost everyone was busy reaping and putting up the sheaves. I stopped beside the village pump and reflected upon my misery. I had resigned myself to water, when a woman carrying a sickle opened the door of one of the inns. Some friendly bird must have told her of my thirst and weariness—perhaps the merry little quail that I heard as I came up from the plain crying 'To-whit! To-whit!' That blessed auberge actually contained bottled beer. And the room was so cool that butter would not have melted in it. These southern houses have such thick stone walls that they have the double advantage of being warm in winter and delightfully cool in summer. I had some difficulty in resisting the temptation to stop the night at this inn; but I did resist it, and was again on the road to St. Affrique before the heat of the day had passed. Another toilsome trudge, during which I met an English threshing-machine being dragged along by bullocks, and the familiar words upon it made me feel for awhile quite at home. The apparition, however, gave me a shock, for the antique flail is still the instrument commonly used for threshing in the southern provinces of France.

At a village called Moulin, lying in a rich and beautiful valley, I met the Sorgues, one of the larger tributaries of the Tarn, and for the rest of my journey I had the companionship of a charming stream. Evening came on, and the fiery blue above me grew soft and rosy. Rosy, too, were the cornfields, where bands of men and women, fifteen or twenty together, were reaping gaily, for the heat of the day was gone, the freshness of the twilight had come, and the fragrance of the valley was loosened. I had left the last group of reapers behind, and the silence of the dusk was broken only by the tree crickets and the rapids of the little river, when a woman passed me on the road and murmured 'Adicias!' (God be with you!). 'Adicias! I replied, and then I was again alone. Presently there was a jangling of bells behind, and I was soon overtaken by three horses and a crowded diligence. The sound of the bells grew fainter and fainter, and once more I was alone with the summer night. The stars began to shine, and the river was lost in the mystery of shadow, save where a sunken rock made the water gleam white, and broke the peace with a cry of trouble.

It was late when I reached St. Affrique, and I believe no tramp arrived at his bourne that night more weary than I, for I had been walking most of the day in the burning sun. But although I lay down like a jaded horse, I was too feverish to sleep. To make matters worse, there was a cock in the yard just underneath my window, and the fiendish creature considered it his duty to crow every two or three minutes after the stroke of midnight. How well did I then enter into the feelings of a man I knew who, under similar provocation, got up from his bed, and, taking a carving-knife from the kitchen, quietly and deftly cut off the cock's head before the astonished bird had time to protest. Having stopped the crowing and assured himself that it would not begin again, he went back to bed and slept the sleep of the innocent.

I was out early the next morning, looking at the extraordinary astronomical dials of the parish church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls. All the straight lines, curves, and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that their ignorance is hopeless. Such a display of science must be like wizard symbolism to the common people. The dials are exceedingly curious, and there are some really astonishing calculations, as, for instance, a table showing the 'number of souls that have appeared before the Tribunal of God.' Near a great sundial are these solemn words: 'Sol et luna faciunt quae precepta sunt eis; nos autem pergrimamur a Domino.' The church itself is one of the most fantastically ugly structures imaginable. All possible tricks of style and taste appear to have been played upon it. It is a jumble of heavy Gothic and Italian, and the apse is twisted out of line with the nave, in which respect, however, it is like the cathedral of Quimper. As I left the church a funeral procession approached, women carrying palls by the four corners a little in front of the coffin, according to the custom of the country when the dead person is of their own sex.

St. Affrique is a small town of about 7,000 inhabitants, lying in a warm valley and surrounded by high hills, the sides of which were once covered with luxuriant vineyards. These slopes, arid, barren, and sun-scorched, are perfectly suited to the cultivation of the vine, the fig, and the almond; but the elevation is still too great for the olive. According to the authors of 'Gallia Christiana,' a saint named Fricus, or Africus, came at the beginning of the sixth century into the valley of the Sorgues, and was the founder of the burg. St. Affrique was a strong place in the Middle Ages, and for this reason it was disturbed less by the English than some other towns in the Rouergue. After the treaty of Brétigny the consuls went to Millau and swore fealty to the King of England, represented there by John Chandos.

As I toiled up the side of the valley in the direction of Millau, I noticed the Rocher de Caylus, a large reddish and somewhat fantastically shaped block of oolitic rock, perched on the hill above the vineyards. Here the lower formation was schistous, the upper calcareous. The sun was intensely hot, but there was the shade of walnut-trees, of which I took advantage, although it is said to be poisonous, like that of the oleander.

When I reached the plateau there was no shade whatever, baneful or beneficent. If there was ever any forest here all vestige of it has disappeared. I was on the border of the Causse de Larzac, one of the highest, most extensive, and hopelessly barren of the calcareous deserts which separate the rivers in this part of France. Not a drop of water, save what may have been collected in tanks for the use of sheep, and the few human beings who eke out an existence there, is to be found upon them. Swept by freezing winds in winter and burnt by a torrid sun in summer, their climate is as harsh as the soil is ungenerous.

But although I was sun-broiled upon this causse, I was interested at every step by the flowers that I found there. Dry, chaffy, or prickly plants, corresponding in their nature to the aridity and asperity of the land, were peculiarly at home upon the undulating stoniness. The most beautiful flower then blooming was the catananche, which has won its poetic French name, Cupidon bleu, by the brilliant colour of its blossom. Multitudes of yellow everlastings also decked the solitude.

On reaching the highest ground the crests of the bare Cevennes were seen against the cloudless sky to the south. A little to the east, beyond the valley of the Cernon, which I intended to cross, were high hills or cliffs, treeless and sterile, with hard-cut angular sides, terminating upwards in vertical walls of naked stone. These were the buttresses of the Causse de Larzac. The lower sides of some of the hills were blue with lias marl, and wherever they were steep not a blade of grass grew.

Having descended to the valley, I was soon climbing towards Roquefort by the flanks of those melancholy hills which seemed to express the hopelessness of nature after ages of effort to overcome some evil power. And yet the tinkling of innumerable sheep-bells told that even here men had found a way of earning their bread. I saw the flocks moving high above me where all was wastefulness and rockiness, and heard the voices of the shepherds. There were the Roquefort sheep whose milk, converted into cheese of the first quality, is sent into distant countries whose people little imagine that its constituents are drawn from a desert where there is little else but stones.