Wanderings by Southern Waters, Eastern Aquitaine

by Edward Harrison Barker

A stout woman with a coloured silk kerchief on her head met me with a good-tempered face, and, after considering what she could do for me in the way of lunch, said, as though a bright idea had suddenly struck her:

'I have just killed some geese; would monsieur like me to cook him some of the blood?'.

'Merci!' I replied. 'Please think of something else.'

An Englishman may possibly become reconciled to snails and frogs as food, but never, I should say, to goose's blood. In about twenty minutes a meal was ready for me, composed of soup containing great pieces of bread, lumps of pumpkin and haricots; minced pork that had been boiled with the soup in a goose's neck, then a veal cutlet, covered with a thick layer of chopped garlic. Horace says that this herb is only fit for the stomachs of reapers, but every man who loves garlic in France is not a reaper. Strangers to this region had better reconcile themselves both to its perfume and its flavour without loss of time, for of all the seasoning essences provided by nature for the delight of mankind garlic is most esteemed here. Those who have a horror of it would fare very badly at a table-d'hôte at Cahors, for its refined odour rises as soon as the soup is brought in, and does not leave until after the salad. Even then the unconverted say that it is still present. To cultivate a taste for garlic is, therefore, essential to happiness here.

I crossed a toll-bridge over the river just below Cajarc, and again entered the department of the Aveyron, my object being to ascend the valley of a tributary of the Lot, to a spot where it flows out of a pool of unknown depth, called the Gouffre de Lantouy. The road passed under the village of Savagnac, built upon the hillside. A Renaissance castle with sham machicolations, little chambers. with their projecting floors resting on brackets turrets on culs de lampe and with extinguisher roofs, and a high terrace overgrown with vines and fig-trees left to fight their own battle, lorded it over all the other houses, like a sunflower in an onion-bed. But the castle, although it gives itself such aristocratic airs, is, in these days, nothing but a farmhouse, sacks of maize being now stored in rooms where ladies once touched the lute with white fingers, and where gentlemen may have crumpled their frills while swearing eternal love upon their knees. The little cemetery adjoining the château has swallowed up the great and the lowly century after century, and the rank grass, now sprinkled with the lingering flowers of summer, barely covers their mingled bones. The old gravestones, left undisturbed, have sunk into the soil nearly out of sight. Such is the ending of all that is human.

A little beyond this village a peasant woman, whom I met picking up walnuts from the road that was strewn with them, lifted her wide-brimmed straw hat to me as I passed. This was indeed polite. I now left the road, and followed a lane by the stream that flows out of the gouffre. This valley is narrow enough to be called a gorge, and the stony hills on either side presented a picture of utter barrenness and desolation. But along the level of the stream the deep-green grass shadowed by the hill was lighted up with the pale-purple death-torches of the poisonous colchicum. After crossing a stubble-field, now overgrown by the violet-coloured pimpernel, I reached the sinister pool, fringed with the flag's sword-like leaves and shadowed by willows and alders. I expected to find the water all in tumult; but no, it had the dark, solemn stillness of the mountain tarn. The two streams that poured out of it to meet a little lower down the valley hardly murmured as they started upon their journey amidst the iris and sedge, although the body of water was strong enough to turn a millwheel.

There is something that troubles the imagination in the appearance of this lonely pool for ever silently overflowing, and so deep that nobody as yet has been able to find the bottom. On the side of the stony hill close by are some ruined walls of a church and convent, said to have been built by St. Mamphaise. The peasants of the district have an extraordinary story with regard to this convent, which is either the cause or the consequence of the superstitious awe in which they hold the Gouffre de Lantouy. This legend is to the effect that the conventual building was once inhabited by women who ate children, and that a certain mother, whose baby they had kidnapped and eaten, cursed them so heartily and to such purpose that the gouffre was formed, and their convent, or the greater part of it, was supernaturally carried down the hill and plunged into the bottomless water. The legend also says that those who stand by the pool on St. John's Eve will hear the convent bell ringing. It not being St. John's Eve when I was there I was unable to test the truth of this part of the legend. What I did hear was a raven croaking from the ruin, and the sound harmonized well with the air of mystery and gloom hanging over the spot.

There is some historic reason for believing that the convent at Lantouy was founded by Charlemagne. Very near this spot are the remains of some ancient fortified works, and the locality is known as 'La domaine de Waïffier.' This name is evidently the same as Waïfré. There is reason to believe that the last of the sovereign Dukes of Aquitaine made a stand here when pursued by his implacable enemy Pepin le Bref. The people pronounce the word 'Waïffier' as though it commenced with a 'G.'

Towards evening I recrossed the Lot and entered Cajarc. Passing through the little town, which is not in itself very interesting, I took a path winding up the side of the hill, at the base of which lies the burg. I wished to see a cascade that has a local reputation for beauty. I reached the foot of a high, fantastic rock, from the ledges of which masses of ivy hung woven together like a veritable tapestry of nature. A small stream descended from the uppermost ridge upon a rock covered with moss showing every hue of green, and then into a dark pool below. The hillside above the cascade has been extensively tunnelled for phosphate. An Englishman discovered the value of the site, and dug a fortune out of it. There are several phosphate-mines in this district, all more or less connected with British enterprise. Phosphate inspires respect for Englishmen here, for it has been the means of giving a great deal of employment and rendering petty proprietors, who could barely get a living out of their thankless soil, comparatively rich. The inhabitants, therefore, consider English speculators in the light of public benefactors, and such they have really proved, although the motive that brought them here was scarcely a philanthropic one. Neither the French nor the British public has any conception of the extent to which the mineral resources of France are worked by the English.

Cajarc, although it looks like a village to-day, was once a fortified town of considerable importance in the Quercy. Its inhabitants offered an obstinate resistance to the English on several occasions. In 1290 they refused to swear fealty to the King of England until their lord, the Bishop of Cahors, gave them the order to do so in the name of the King of France. Subsequently in the same and the following century, when the Ouercynois were again in arms against the English, various attempts to take the town by surprise failed through the vigilance and courage of the burghers. To punish them, the English, in 1368, destroyed their bridge across the Lot, of which some remnants may still be seen.