A Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees

by Edwin Asa Dix

The son renews his acquaintance, the next morning, with Cauterets, as we start for the Lac de Gaube. It is the Fourth of July; the hotel manager has good-naturedly procured some fire-crackers for the small boy of the party, and thus our national devotions are duly paid and we are shrived for the day. Carriages can be taken for part of the way toward the Lac; it is good policy, so saddle-horses for the ladies are sent on to wait for us at the point where the road ends and the bridal-path begins.

The first mile in the road is perhaps the most frequented bit in the Pyrenees; it is the route to a second large spring-house known as the Raillère, which is even more sought than the one in the town. We find the wayside everything but dull. Omnibuses meet us frequently, wealthier drinkers pass in light carriages, while many, going or coming, are enjoying the journey on foot. Each is armed with his or her individual drinking-cup, worn by a strap over the shoulder like field-glasses. The road is somewhat shadeless, and at noon will be hot; but this is an early-morning route. These are sunrise waters. Such is the dictum or the wont. The faithful even work up a mild daily rivalry in early waking. This may aid to make them healthy; improbably, wealthy; but it does not show them to be wise. Time is always quoted under par at a summer resort; why should the idlers heedlessly load up with too much of the stock? These people have come out here, many of them, at six and seven o'clock, a few even earlier; they have sipped their modicum of sulphur and scandal, have prolonged the event as fully as possible, and must now ripple irregularly back toward the town, objectless entirely until the noon music and the atoning siesta.

The building itself, a large, prominent structure, stands out on the slope of a sterile mountain side, the road sweeping up to its level in a long, elliptic curve. We find much people here congregated, and omnibuses and footfarers are still arriving and departing. Among the throng are three veritable Capuchin monks, thickly weighted with enfolding hoods and brown woolen gowns, the latter heavy and long and girdled at the waist,—a light, airy costume for a warm day. Our drivers stop here while one of them repairs a broken strap, and we contentedly watch and speculate upon the assemblage.

Three other smaller spring-establishments are passed in turn, farther up the valley. Each has its specialty and its limited but believing clientèle. Then the road becomes solitary, and ephemeral humanity is left behind. Soon the slow, even strain of the horses tells of stiffer work than along the easy, inclines nearer the Raillère. The Gave comes jumping downward more and more hurriedly, and presently its restless mutterings deepen into a dull growl, which grows louder. It rises by degrees to a roar, the road makes a last energetic bend,—and we are looking down upon the famed Cerizet cascade. It is a broad rush of the stream, thundering beneath the bridge; there is an unexpected body to the fall; the massed water bounds down a double ledge, and swirls angrily away down the gorge. The scene is strikingly set, with slippery rocks and dark-green box bordering the torrent, and the cliffs rising sharply around, naked and bony or furred with box and pine. This is the favorite short drive from Cauterets. Pedestrians seek it, as well. The Cerizet holds the charm of its wildness alike for the idler and the lover of nature.

Here the road ends, in a confined level across the bridge. At the bend above stand a rough shanty and a shed, and near by our waiting saddle-horses are unobtrusively browsing. Drivers and carriages now leave us and turn back, and the guide helps us to roll wraps and coats into cylinder-form and straps them snugly behind the saddles. The shanty is not too primitive to vend refreshing drinks, and the ancient Frenchman in the doorway vainly lures us to lemonade and sour wine. The guide hands out sticks for those of us who walk, swings the camera strap over his shoulder, and we all wave a friendly hand to the old mountain-taverner, who grins a forgiving au revoir.

We strike at once into the thicket. There is only the footway to pierce it, crooked and steep and stony from the start.

"The winding vale now narrows on the view,"

and the crowding trees at times shut out all sight of the cliffs opposite and above, though we always hear the noise of the torrent. The sun can rarely find the path, which is damp and at places muddy. The slant of the gorge has grown steeper, and when we come to breaks in the forest, we see the water tearing down toward us along its broken trough in increasing contortions, often in great flying leaps. No path could hold this incline directly, and this one gracefully yields and adopts the usual expedient, ricochetting upward in short, incessant lacings, tracing up in the main the run of the Gave, but often diverted, zigzagging, always mounting, quadrupling the distance while it quarters the angle.

Two other cascades are passed. The horses, used to the work, strain forward uncomplainingly, the guide leading the foremost; they toil quietly along the easier spots, but tug themselves rapidly, almost convulsively, up over the hard ones. The jolting, pitching motion is severe and somewhat trying; and at intervals the ladies dismount and join us in walking,—relieving the effort of rest with the rest of effort.

An hour or less of this, and then another roar presages another cataract, and soon we emerge upon the scene. This is the Pont d'Espagne, a bridge of long logs stretching across the torrent at the spot where two streams unite and throw themselves together into the hollow, twenty-eight or thirty feet below. We pause on the rough bridge and gaze down at the plunging water and foam and upward at our surroundings. The entire picture, framed in by the sharp blackness of the pines and the broken escarpments of cliff and mountain, has been well compared to a scene in Norway.