Its immense length of 625 miles takes the Loire through ten departments, but the changes of scenery are not so remarkable as those of the Rhone. The source is in the Cevennes, about 4500 feet above sea-level, on the east side of the Gerbier de Jonc, and almost in sight of the Rhone. Through Haute Loire in the marvellously picturesque region of dead volcanoes near Le Puy-en-Velay it takes its course northwards, flowing at the foot of basaltic cliffs and chestnut-clad slopes. On commanding spurs ruined castles are perched in most romantic fashion, and if it were not for their painful inaccessibility, the demand among the wealthy for these little strongholds of the Middle Ages would run up their value to astonishing figures.
The action of water in the past has been vastly more energetic in the Auvergnes and the Cevennes in the ages since their masses of plutonic rock were produced than at the present day, for the scoria and the general debris of seismic disturbance has been so much eroded that the throats of volcanoes filled with the last product of the immense heat below here and there stand out stripped of their cones. One of the most remarkable of these phenomena is to be seen at Le Puy. This strange aiguille has been crowned with a beautiful Romanesque chapel for some nine centuries, and it is just possible that a Roman temple stood there at an earlier date.
In the neighbourhood of St. Étienne the Loire is considered to be navigable. It traverses the alluvial plain of Forez, the mountains of that name to the west separating it from the basin of its great tributary the Allier, which takes a roughly parallel course and joins it just below Nevers. If rivers could express their feeling by other means than overproduction and strikes, the Allier would no doubt say something forcible as to the ascendency of its neighbour, whose claims to be the parent stream are open to question.
Nearly all the way through this plain of Forez the Loire, in fine weather, resembles a ribbon of fairest blue threaded through lace of exquisite delicacy, for it is bordered by trees growing close to the water-side, and only now and then does the band of blue show an uninterrupted surface. Lower down bare red hills are encountered, through which the river has forced its way to the plain in which stands the town of Roanne, after which its course is less picturesque for a time. This is perhaps a scarcely accurate statement, for picture-making qualities with trees, cattle, and distant hills are scarcely ever absent, but there is a certain monotony in the scenery such as one can hardly find on the Thames or the Wye. From Nevers to Orleans there are no towns on the river, which gradually turns its course to the west, flowing exactly in that direction at Orleans, where its ample width adds much interest and charm to a very much modernised city. Its habit of flooding, and so causing immense damage over large areas, has made it necessary to construct very formidable dykes, which now protect the country it traverses between La Martinière and Nantes. Between Orleans and Tours, where embankments do not exist, the writer has seen the cream-coloured flood-waters foaming and swirling past trees, fences, and hay-stacks over large areas of the Sologne. Here and there it has been almost impossible to see any indications of the usual river-bed, and so level is the country to the south in the neighbourhood of Beaugency that there seems nothing to check the floods for several kilomètres from the river. On these occasions one trembles on account of the danger to which the thirteenth-century bridge at Beaugency, patched, and in part rebuilt, is hourly exposed. It is the oldest bridge on the Loire.
Below Blois embankments contain the river, and the roadway on that which defends the north side provides the charming riverside drive to Amboise and Tours familiar to all who have visited the romantic châteaux of Touraine. The average rise of the river in flood is 14 feet, and these dykes are quite equal to this task, but when, as in 1846 and 1856, the Loire raised its surface to over 22 feet, even these banks were useless. With dredging, embanking, and dam construction the river is being gradually harnessed, but there is still much to be done before riverside towns can contemplate the rapid melting of snow in the mountains without the gravest anxiety.
An upper course in a country of impervious rock means that the volume of water is not reduced by absorption, and the difficulties of the river are increased when it encounters the tertiary beds of the formation to which Paris gives its name. In this soft soil the Loire gathers up great quantities of detritus, which it deposits farther down, producing the sand-banks which cost the communities large sums to remove.
If the middle part of its course is not very interesting, the Loire removes that reproach between Orleans and its mouth. Its waters, and those of some of its shorter tributaries, reflect the towers and crenellated walls of some of the most remarkable and interesting of all the châteaux of France. Blois, the scene of the murders of the Duc de Guise (who had instigated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew) and of his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine; Amboise, with its great tower, containing a spiral roadway for carriages and the courtyard in which Mary Stuart had, in 1560, been the swooning witness of a most appalling massacre of 1200 Huguenot prisoners, the Duc de Guise refusing to listen to her entreaties that they should be spared; Chenonceaux, the scene of many a royal hunting party, and the possession for a time of Diane de Poitiers, and Chaumont, which Catherine de Medici obliged Diane to take in exchange; Langeais, where rich furnishings of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance bring one into the very atmosphere of the poignard and of deadly intrigue; and Angers, with its seventeen round towers, begun by Philippe Auguste, are all eloquent of the romantic age of French history, of human passion, of love, hate, and despair.
CHÂTEAU GAILLARD AND A LOOP OF THE SEINE.