GENERAL SKETCH MAP OF THE PYRENEES
THE PYRENEES
I
THE PHYSICAL NATURE OF THE PYRENEES
To use for travel or for pleasure a great mountain system, the first thing necessary is to understand its structure and its plan; to this understanding must next be added an understanding of its appearance, climate, soil, and, as it were, habits, all of which lend it a character peculiar to itself.
These two approaches to the comprehension of a mountain system may be called the approaches to its physical nature; and when one has the elements of that nature clearly seized, one is the better able to comprehend the human incidents attached to it.
From an appreciation of this physical basis one must next proceed to a general view of the history of the district—if it has a history—and of the modern political character resulting from it. At the root of this will be found the original groups or communities which have remained unchanged in Western Europe throughout all recorded time. These groups are sometimes distinguishable by language, more often by character. Changes of philosophy profoundly affect them; changes of economic circumstance, though affecting them far less, do something to render the problem of their continuity complex: but upon an acquaintance with the living men concerned, it is always possible to distinguish where the boundaries of a country-side are set; and the permanence of such limits in European life is the chief lesson a deep knowledge of any district conveys.
The recorded history of the inhabitants lends to these hills their only full meaning for the human being that visits them to-day; nor does anyone know, nor half know, any country-side of Europe unless he possesses not only its physical appearance and its present habitation, but the elements of its past.
These things established, one can turn to the details of travel and explain the communications, the difficulties, and the opportunities attaching to various lines of travel. In the case of a mountain range, the greater part of this last will, of course, for modern Englishmen, consist in some account of wilder travel upon foot, and the sense of exploration and of discovery which the district affords.