The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

Such are the lines to be followed in this book, and, first, I will begin by laying down the plan and contours of the Pyrenees.

The first impression reached by modern and educated men when they consider a mountain system is one over-simple. This over-simplicity is the necessary result of our present forms of elementary education, and has been well put by some financial vulgarian or other (with the intention of praise) when he called it “Thinking in Maps,” or, “Thinking Imperially”; for the maps in a man’s head when he first approaches a new range are the maps of the schoolroom.

Thus one sees the Sierra Nevada in California as one line, the Cascade Range as another parallel to it. The Alps and the Himalayas alike arrange themselves into simple curves, arcs of a circle with a great river for the cord. The Atlas is a straight line cutting off the northern projection of Africa, the Apennines are a straight line running down the centre of Italy. Such are the first geographic elements present in the mind.

The next impression, however, the impression gathered in actual travel, or in a detailed study, is one of mere confusion, a confusion the more hopeless on account of the false simplicity of the original premise. Deductions from that premise are perpetually at variance with the observed facts of travel or of study, the exceptions become so numerous as to swamp the rule, and an original misconception upon the main character of the chain prevents a new and more accurate synthesis of its general aspect. Thus, the conception of the Cascade Range upon the Pacific Coast of the United States as parallel and separate from the Sierras, confuses one’s view of all the district round Shasta, and of all the watersheds south of the Mohave where the two systems merge; or again, one who has only thought of the Alps as a mere arc of a circle misconceives, and is bewildered by the nature, the appearance, and the whole history of the great re-entrant angles of the Val d’Aosta with its Gallic influences; the anomaly of the Adige Valley will not permit him to explain its political fortunes, and the outlying arms which have preserved the independence of Swiss institutions upon the southern slope will not fall into his view of the mountains.

This confusion, I say, is not due so much to the multitude of detail as to the permanent effect of an original strong and over-simple conception remaining in the mind as it continues to accumulate increasing but sporadic knowledge of a particular district; and it is a confusion in which those who have formed such an erroneous conception commonly remain.

In order to avoid such confusion and to allow one’s increasing knowledge a frame wherein to fit, it is essential to grasp in one scheme the few elementary lines which underlie a mountain system, and such a scheme will be a trifle more complex than the too simple scheme usually presented, but once one has it one can appreciate the place of every irregularity in the structure of the whole chain of hills.

In the case of the Pyrenees the common error of too great simplicity may be easily stated. These mountains are regarded as a wall separating France from Spain, and running direct from sea to sea. Such an aspect of the range will more and more confuse the traveller and reader the more he studies the actual shape of the valleys. Another picture should occupy the mind, and it will presently be seen that with this picture permanently fixed as a framework for the whole system, an increased knowledge of its details does but expand the sense of unity originally conveyed. The Pyrenees must not be regarded as a sharp heaped ridge forming a single watershed between the plains of Gaul and those of Northern Spain, and running east and west from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. They form a system, the watershed of which does not exactly stretch from one sea to the other. The axis of it does not consist of one line; the general direction is not due east. The axis of the Pyrenean chain is built up of two main lines, of approximately equal length: the one running south of east from a point at some distance from the Atlantic, the other north of west from a point right on the shores of the Mediterranean. These two lines do not meet. They miss by over eight miles, and the gap between them is joined by a low saddle.

Plan A.

The first of these lines starts from a point (Mount Urtioga) 25 miles south of the corner made by the Bay of Biscay at Irun, and some 15 miles west of its meridian; it runs about 9° 15′ south of east to the peak called Sabouredo, the last of the Maladetta group, the direct distance from which to Mount Urtioga is precisely 200 kilometres, or 124 miles. The second runs from Cape Cerberus on the Mediterranean to a peak called the Pic-de-l’homme, which stands a trifle over 12 kilometres, or 7¾ miles, north of the Sabouredo; its direction is 9° 25′ north of west, and the total length of this second line is just over 190 kilometres, or 117 miles.