In this distance, there is a slight discrepancy between the political boundary and the watershed here and there in the Basque valleys. Mount Urtioga itself, though upon the watershed, is entirely in Spain, and the sources of the torrents which feed the valley of Baigorry all rise a mile or so beyond the political frontier, which is here composed of two straight conventional lines.
The head waters of the Nive are wholly in Spain also, as is all the left bank of that river to a point four miles below Val Carlos. The right bank, however, is French, so far as the torrent Garratono. Thence forward from the sources of that torrent (that is, upon the Atheta) the frontier now follows the watershed, now leaves the very head-springs of the torrents in Spain until, a few miles further east, it makes a considerable invasion of Spanish territory, not because the frontier itself bends, but because the watershed here goes northward in a half circle. All the upper valley of the Iraty is politically in France; but from the Pic d’Orhy, where a definite ridge begins, it follows the frontier strictly for mile after mile (with the exception of a curious little enclave which gives Spain two or three hundred yards of the head-waters of the Aspe), and there is no further exception throughout all the high Pyrenees until one strikes the curious anomaly of the Val d’Aran.
I have said in describing the physical structure of the Pyrenees that the two main axes of those mountains were joined by a sort of fault, a serpentine bridge of high land which united them from the Sabouredo to a point ten miles northward, the Pic de l’Homme overhanging the Pass of Bonaigo. The valley caught on the French side of this twist is the Val d’Aran, containing the upper waters of the French river Garonne. Geographically of course it is French, but politically it is Spanish so far as a certain gorge where is a bridge called the King’s Bridge, and where the Garonne pours through a narrow gate of rock into its lower valley. The story goes that when the Treaty of the Pyrenees was in act of negotiation someone said diplomatically and casually to the French negotiators, “The Val d’Aran of course you regard as Spanish,” and they, knowing no more of these mountains than of the mountains of the moon, said, “Of course.” The true reason is rather that the gate in the mountains cuts off this upper valley from the lower gorges of the river much more than the low, easy, and grassy saddle of the Bonaigo cuts it off from the Spanish valley of Eneou just to the east of it: and though the Val d’Aran may be geographically or rather hydrographically French, it is topographically Spanish, which is as though one were to say that Almighty God made it so.
Another exception and a big one to the rule that the frontier follows the watershed, is, of course, to be found in the French Cerdagne. The true watershed here is coincident with the frontier as far as the Pic de la Cabanette in latitude 42° 35′ 30″. The watershed then goes on over the Port de Saldeu, along the crest of the Port d’Embalire to the Pic Nègre, and there it turns to the east along the ridge across the saddle of which goes the high road over the Col called Puymorens. It follows that ridge, not to the summit of the Carlitte, but to a lower peak called the Madides, three miles to the north-east, runs along two miles of a high rocky ledge to the Pic de la Madge and then there follows a difficult sort of hydrographical No Man’s Land, the centre of which is the great marsh of Pouillouse, nor can you tell exactly where the watershed is for some miles in the forest below that marsh, for the same damp flat ground sends water into the valley of the Tet and into the valley of the Segre. Three miles to the south-west, however, it is clearly defined again in a low rounded lump of wooded land, it passes over the flat Col de la Perche and then follows the crest still going south-west up to the Pic d’Eyne, where again it becomes the frontier, and the frontier it remains until it reaches the Mediterranean.
From the Pic de la Cabanette, all the way to the Pic d’Eyne, France and Mazarin politically took in by the Treaty of the Pyrenees a belt to the south of the watershed and extending down to a conventional line which left Bourg-Madame French and Puigcerdá Spanish; an exception in this is a small strip beyond the Pic de la Cabanette, on the left bank of the Ariège, which, though geographically French, was given to Andorra, so that Andorra might smuggle more comfortably over the passes.
The causes of this annexation of the French Cerdagne by Mazarin are clear enough when one remembers that the Roussillon (which is geographically French) passed to France by the same treaty. There is no way from the valley of the Ariège into the Roussillon except by going round this corner of the Cerdagne, at least no practicable carriage way; the only other way is the difficult and high short cut described later in this book. If the frontier be carefully noted, it will be seen that it is designed merely to preserve a right of passage over this road. Jurisdiction was only claimed by France over the villages, and Llivia, being a town, stands in an island of Spanish territory in the midst of the French Cerdagne, as will be seen later when I speak of this district in detail.
Such is the present political aspect of the Pyrenees, with Toulouse for their great French town in the plains, 60 miles away to the north, Saragossa for their great Spanish town in the plains, 100 miles away to the south, a string of towns just at their feet (Bayonne, Pau, Tarbes, St. Girons, etc.) on the northern side; on the south a rarer and less connected group (Pamplona, Huesca, Barbastro, Lerida, etc.); and against the Mediterranean the district of Gerona, shut in by the Sierra del Cadi (with its outposts) and the Alberes upon the Spanish side, the town of Gerona its capital; the Roussillon, with Perpignan for its capital, shut in between the Alberes and the Corbieres on the French side.
