The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

2. Steep rocks and cliffs, the presence of which should always be indicated to the traveller, are carefully marked upon either side of the frontier.

3. Paths, the importance of which the reader will presently appreciate, are clearly marked, with all details, as exactly as on the French side.

4. Every habitation is marked, and in the case of villages and towns, the number of inhabitants, the postal and other facilities.

5. Most of the heights are marked, though not so many as on the northern slope, but at any rate the height of every important port, col, and peak appears. In general, it may be said that there is no map of the Pyrenees, immediately to the south of the frontier, equivalent to those of the districts which happen to fall within the French 1/100,000 survey.

This leads me to the principal drawback connected with the use of the French 1/100,000 map upon the Spanish side, which is, that it only includes such Spanish territory as accidentally happens to fall within each square blocked out in the French survey.

The English reader is acquainted, it may be presumed, with the one-inch Ordnance Map, and he will have remarked, how, if it so happens that a little corner of land escapes the regular series of rectangles into which the one-inch Ordnance Map is divided, that little corner of land will have a map all to itself, though the greater part of the rectangular space so marked may be taken up by the sea. In the same way any little bit of French territory which projects beyond the scheme of rectangles into which the whole survey is divided, has, added to it, an outer part completing the map and extending into Spain; where (as for instance on the sheet called “Gavarnie”) the little piece of French territory so projecting is small in comparison with the whole rectangle, a considerable piece of Spanish territory will be included; but where (as for instance on the sheet called “Bayonne”) the frontier very nearly corresponds with the survey, very little of the Spanish side will be included.

From this it is easy to perceive that the maximum amount of Spanish territory in any one map must be inferior either in width or in length to the full dimensions of each sheet, and that the total distance into Spain, which any one sheet can mark, south of the frontier, is less than the width of any one sheet. Now each sheet of the French 1/100,000 map includes 15 minutes of a degree from north to south, that is, about 17 miles. One may say, therefore, that the amount of Spanish territory shown to the south of the frontier in this excellent survey is always less than one full day’s journey. In many parts it narrows to far less than this. There are not a few parts of the range where even for those who make but short excursions on to the Spanish side, this drawback is of considerable effect. For instance, in the easy and pleasant excursion which takes one from Andorra to Urgel, the 1/100,000 map cuts one short at 42° 30′ below Andorra, and 42° 15′ beyond the main road to Urgel, and no small part of the road lies south or west of this limitation.

The 1/200,000 map somewhat makes up for the deficiency of the 1/100,000 map, but not in a complete manner. The frontier sections of this survey (five in number) show Spanish territory to the extent of some 30 miles in the Basque country, they give but a tiny corner of the extreme east of the territory of Aragon, they give over 30 miles for the greater part of the north of that province, but in Catalonia the belt is restricted to far less. Moreover, the Spanish details afforded are much slighter than in the 1/100,000. There is no indication of the relief of the country, no shading, only the principal water-courses and the principal highways and mule roads are marked. But it is here that the 1/200,000 is useful, if one has the intention of walking for some days upon the Spanish side. Thus the direction from Castellbo in Catalonia to Esterri can be roughly drawn upon the 1/200,000 and will not be discovered so clearly in any other survey.

It now remains to sum up the respective advantages of these four maps for the general purposes of travel, and to give a few comments upon the uses of each.