What I would particularly impress upon anyone going into the Pyrenees is this, that such a method of counting is exceedingly accurate, and is moreover the only accurate method. Nothing is more fatal to a civilized man of the plains than to take his little measuring stick and measure upon the map by the scale the distance between two points, saying, “It will take me so many hours.” There was a Basque at Ste. Engrace who very well expressed to me the contempt which mountaineers have for that method of the plains. A deputy of the French Parliament had stopped in his inn, had thus measured the distance from the village to the pass, and would not believe that it could take three hours. It always takes exactly three hours. I have done it in four by careful dawdling, and the dawdling, when I came to reckon it up, had taken exactly one hour out of the four. Now, measured upon the map, that distance, as the crow flies, is precisely three miles, but it takes three hours none the less. You will not do it in less, and what is odder, you can hardly do it in more, for if you deliberately go too slowly, you are done for in no time, and if you halt, you will find that your halt fits in exactly to make the walking time three hours. Similarly, over the Pourtalet, from the last Spanish hamlet to the first French one, is six hours; part of the way you may choose between a good road and a mule track, but whichever you choose it is six hours; and there is nothing more astonishing in Pyrenean travel than the accuracy of this rough method. As I said just now, you must heed it blindly; it is by far your best guide.
The use of maps has one last thing to be said about it, which applies particularly to the Schrader map and to the 1/100,000, and this is that where you think you see a short cut, and the map gives you no track, there the short cut is to be avoided. I say it applies particularly to the Schrader and 1/100,000, because these two maps are so particular in detail that you think their information must be enough without the further aid of a path. Moreover, the path sometimes takes such apparently needless turns that you are for escaping it by an easier cut.
You will never succeed. You may indeed succeed in a bit of exceptionally hard climbing, you may not lose your life, but you will most certainly wish that you had never attempted the unmarked crossing of the ridge you have attacked. It is obvious that the exception to this doctrine would be found in a piece of genuine experiment. If you say to yourself for instance, “I can get over the shoulder of the Pic d’Anie into the valley of the rivulet beyond, which has no name, but which runs into the Tarn of Uterdineta,” you will probably do it, but it will not be a short cut from the Val d’Aspe into the valley of Isaba, though it is the shortest way. These temptations for cutting across the hills come very often in one’s first experiments in the Pyrenees: they get less frequent as one knows more of them. These mountains are full of vengeance, and hate to be disturbed.
Note.—A convenient map for viewing the whole range is the 1/400,000 which is sold by Messrs. Sifton & Praed, mounted in two sheets, and in a case. It is especially of use in showing a large belt of the Spanish side. Motorists in particular should see it.
IV
THE ROAD SYSTEM OF THE PYRENEES
There are two kinds of platforms for travel in the Pyrenees—mule tracks and great, highly engineered, modern roads. No others exist. When, therefore, one is describing travel in the Pyrenees, one must separately describe the opportunities of wheeled travel open to all vehicles, however elaborate, and of travel on foot or with a mule. As the last will take up the greater part of my space, I will speak of wheeled travel first.
To understand what are the opportunities of this, one may take as one’s standard the roads which can be traversed by a motor car. Those passages which a motor car cannot use cannot be used by a bicycle or a carriage, for the roads of the Pyrenees are, as I have said, either very good broad roads, well graded, and with a hard surface, or they do not exist; the change is always abrupt throughout the chain from an excellent highway, carefully engineered, to a mule track.
The scheme of Pyrenean roads, as it exists now, is, briefly, first: a couple of great lateral roads on the French side, which may be called the upper and the lower road; next, four roads traversing the chain (six if you count the roads along the sea-coast at either end, which I omit—the one goes by St. Jean de Luz, the other by the Pass of Lacleuse or La Perthuis); thirdly, a series of roads, numerous on the French side, rare on the Spanish, which penetrate the valleys but do not cross the chain, and end at a greater or less distance from the watershed.