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Here it is the second age of nature. The earth conceals the rocks, the mosses clothe the earth, the rounded undulations of the upheaved soil resemble the tired waves an hour after the tempest. Luchon is not far from the plains; its mountains are the last billows of the subterranean storm which lifted the Pyrenees; distance has diminished their violence, tempered their grandeur, and softened their steeps.
Toward evening we descended into the hollow where the goats were passing. A spring was running there, caught in the hollowed trunks of trees which answered for watering-troughs to the herds. It is a delicious pleasure after a day’s tramp to bathe hands and lips in the cold fountain. Its sound on this solitary plateau was charming. The water trickled through the wood, among the stones, and everywhere that it glided over the blackened earth the sun covered it with splendor. Lines of reeds marked its track to the brink of the pool. Herdsman and animals had gone down; it was the sole inhabitant of this abandoned field. Was it not singular to meet with a marsh at the height of five thousand feet?
V.
Toward the south the river becomes a torrent. Half a league from Luchon it is swallowed up in a deep defile of red rocks, many of which have fallen; the bed is choked with blocks; the two walls of rock close together in the north, and the dammed-up water roars to get out of its prison; but the trees grow in the crevices, and along the wall the white flowers of the bramble hang in locks.
