[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
Seen in the distance, the whole Gave is only a storm of silvered falls, intersected by splendid blue expanses. Fiery and joyful youth, useless and full of poetry; to-morrow that troubled wave will receive the filth of cities, and quays of stone will imprison its course by way of regulation.
III.
At the bottom of an ice-cold gorge rolls the cascade of Larresecq. It does not deserve its renown: it is a sort of dilapidated stairway with a dirty stream, lost among stones and shifting earth, awkwardly scrambling down it; but, in getting there, you pass by a profound steep-edged hollow, where the torrent rolls along swallowed up in the caverns it has scooped out, obstructed by the trunks of the trees that it uproots. Overhead, lordly oaks meet in arcades; the shrubs steep their roots far below in the turbulent stream. No sunlight penetrates into this dark ravine; the Gave pierces its way through, unseen and icy. At the outlet where it streams forth, you hear its hoarse outcry; it is struggling among the rocks that choke it: one might fancy-it a bull stricken by the pangs of death.
This valley is solitary and out of the world; it is without culture; no tourists, not even herdsmen are to be found; three or four cows, perhaps, are there, busily cropping the herbage. Other gorges at the sides of the road and in the mountain of Gourzy are still wilder. There the faint trace of an ancient pathway may with difficulty be made out.
