While the mistress of the hotel was preparing what we later pronounced a most excellent meal, mine host was telling me surprising things in the dining-room, to which one gained access through a fine old-fashioned kitchen. With one of Taride's large scale maps before me, whereon was shown a "national road" right through the gorges of the Tarn to Millau, I asked for some particulars of the route, and was smilingly informed that it did not yet exist.
"But it is here, shown by a thick red line, on this map."
"Quite so, m'sieu; many cyclists come here with a map like that and think they can cycle all the way. But there is no road as yet, though in five years or six there will be one. The only way to descend the Tarn from here to Le Rozier is in a barque."
Now, experience has made me doubtful of anything a hotel-keeper in a tourist resort will tell you about boats and coaches, for you never know to what extent he is financially interested in the matter, and he of the Hôtel de Paris was avowedly the agent of the company to whom belong the boats used for the descent of the river. Although his hotel had a modern and well-appointed annexe—token of the growing popularity of the place where hotels are rapidly increasing—in person he resembled a brigand grown stout with easeful days, and one naturally grew more suspicious when he protested that it would not make the difference of a sou to him whether we went by boat or toiled ourselves to death across the mountains. A good friend at Florac—none other than the Free Church minister—had also assured us there was no road beyond Ste. Enimie, but that the boat charges were not dear. "Nor are they," said the hotel-keeper; "it is only thirty-six francs (thirty shillings) all the way, which is very cheap." We were unable to see eye to eye with him then, but subsequently came round to his opinion when we knew how much labour and skill could be purchased for this modest outlay.
IV.
You must know that the Tarn and its ways are not to be measured by the ordinary experiences of holiday travel. At seven o'clock in the morning you wake and breakfast without loss of time, in order to set out without delay and reach Le Rozier, thirty miles to the south, in time for six o'clock dinner. On the beach, close by the hotel, lie a number of flat-bottomed barques, rudely constructed affairs, exactly similar to fishing-punts used in shallow English waters. A plank of wood with a back to it, and covered with a loose cushion, is laid athwart the primitive craft, and here you take your seat. It is possible, I believe, for six passengers to be carried, but personally I should be loath to trust myself in such a boat with more than four, for two boatmen are necessary to each punt. The charge is for the boat irrespective of numbers, so that we might have had two more in ours without adding to the cost, but our bicycles helped us to square matters. Our boatmen were rough, half-shaven fellows, and he who took his place at the stern seemed to have been drinking unnecessarily early in the morning. But both knew their business thoroughly, and were alive to every current and whirlpool in the river.
Their system of navigation is at once simple and effective, the only possible method of using the water-way. Armed with a strong pole, they stand, the one in front and the other behind, and allow the barque to glide down the swift current of the river, which runs, as I should judge, at six or eight miles an hour. Its course is broken up by innumerable gravel beds and rocky snags, and while we seem to be on the very instant of dashing into a seething whirlpool one of the boatmen will, with admirable precision, jab his pole into a hidden gravel bank and thrust the boat once more into the main current. Beautiful was it to watch how skilfully the men made use of this current, and that, guiding the frail craft straight into what seemed a perilous swirl of breakers, only that they might avail themselves of a different current resulting therefrom, and pilot us into a quiet pool by the beach on the very lip of a thundering weir.
THE CHATEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN