[CHAPTER VI.]
vallée d'ossau—le hourat—the rio verde—eaux chaudes eaux bonnes—bielle—izeste—saccaze, the naturalist.
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"Salut Ossau, la montagnarde,
La Béarnaise, que Dieu garde!
Avec bonheur je te regarde,
Douce vallée!—et sur ma foy
Parmi tes sœurs que je desire,
De Leucate à Fontarable
Je te dis que la plus jolie
Ne peut se comparer à toi."
Ancienne Balade.
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On rather a cold morning, early in October, we set out from Pau for the Vallée d'Ossau; the road between the hills covered with vines of Jurançon. Gan and Gelos are extremely pretty. We passed a house which was pointed out to us as belonging to the Baron Bernadotte, nephew to the King of Sweden, who, being a native of Pau, divides the honours of the town with Henry IV. Formerly, in this spot stood a castle, where a singularly Arcadian custom prevailed; every shepherd of the Vallée d'Ossau who passed by that spot with his flock, was required to place a small branch of leaves in a large ring fixed on the portal. If their lords insisted on no heavier homage than this, their duty was not very severe.
We passed through Gan—a wretched-looking village, once of great importance; one of the thirteen towns of Béarn; originally surrounded by walls and towers, of which nothing now remains except a few stones, which have served to build the houses. A tourelle is shown in the place as having formed part of the house of Marca, the historian of Béarn: there is an inscription on it, and arms, with the date of 1635.
The further we advanced the more the scenery improved, and as we followed the course of the beautiful, rapid, and noisy river Nès, which went foaming over its shallow, stony bed, making snowy cascades at every step, we were delighted with the gambols of that most beautiful of mountain-torrents, which appears to descend a series of marble stairs of extraordinary extent, rushing and leaping along the solitary gorge like a wild child at play.
The village of Sévignac opens the Vallée d'Ossau; and a host of villages, and a wide spread of pasture-land, with high mountains stretching far away into the distance, were before us. We breakfasted at Louvie, and then continued our route, the road becoming wilder, and having more character, than hitherto; we seemed now to have entered the gorges, and to be really approaching the great mountains, which, in strange and picturesque shapes, rose up in all directions around us. The most striking object here, is an isolated mount, on the summit of which stand the ruins of a feudal tower, called Castel Jaloux, built by Gaston Phoebus, for the convenience of holding the assemblies of Ossau, there to meet the viscounts who were independent of the kingdom of Béarn. The village of Castets is at the base of the rock, concealed amidst thick foliage: this situation is charming, in the midst of gigantic steeps and rich valleys, with the Gave foaming at its foot.
Laruns, the chief town of the canton, is a long, straggling town, almost Swiss in the construction of its houses: it has a small antique church, where there is a bénitier, curiously ornamented with figures of syrens: this is a favourite ornament in this part of the world, difficult to be explained, unless it is intended to represent some water-nymphs of the different Gaves, for it is too far from the sea to have any allusion to an ocean spirit. The road divides here, one route leading to the Eaux Bonnes, the other to the Eaux Chaudes; we proposed visiting the former on our way back, our intention being, if possible, to attempt the ascent of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau.