On its marbled circumference are traced nearly three hundred topographical features of the surrounding landscape, and a study of this well-thought-out affair is most interesting to any traveller with a thought above a table d’hôte. Throughout the region of the Pyrenees these circular “tables d’orientation,” with the marked outlines of all the surrounding landscape, are to be found on many vantage grounds. The principal ones are:—
On the Ramparts of the Château de Pau.
The Col d’Aspin.
The Col de Riou.
Platform of the Tour Massey at Tarbes.
Platform de Mouguerre.
Summit of the Pic du Midi.
Summit of the Cabaliros.
Summit of the Canigou.
Over the Col de Riou and down into the Gave de Pau again, and one comes to Luz. Luz is curiously and delightfully situated in a triangular basin formed by the water-courses of the Gave de Pau and the Gave de Barèges. Practically Luz is a ville ancienne and a ville moderne, the older portion being by far the most interesting, though there is no squalor or unusual picturesqueness. Civic improvements have straightened out crooked streets and razed tottering house fronts and thus spoiled the picture of mediævalism such as artists—and most others—love.