Lothaire and the then reigning Comte d’Empories came to an arrangement in the tenth century whereby the hill above the town was to be fortified by the building of a château or mas. This was done; but the seaport never prospered greatly until the union of France and Roussillon, when its people, whose chief source of prosperity had been a contraband trade, took their proper place in the affairs of the day.
The National Convention subsequently formulated a decree that the “Banyulais ayant bien merité de la patrie,” and ordered that an obelisk be erected commemorative of the capitulation of the Spaniards. For long years this none too lovely monument was unbuilt,—“Banyuls est si loin de Paris,” said the habitant in explanation—but to-day it stands in all its ugliness on the quay by the waterside.
CHAPTER VII
THE CANIGOU AND ANDORRA
THERE is a section of the Pyrenees that may well be called “the unknown Pyrenees.” The main chain has been travelled, explored and exploited for long years, but the Canigou, lying between the rivers Tet and Tech, has only come to be known since half a dozen years ago when the French Alps Club built a châlet-hotel on the plateau of Cortalets. This is at an altitude of 2,200 metres, from which point it is a two hour and a half climb to the summit.
All the beauties of the main chain of the Pyrenees are here in this side-long spur just before it plunges its forefoot into the blue waters of the Mediterranean. It is majestic, and full of sweet flowering valleys stretching off northward and eastward. Unless one would conquer the Andes or the Himalayas he will find the Canigou, Puig, Campiardos, or Puigmal, from eight to ten thousand feet in height, all he will care to undertake without embracing mountaineering as a profession.
The great charm of the Canigou is its comparatively isolated grandeur; for the mountains slope down nearly to sea level, before they rise again and form the main chain.
A makeshift road runs up as far as the Club’s châlet, but walking or mule back are the only practicable means of approach. To-day it is all primitive and unspoiled, but some one in the neighbourhood has been to Switzerland and learned the rudiments of “exploitation” and every little while threatens a funicular railway—and a tea room.
In the châlet are twenty-five beds ready for occupancy, at prices ranging from a franc and a half to two francs and a half in summer. In winter the establishment is closed; but those venturesome spirits who would undertake the climb may get a key to the snow-buried door at Perpignan.
One may dispute the fact that Canigou is as fine as Mont Blanc, Mount McKinley or Popocatepetl, but its three thousand majestic metres of tree-grown height are quite as pleasing and varied in their outline as any other peak on earth.
The Savoyard says: “Ce n’est tout de même pas le Mont Blanc avec ses 4,800 mètres,” and you admit it, but one doesn’t size up a mountain for its mere mathematical valuation.