Costumes and dress are rough and simple and of heavy woollens, clipped from the sheep and woven on the spot. Public officers, the few representatives of officialdom who exist, alone make any pretence at following the fashions. The women occupy a very subordinate position in public affairs. They may not be present at receptions and functions and not even at mass when it is said by the bishop. Crime is infrequent, and simple, light punishments alone are inflicted. Things are not so uncivilized in Andorra as one might think!
In need all men may be called upon to serve as soldiers, and each head of a family must have a rifle and ball at hand at all times. In other words, he must be able to protect himself against marauders. This does away with the necessity of a large standing police force.
Commerce and industry are free of all taxation in Andorra, and customs dues apply on but few articles. For this reason there is not a very heavy tax on a people who are mostly cultivators and graziers.
There is little manufacturing industry, as might be supposed, and what is made—save by hand and in single examples—is of the most simple character. “Made in Germany” or “Fabriqué en Belgique” are the marks one sees on most of the common manufactured articles. “Those terrible Germans!” is a trite, but true saying.
The Andorrans are a simple, proud, gullible people, who live to-day in the past, of the past and for the past; “Les vallées et souverainetés de l’Andorre” are to them to-day just what they always were—a little world of their own.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HIGH VALLEY OF THE AUDE
THE Aude, rising close under the crest of the Pyrenees, flows down to the Mediterranean between Narbonne and Béziers. It is one of the daintiest mountain streams imaginable as it flows down through the Gorges de St. Georges and by Axat and Quillan to Carcassonne, and the following simple lines by Auguste Baluffe describe it well.
“Dans le fond des bleus horizons,
Les villages ont des maisons
Toutes blanches,
Que l’on aperçoit à travers
Les bois, formant des rideaux verts
De leurs branches.”
At Carcassonne the Aude joins that natural waterway of the Pyrenees, the Garonne, through the Canal du Midi. This great Canal-de-Deux-Mers, as it is often called, connecting with the Garonne at Toulouse, joins the Mediterranean at the Golfe des Lions, with the Atlantic at the Golfe de Gascogne, and serves in its course Carcassonne, Narbonne and Béziers. The Canal du Midi was one of the marvels of its time when built (1668), though it has since been superseded by many others. It was one of the first masterpieces of the French engineers, and may have been the inspiration of De Lesseps in later years.
Boileau in his “Epitre au Roi,” said:—