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The Loire is the longest river in France, and the only one of the four great rivers whose basin or watershed lies wholly within French territory. It moreover traverses eleven provinces. It rises in a fissure of granite rock at the foot of the Gerbier-de-Jonc, a volcanic cone in the mountains of the Vivarais, a hundred kilometres or more south of Lyons. In three kilometres, approximately two miles, the little torrent drops a thousand feet, after receiving to its arms a tiny affluent coming from the Croix de Monteuse.
For twelve kilometres the river twists and turns around the base of the Vivarais mountains, and finally enters a gorge between the rocks, and mingles with the waters of the little Lac d'Issarles, entering for the first time a flat lowland plain like that through which its course mostly runs.
The monument-crowned pinnacles of Le Puy and the inverted bowl of Puy-de-Dôme rise high above the plain and point the way to Roanne, where such activity as does actually take place upon the Loire begins.
Navigation, classed officially as "flottable," merely, has already begun at Vorey, just below Le Puy, but the traffic is insignificant.
Meantime the streams coming from the direction of St. Etienne and Lyons have been added to the Loire, but they do not much increase its bulk. St. Galmier, the source dear to patrons of tables d'hôte on account of its palatable mineral water, which is about the only decent drinking-water one can buy at a reasonable price, lies but a short distance away to the right.
At St. Rambert the plain of Forez is entered, and here the stream is enriched by numberless rivulets which make their way from various sources through a thickly wooded country.
From Roanne onward, the Canal Latéral keeps company with the Loire to Chatillon, not far from Orléans.
Before reaching Nevers, the Canal du Nivernais branches off to the left and joins the Loire with the Yonne at Auxerre. Daudet tells of the life of the Canal du Nivernais, in "La Belle Nivernaise," in a manner too convincingly graphic for any one else to attempt the task, in fiction or out of it. Like the Tartarin books, "La Belle Nivernaise" is distinctly local, and forms of itself an excellent guide to a little known and little visited region.
At Nevers the topography changes, or rather, the characteristics of the life of the country round about change, for the topography, so far as its profile is concerned, remains much the same for three-fourths the length of this great river. Nevers, La Charité, Sancerre, Gien, and Cosne follow in quick succession, all reminders of a historic past as vivid as it was varied.