From time immemorial, artificial irrigation has been carried on in the Vallée d'Aspe, and most beautiful is the appearance of the brilliantly green pastures, intersected by miniature canals in every direction; the sweet pastoral landscape framed by mountain peaks of loveliest colour and majestic shape. These well-watered grasslands produce two or even three crops a year; the second, or regain as it is called, was being got in early in September, and harvest having taken place early, clover was already springing up on the cleared cornfields. Everywhere men and women were afield making hay or scattering manure on the meadows, the latter sometimes being done with the hands.
All these small farmers keep donkeys and mules, and on market-days the roads are alive with cavalcades; the men wearing gay waist-sashes, flat cloth caps, or berets, the women coloured kerchiefs. The type is uniform—medium stature, spareness, dark eyes and hair, and olive complexion predominating. Within the last thirty years the general health and physique have immensely improved, owing to better food and wholesomer dwellings. Goître and other maladies arising from insufficient diet have disappeared. Epidemics, I was assured, seldom work havoc in this valley; and though much remains to be done in the way of drainage and sanitation, the villages have a clean, cheerful look.
The last ailment that would occur to us proves most fatal to those hardy country folks. They are very neglectful of their health, and as the changes of temperature are rapid and sudden, the chief mortality arises from inflammation of the lungs. It is difficult indeed to defend oneself against so variable a climate. On my arrival the heat was tropical. Twelve hours later I should have rejoiced in a fire. Dangerous, too, is the delicious hour after sunset, when mist rises from the valley, whilst yet the purple and golden glow on the peaks above tempts us to linger abroad.
The scenery is grandiose and most beautiful. Above the white-walled, grey-roofed villages and townlings scattered about the open, rise sharp-pointed green hills or monticules, one gently overtopping the other; surmounting these, lofty barren peaks, recalling the volcanic chains of Auvergne, the highest snow-capped point twice the altitude of the Puy de Dôme, two-thirds that of Mont Blanc.
Whichever way we go we find delightful scenery. Hidden behind the folded hills, approached by lovely little glades and winding bridle-path, tosses and foams the Gave d'Aspe, its banks thickly set with willow and salicornia, its solitary coves inviting the bather. The witchery of these mountain streams grows upon us in the Pyrenees. We hunger for the music of their cascades when far away. The sun-lit, snow-lit peaks, towering into the brilliant blue heavens, are not deserted as they appear. Shepherd farmers throughout the summer dwell in huts here, and welcome visitors with great affability.
Let me narrate a fact interesting alike to the naturalist and meteorologist. On the 7th September, 1891, the heat on one of these summits, nine thousand feet above the sea-level, was so intense that a little flock of sheep were seen literally hugging the snow, laying their faces against the cool masses, huddled about them, as shivering mortals round a fire in winter. And, a little way off, the eye-witnesses of this strange scene gathered deep blue irises in full bloom.
[Illustration: ORCUM]
On the lower slopes the farmers leave their horses to graze, giving them a look from time to time. One beautiful young horse lost its life just before my arrival, unwarily approaching a precipitous incline. As a rule accidents are very rare.
The izard or Pyrenean chamois, although hunted as game, is not yet a survival here, nor the eagle and bear, the latter only making its appearance in winter-time.
Tent-life in these mountain-sides is quite safe and practicable. Who can say? A generation hence and these magnificent Alps may be tunnelled by railways, crowned by monster hotels, peopled from July to October with tourists in search of disappointments.