With such knowledge of their natural history, it was with feelings of no ordinary interest that our young hunters turned their faces towards that vast serried rampart that separates the land of the Gaul from the country of the Iberian.
It was by the Val d’Ossau, literally the “valley of the bear,” that they made their approach to the mountains,—that valley celebrated as the residence and hunting-ground of Henri of Navarre: but now, in modern days, noted for its valuable thermal springs of Eaux Bonnes and Eaux Chaudes.
Up this mountain gorge went our heroes, their faces turned southward, and their eyes carried high up to the Pic du Midi d’Ossau—the mountain of the bears—an appropriate name for that beacon which was now directing their course.
Chapter Twenty.
An Odd Avalanche.
It is needless to say that the young Russians were delighted with the scenes that met their eyes in this fair southern land; and many of them are found faithfully described in their journal. They noted the picturesque dresses of the Pyrenean peasantry—so different from the eternal blue blouse which they had met in northern and central France. Here was worn the “barret,” of scarlet or white, the rich brown jacket and red sash of the peculiar costumes of the Basque and Béarnais peasants—a fine race of men, and one, too, historically noble. They saw carts drawn by large limbed cream-coloured oxen; and passed flocks of sheep and milch goats, tended by shepherds in picturesque dresses, and guarded by numbers of large Pyrenean dogs, whose chief duty was to protect their charge from the wolves. They saw men standing knee-deep in the water, surrounded by droves of pigs—the latter voluntarily submitting themselves to a process of washing, which resulted in producing over their skins a roseate, pinky appearance. It could be seen, too, that these pachyderms not only submitted voluntarily to the operation, but with a keen sense of enjoyment, as evinced by their contented grunts, and by their long tails, hanging “kinkless” while the large calabashes of water were poured over their backs. Perhaps to this careful management of the Pyrenean pigs are the beautiful “Bayonne hams” indebted for their celebrity.
Further on, our travellers passed a plumire, or “hen-bath.” Here was a tank—another thermal spring—in which the water was something more than “tepid.” In fact, it was almost on the boil; and yet in this tank a number of women were ducking their hens—not, as might be supposed, dead ones, in order to scald off their feathers, but live fowls, to rid them, as they said, of parasitical insects, and make them feel more comfortable! As the water was almost hot enough to parboil the poor birds, and as the women held them in it immersed to the necks, the comfort of the thing—so thought our travellers—was rather a doubtful question.
A little further on, another “custom” of the French Pyrenees came under the eyes of the party. Their ears were assailed by a singular medley of sounds, that rose from a little valley near the side of the road. On looking into the valley, they saw a crowd of forty or fifty women, all engaged in the same operation, which was that of flax-hackling. They learnt from this that; in the Pyrenean countries the women are the hacklers of flax; and that, instead of each staying at her own home to perform the operation, a large number of them meet together in some shaded spot, bringing their unhackled flax along with them; and there, amidst jesting and laughing and singing, the rough staple is reduced to its shining and silky fineness.