A Book of the Cevennes

by S. Baring-Gould

Bramabiau

The exploration of Bramabiau was accomplished in June, 1888, by M. Martel and his guides. They attempted first to penetrate by the opening through which the Bonheur leaps into light again, but found that the gallery consisted of a series of ascents, with cascades and pools; and although by wading and with ladders they succeeded in reaching a considerable distance, they could not attain to the point where the stream begins to dive underground. On the following day these indefatigable explorers attacked the tunnel from above, where the Bonheur enters, and were able to descend to the point reached on the preceding day, and further to pursue their course till they came out where the stream issues, a distance as the crow flies of a kilometre.

In January, 1888, a man of Camprieu disappeared, and there was reason to suspect he had committed suicide. As his body could not be found, it was supposed that he had flung himself down the abyss of the Bonheur; and, in fact, when M. Martel searched the cavern he found the body wedged into a spot where, in the cave itself, the stream disappears underground for a while, to again reappear and continue its subterranean course. It goes through these vagaries twice, and perpetrates seven cascades.

"To avoid repetitions," says M. Martel in his account of the exploration, "I will say no more of the magic of magnesium light under vaults lofty as Gothic naves; I must only ask of the reader to figure, if he can in the profound night of these caverns, the deafening roar of the falling water, the dispersion of the party groping in all directions for passages, the flicker of the feeble candles, the distant calls and signals, whistles, and horns, the cords strained, and the ladders set up against steep walls, our silhouettes magnified against the walls in shadows, and profiled against the boiling torrent, all under vaults 150 feet high and at the extremity of galleries of 300 feet.

"One portion of our course was effected only by a series of gymnastics, according to the width of the gallery that varied from three feet to ten feet, according to how far the ledges were practicable—so we crept along, a few yards above the torrent, clinging to the rock with our fingers, our breasts against the wall, or else wading in the water up to our armpits. Often our candles went out, caused by our rapid movements, or by the rush of wind that swept through the tunnel; the drip of our soaked clothes, the difficulty of communication amidst the roar of the falling water, increased our difficulties tenfold."

Where the Bonheur escapes into daylight there is an immense rift in the rocks, and out of this the stream leaps in a fall of some dignity. Up to 1888 it was not thought possible that the Bonheur could be the stream that issued at Bramabiau, for anything thrown in above never issued below. But the exploration by M. Martel solved the mystery. The stream sinks, filters through the rock, leaving above that which is thrown in, and issues limpid at the cascade that rushes from the entrance.

The descent of the Aigoual on the side of Valleraugue is by a thousand steps hewn in granite and schist, and at the bottom of this is the vegetable garden of the officials of the Observatory.

Valleraugue lies at the bottom of a cirque of mountains at the confluence of the rivers of the Mallet and the Clareau, and it is after their marriage that the united streams assume the name of Hérault. The descent from the Aigoual to Valleraugue occupies two hours, the ascent by the carriage road takes seven. Valleraugue is a busy factory town; the population is mainly engaged in silk spinning and weaving. The place is almost wholly Protestant. This valley of the Hérault as far as Ganges is one of the most active in silk industry in the Cévennes. The vegetation is wholly southern; the hillsides disposed in terraces are planted with vines and mulberries; and ilexes abound, providing the tanneries with their bark. "This valley," says Ardouin Dumazet, "is a synthesis of all the somewhat severe graces of the Cevenol land." The Roman road over l'Hospitalet has been already referred to. It runs from Avignon to Anduze and then ascends the crest above the Gardon, and passing under Barre stretches away to Florac. Barre itself occupies a Gallo-Roman oppidum, of which traces remain, and throughout the neighbourhood relics of the Roman tenure of the land are found. After the Col d'Aire de Côte ensues a series of frightful cirques, whose vertical walls crumble away by degrees under the action of the weather. The flanks of the mountain are profoundly breached, and form precipices. The nature of the rock contributes to augment the savagery of the region. It is composed of schists steeply inclined towards the north, and penetrated by numerous veins of porphyry that metamorphized them. Here are needles, here masses of schist support tables of limestone. A little triangular plateau, a lost islet of the Causse, succeeds to the schists. This is the Can de l'Hospitalet.