A Book of the Cevennes

by S. Baring-Gould

The desolate tableland over which one travels to reach Mézenc is well described by Georges Sand in her novel Le Marquis de Villemer, and the backward and unprogressive character of the inhabitants has not altered since her time.

The carriage is left at the village of Les Estables, a poor and dirty place, where the natives shiver through half the year. Their condition is indeed miserable. Their cottages, built of lava-blocks, are thatched with straw, or roofed with clinkstone (phonolith). The street is filthy, encumbered with stones and deep in slime. Were it not for the lace industry and for the violet harvest, the place would be deserted. The cattle are lean and poor in quality, from lack of lime in the soil; the harvests ripen so late that when gathered in the crops are frequently spoilt.

At Ste. Eulalie, on the Sunday after the 12th July, is held the Foire aux Violettes. To that stream the cottagers from Les Estables and all the hamlets about Mézenc, laden with baskets heaped up with violets, and not violets only, but also the thousand aromatic herbs that luxuriate in this desolate region. The violets of Mézenc are so numerous and so large that in spring the mountain is arrayed in royal purple. The Mézenc violet is, moreover, more intense in colour than that of the Alps, and it retains its colour longer when dried. To this fair come the merchants of Lyons, Marseilles, and Nîmes. Every kind of simple used by druggists, every herb used for the production of essences, is there to be procured. But the violet is the staple of the trade. The air is scented with it, but the sweetness cannot neutralise the bad savour of the village—that defies suppression.

The flowers are gathered at the end of May by women and children. Then they are dried in the hayloft, never allowed so to do in the sun. And when we buy the crystallised violet at Gunters, or try the withered flowers as a cure for cancer, ten to one but we are employing the produce of Mézenc, and putting a few petits sous into the pockets of those leading a hard life in this southern Siberia.

The flora of Mézenc is subalpine, with many gaps. One rare plant alone is found on it, the Senecio leucophyllus, that flowers in August and September, and is found also on the Pyrenees at heights between 3,000 and 6,000 feet. It resembles the Senecio maritimus that grows on the Mediterranean littoral, which is cultivated in our gardens as an ornamental plant on account of its imbricated and silvery foliage.

Oaks here are low-growing and yield acorns once in six years, and beech once in four, whereas the service tree gives its fruit every year. This arrest of oak and beech is due to spring frosts when the trees are in flower, and an early winter forbids the glands and mast to ripen even when formed.

It is quite easy to "do" Mézenc from Le Puy in a day. That admirable institution, the Syndicat d'Initiative, provides a conveyance, starting from the capital every Sunday morning in summer at 5 a.m., and from Estables the mountain may be climbed in an hour and a half. The conveyance is back at Le Puy at 10 p.m., and the cost of a seat is but five francs. But if the visitor desires to extend his expedition, he should seek the Gerbier de Jonc and the lake of Issarley and return by Le Monastier. But this will occupy two days.

The Gerbier de Jonc is a conical clinkstone mountain, not so high as the Mézenc, but commanding quite as fine a prospect. It has been compared not inaptly to a pine cone, bristling with foils of phonolith that make the ascent by no means easy. Indeed, from the source of the Loire at its foot it is but a climb of 530 feet, but the dislocation of the rock and the steepness make the climb somewhat laborious.