A Book of the Cevennes

by S. Baring-Gould

Le Pont de l'Arc

Before reaching the Pont de l'Arc the cañon begins; rocky walls, grey, yellow, and fawn colour, stand up above the river, leaving no space between them but for the river; the road has been cut in cornice in the rock above it. The caves of the Bear, the Temple, and the Pulpit are but some of the thousands that open in cliffs that are honeycombed with them. The two latter were employed for meetings during the time of the revolt of the Camisards. The Prophetess Isabeau, clothed in white and wearing a gold circlet on her head, here went into ecstasies and harangued the insurgents, bidding them slay and spare none of the Philistines, and promising to them invulnerability.

A little further down is the Goule de Foussoubie, a stream that issues from the rocks just above the level of the Ardèche. The water that feeds it consists of seven rills on the Causse, three miles distant, that plunge into a pot-hole and disappear. Various attempts have been made to follow the underground course, but all have failed and one ended fatally. In dry weather very little water issues from the Goule, but it comes forth in volumes after a storm.

The boat shoots under the Pont de l'Arc; the rock that has been pierced is ninety feet thick. As already said, a fortress stood above, destroyed by Louis XIII., on a bit of rising ground on the left bank. There are still remains of the octagonal tower and enclosing wall and of some of the chambers tenanted by the garrison. But it was an oppidum, a place of refuge from prehistoric times, as early stone weapons, and later Gallo-Roman ware, have been found there, as well as accumulations of pebbles to serve as sling-stones. The road down the river ends at Chames, where is a boatman, who lives by fishing and ferrying over any of the inhabitants of S. Remèze or la Bastide de Verac, who desire to cross. A stream issues from a grotto; it is the Fontaine de Vamale. The cave is apparently closed at the end, but on entering one finds on the right hand an opening into a valley, giving access to a terrace above the river, lighted by the setting sun, in which luxuriate lavender, Judas trees, evergreen dwarf oaks, juniper, and wild asparagus. This tiny valley is bounded on the west by a lofty calcareous wall in which is a rent, and a narrow path leads up this gap among bushes to the top of the plateau. It is by this track that the inhabitants of Vic descend and ascend before or after crossing the river.

Hard by is a natural cave on the right bank, partly closed by a wall, so overgrown with ivy that were it not pointed out one might pass without discovering that man built himself a residence here. This is called the Castle of Ebbo, and the tradition is current that the Templars of La Madeleine fled to it and hid there when sentence had gone forth against them by Philip the Fair in 1312; but it was probably a post that belonged to the Seigneur of Verac to watch his fisheries.

Chames is a little hamlet on the left bank of the Ardèche, where the rocks fall back and allow of slopes on which can grow olive trees, vines, plums, and almonds. The water is here still and seems transformed to a mirror, so that from the opposite side, that of the Castle of Ebbo, when the sun is full on the white cottages and gleaming limestone rocks, they as well as the fruit trees are reflected with intensity in the glassy surface.

The Rock of the Five Windows seems to block the way. Below Chames the river bends around a peninsula which is called the Pas du Mousse, so called in satire, for no moss grows there or can grow; it is all rubble brought down and deposited there by the river. A rock shooting up some eighty or ninety feet to a sharp point and pierced at bottom is called the Needle, and the cave is its eye. A little further down is the Grotto of Oustalas in the face of a cliff above a narrow meadow, with trees and a farmhouse and sheds. In order to reach the entry, that is like a giant's mouth yawning, steps have been cut in the rock; so also within to reach portions of the cave that have been employed as chambers. There are remains of a wall that formerly closed the mouth, and this cave was undoubtedly inhabited at some time, but when cannot be said. One can see the notches in the wall for beams of a roof, and recesses employed as cupboards.

As we continue our descent, the heights of the sheer walls full of holes are as slices of Gruyère cheese, streaked here black, there flaming red, then of a ghastly white, now forming into needles, then with their crests riddled as though the walls of a ruined castle pierced with windows. Evergreen oaks, the spiky-leafed kermes, bursts of flame from yellow broom, flashes of pink when the Judas tree is in bloom; not a house, not a field—all silent, the only sound the roar of the water over a rapid. The canoe dances, bounds, shoots; by a skilful turn of the oar avoids a fang of rock, escapes a huge boulder, darts into still water, where the boatman bails out that which has poured over the gunwale, for it is over your ankles. Then, again, the growl of another rapid, more swinging down between rocks in races of water green as grass, then gliding over shallow portions where we can see the stones and gravel at the bottom and the fish darting; then over a depression, the water bottle-green, too deep for the sunlight to penetrate, close under an overhanging cliff.