A Book of the Pyrenees

by S. Baring-Gould

The Cirque de Troumousse is above Héas. It is less remarkable than that of Gavarnie, though more extensive. It lacks the series of bold escarpments capped with glacier that form the distinguishing feature of the latter.

Above Gèdre, on the route to Gavarnie is a chaos, an agglomeration of fallen gneiss rocks from above; it is as if half a mountain had been precipitated into the valley from the Coumélie. Farther up may be seen a cleft rock, between the jaws of which hangs a mass, arrested there on its way down. The scenery becomes grander, but at the same time more dreary; the cirque opens before one, and we reach the village of Gavarnie.

The Cirque of Gavarnie has been already briefly described in my first chapter. To see it to advantage it should be visited in spring or early summer, when, from the melting of the snows, the great fall is full of water. It resembles the Staubbach only in the long drop of the stream and its resolution into fine spray. The setting of it is immeasurably superior to that of the famous Swiss fall. The height is 1385 feet, and is the highest in Europe, except one or two in Norway. If there be plenty of water it shoots down in one single column; but in summer it descends in two leaps. This is not the only cascade in the cirque; down every part of the huge curve threads of water drop into the basin. Towards the end of a hot summer many of these fail, and the great cascade is much reduced.

The first sight of the cirque is disappointing. There is nothing by which to scale it, and the appearance is only one of size, gloom, and cold. The bottom of the great bowl is heaped with rubble brought down from above. But at Gavarnie we are four miles from the foot of the cirque, and it looks as if not more than a quarter of an hour’s stroll was required to reach it. A thousand feet seems to be no more than a hundred, and the huge rocks hurled down from above are reduced in appearance to mere pebbles.

A stone dropped from the top of the Pic du Marboré, 10,600 feet, will fall 5500 feet into the cirque. In the church of Gavarnie are to be seen twelve skulls, held to have belonged to the Templars of Luz, who fled hither, and were here executed. A story is current that on the last night of the year, just before the clock strikes midnight, a Templar clothed in white, and with a red cross on his breast, enters the church at Gavarnie and cries, “Ho! who are there that will stand up and fight for the temple?” Whereupon one skull after another replies, “None; the temple is destroyed.” This white-robed Templar is Du Molay, the Grand Master, burned alive at Paris, with four other great dignitaries of the Order. King Philip the Fair coveted the great possessions of the Knights, and Pope Clement V had obtained the tiara by the help of the King; the price he paid for it was the dissolution of the Order, and the sacrifice of the Knights to torture and death. In the midst of the fire Du Molay cried out, “Clement, iniquitous and cruel judge, I summon thee within forty days to meet me before the throne of God.” According to some accounts he cited the King as well. Du Molay was burnt on 18 March, 1314; on 30 April, Clement was dead; and Philip the Fair on 29 November, in the same year.

The road over the pass of the Tourmalet branches off below Luz and ascends the desolate Valley of Bastan, ravaged by avalanches, to Barèges, a long street of hotels and lodging-houses closed during the winter. The baths here have been famous for long. The waters impregnated with sulphate of soda are the most powerful in the Pyrenees, and are charged with a peculiar nitrogenous substance called glairine that renders them oily to the touch. Their great use is for the healing of wounds and ulcers, and for scrofula. They have been employed for a military hospital since 1760. Barèges stands over 5000 feet above the sea, yet it is more bleak and inhospitable in appearance than many a town such as Briançon, little short of it in altitude. A covered tank for bathers was erected here in 1550; and hither, to take advantage of the waters, came Mme. de Maintenon, in 1677 with the young Duke of Maine.

The scourge of the place has been the avalanches, mainly those that shoot down by four great paths from the Labas Blancs, the mountain to the north, and which bring the town or village, call it which you will, under 100,000 cubic feet of snow. Extensive works have been undertaken to prevent the complete destruction of the houses, baths, and hospitals. Huge barriers of masonry 40 feet high and 46 feet long by 18 feet wide have been drawn across the ravine of Le Theil, and extensive replanting of the sides with pines has reduced the danger; but it will take many years of growth before the trees attain a sufficient height to be able to completely screen the place. The ravine of Le Theil may be said to have been already rendered innocuous; but that of Midaou caused disaster in July, 1897, when an avalanche carried away a portion of the baths, and choked the valley as far as to Luz. Since 1900, however, this trough of the avalanche has been blocked.

On the left bank also the work has been energetically pursued to arrest the fall of torrents of snow from the Pic d’Ayré, where the avalanche path is formed of glacial clay, hard as cement when dry, but in time of rain forming a flood of mud falling 1200 feet. Here replanting has proved efficacious, and barriers of masonry have been erected, that have served the purpose intended. This work was begun in 1862, and since 1869 no lava-like flood of mud has reached the Valley of Bastan. The inspector Dellon says:—

“The regulation of the system of the torrents of Rieulet and Bayet, the fixing of the glacial mud which constitutes to a large extent the banks of these torrents, and the foot of the slope of the mountains facing Barèges, the attenuation of the avalanches, so dangerous to this thermal station, all prove the efficacy of the means adopted. The contrast is most striking between the districts within the range of these torrents acquired by the State, and such others as have not, and still belong to the communes. In these latter the devastation increases every year, annually exposing the route nationale and the Bastan to ever magnifying dangers of obstruction.”

All the valley might be saved and reclaimed, but everywhere, here as elsewhere, the Board of Forestation meets with sullen and stubborn opposition from the peasantry.