The Project Gutenberg eBook, In the Track of R. L. Stevenson and Elsewhere in Old France, by Sir John Alexander Hammerton

IN THE TRACK OF R. L. STEVENSON
AND
ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE

FRONTISPIECE

THE SCHELDT AT ANTWERP
"We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. In a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt."—R. L. S.

All rights reserved

In the Track of
R. L. STEVENSON
and
Elsewhere in Old France

by
J. A. HAMMERTON
AUTHOR OF "STEVENSONIANA"

WITH 92 ILLUSTRATIONS

BRISTOL
J. W. Arrowsmith, 11 Quay Street
LONDON
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited

First published in 1907

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Note

The travel-sketches that go to the making of this little book have appeared, in part only, in certain literary magazines, here and in America; but the greater part of the work is now printed for the first time.

Perhaps the author should anticipate a criticism that might arise from the sequence of the first two papers. Had he gone to work on a set plan, he would naturally have undertaken his pilgrimage along the route of An Inland Voyage before visiting the scenes of Travels with a Donkey, as the one book preceded the other in order of publication, An Inland Voyage, which appeared originally in 1878, being properly Stevenson's first book. Travels with a Donkey was published in 1879. But he has preferred to give precedence to "Through the Cevennes," as it was the first of his Stevenson travel-sketches to be written. Moreover, these little journeys were as much, indeed more affairs of personal pleasure than of copy-hunting, and when the author went forth on them he had no intention of making a book about his experiences—at least, not one deriving its chief interest from association with the memory of R. L. S. He has been counselled, however, to bring together these chapters and their accompanying photographs in this form, on the plea that the interest in Stevenson's French travels is still so considerable that any straightforward account of later journeys over the same ground cannot fail to have some attraction for the admirers of that great master of English prose.

The book is but a very little sheaf from the occasional writings of its author on his wayfarings in old France, where in the last ten years he has travelled many thousands of miles by road and rail between Maubeuge and Marseilles, from Belfort to Bordeaux, and always with undiminished interest among a people who are eminently lovable and amid scenes of infinite variety and charm.

"In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant Highland valley about fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent a month of fine days."—R. L. S.

The Public Well

LE MONASTIER

Through the Cevennes

I.

Someone has accounted for the charm of story-telling by the suggestion that the natural man imagines himself the hero of the tale he is reading, and squares this action or that with what he would suspect himself of doing in similar circumstances. The romancer who can best beguile his reader into this conceit of mind is likely to be the most popular. It seems to me that with books of travel this mental make-believe must also take place if the reader is to derive the full measure of entertainment from the narrative. With myself, at all events, it is so, and Hazlitt may be authority of sufficient weight to justify the thought that my own experience is not likely to be singular. To me the chief charm in reading a book of travel is this fanciful assumption of the rôle of the traveller; and so far does it condition my reading, that my readiest appetite is for a story of wayfaring in some quarter of the world where I may hope, not unreasonably, to look upon the scenes that have first engaged my mind's eye. Thus the adventures of a Mr. Savage Landor in Thibet, or a Sir Henry Stanley in innermost Africa, have less attraction for me than the narrative of a journey such as Elihu Burritt undertook in his famous walk from London to John o' Groats, or R. L. Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. I will grant you that the delicious literary style of Stevenson's book is its potent charm, but I am persuaded that others than myself have had their pleasure in the reading of it sensibly increased by the thought that some day they might witness Nature's originals of the landscapes which the master painter has depicted so deftly. It had long been a dream of mine to track his path through that romantic region of old France; not in the impudently emulative spirit of the throaty tenor who, hearing Mr. Edward Lloyd sing a new song, hastens to the music-seller's, resolved to practise it for his next "musical evening;" not, forsooth, to do again badly what had once been done well; but to travel the ground in the true pilgrim spirit of love for him who

"Here passed one day, nor came again—

A prince among the tribes of men."

Well did I know that many of the places with which I was familiar romantically through Stevenson's witchery of words were drab and dull enough in reality: enough for me that here in his pilgrim way that "blithe and rare spirit" had rested for a little while.

II.

The mountainous district of France to which, somewhat loosely, Stevenson applies the name Cevennes, lies along the western confines of Provence, and overlaps on several departments, chief of which are Ardèche, Lozère, Gard, and Herault. In many parts the villages and the people have far less in common with France and the French than Normandy and the Normans have with provincial England. Here in these mountain fastnesses and sheltered valleys the course of life has flowed along almost changeless for centuries, and here, too, we shall find much that is best in the romantic history and natural grandeur of France. Remote from Paris, and happily without the area of the "cheap trip" organisers, it is likely to remain for ever "off the beaten track."

In order to visit the Cevennes proper, the beautiful town of Mende would be the best starting-place. But since my purpose was to strike the trail of R. L. S., after some wanderings awheel northward of Clermont Ferrand, I approached the district from Le Puy, a town which so excellent a judge as Mr. Joseph Pennell has voted the most picturesque in Europe. Besides, Stevenson himself had often wandered through its quaint, unusual streets, while preparing for his memorable journey with immortal Modestine. "I decided on a sleeping sack," he says; "and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home." At that time the wanderer's "home" was in the mountain town of Le Monastier, some fifteen miles south-east of Le Puy, and there in the autumn of 1877 he spent "about a month of fine days," variously occupied in completing his New Arabian Nights and Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh, and conducting, with no little personal and general entertainment, the preliminaries of his projected journey through the Cevennes.

Where R. L. S. bought Modestine

"Our first interview (with Father Adam) was in the Monastier market place."—R. L. S.

"The bell of Monastier was just striking nine, as I descended the hill through the common."—R. L. S.

LE MONASTIER

III.

Together with a friend I had spent some rainy but memorable days at Le Puy in the summer of 1903, waiting for fair weather to advance on this little highland town, which lies secure away from railways and can only be reached by road. A bright morning in June saw us gliding on our wheels along the excellent route nationale that carries us thither on a long, easy gradient. The town seen at a distance is a mere huddle of grey houses stuck on the side of a bleak, treeless upland, and at close quarters it presents few allurements to the traveller. But it is typical of the mountain villages of France, and rich in the rugged, unspoilt character of its inhabitants. Stevenson tells us that it is "notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension." As regards the last of these features, the claim to distinction may readily be admitted, but for the rest they apply equally to scores of similar villages of the Cevennes. Certainly it is not notable for the variety or comfort of its hostelries, but I shall not regret our brief sojourn at the Hôtel de Chabrier.

Mine host was a worthy who will always have a corner in my memory. Like his establishment, his person was much the worse for wear. Lame of a leg, his feet shod with the tattered fragments of slippers such as the Scots describe with their untranslatable "bauchle," a pair of unclean heels peeping out through his stockings, he was the living advertisement of his frowsy inn, the ground floor of which, still bearing the legend Café, had been turned into a stable for oxen and lay open to the highway, a doubtful shelter for our bicycles. But withal, turning a shut eye to the kitchen as we passed, the cooking was excellent, and M. Chabrier assured us that he was renowned for game patties, which he sent to "all parts of Europe." The frank satisfaction with himself and his hotel he betrayed at every turn would have rejoiced the heart of so shrewd a student of character as R. L. S., and the chances are considerable that in that month of fine days, six-and-twenty years before, Stevenson may have gossiped with my friend of the greasy cap, for M. Chabrier was then, as now, making his guests welcome and baking his inimitable patties.

Did he know Stevenson? "Oui, oui, oui, M'sieu!" Stevenson was a writer of books who had spent some time there years ago. "Oui, oui, parfaitement, M'sieu Stevenzong." What a memory the man had, and how blithely he recalled the distant past!

"Then, of course, you must have known the noted village character Father Adam, who sold his donkey to this Scottish traveller?"

"Père Adam—oui, oui, oui—ah, non, non, je ne le connais pas," thus shuffling when I asked for some further details.

Mine host, who read the duty of an innkeeper to be the humouring of his patrons, could clearly supply me with the most surprising details of him whose footsteps I was tracing; but wishful not to lead him into temptation, I tested his evidence early in our talk by asking how many years had passed since he of whom we spoke had rested at Le Monastier, and whether he had patronised the Hôtel de Chabrier. He sagely scratched his head and racked his memory for a moment, with the result that this Scotsman—oh, he was sure he was a Scotsman—had stayed in that very hotel, and occupied bedroom number three, just four years back!

Obviously he was mistaken—not to put too fine a point upon it—and his cheerful avowal, in discussing another subject, that he was "a partisan of no religion," did not increase my faith in him. There were few Protestants in Le Monastier, he told me; but as I happened to know from my good friend the pasteur at Le Puy that the postmaster here, at least, stood by the reformed faith, and by that token might be supposed a man of some reading, I hoped there to find some knowledge of Stevenson, whose works and travels were familiar to the pasteur. Alas, "J' n' sais pas" was the burden of the postmaster's song.

To wander about the evil-smelling by-ways of Le Monastier, and observe the ancient crones busy at almost every door with their lace-making pillows, the bent and grizzled wood-choppers at work in open spaces, is to understand that, despite the lapse of more than a quarter of a century, there must be still alive hundreds of the village folk among whom Stevenson moved. But to find any who could recall him were the most hopeless of tasks; to identify the auberge, in the billiard-room of which "at the witching hour of dawn" he concluded the purchase of the donkey and administered brandy to its disconsolate seller, were equally impossible, and it was only left to the pilgrims to visit the market-place where Father Adam and his donkey were first encountered. So with the stink of the church, whose interior seemed to enclose the common sewer of the town, still lingering in our nostrils, we resumed our journey southward across the little river Gazeille, and headed uphill in the direction of St. Martin de Frugères, noting as we mounted on the other side of the valley the straggling lane down which Modestine, loaded with that wonderful sleeping sack and the paraphernalia of the most original of travellers, "tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait" to the ford across the river, giving as yet no hint of the troubles she had in store for "the green donkey driver."

CHÂTEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER

A drawing of this castle by Stevenson has been published.

GOUDET

"I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a valley."—R. L. S.

IV.

Along our road were several picturesque patches formed of rock and pine, and notably the romantic ruins of Château Neuf, with the little village clustered at their roots, which furnished subjects for Stevenson's block and pencil. Among his efforts as a limner there has also been published a sketch of his that gives with striking effect the far-reaching panorama of the volcanic mountain masses ranging westward from Le Monastier, a scene of wild and austere aspect. A little beyond Château Neuf we were wheeling on the same road where he urged with sinking heart the unwilling ass, and while still within sight of his starting-place, showing now like a scar on the far hillside, we passed by the filthy village of St. Victor, the neighbourhood where the greenness of the donkey driver was diminished by the advice of a peasant, who advocated thrashing and the use of the magic word "Proot."

The road grew wilder as we advanced towards St. Martin de Frugères, to which village the sentimental traveller came upon a Sabbath, and wrote of the "home feeling" the scene at the church brought over him—a sentiment difficult to appreciate as we wandered the filth-sodden streets and inspected the ugly little church, whitewashed within and stuffed with cheap symbols of a religion that is anathema to descendants of the Covenanters. The silvery Loire far below in the valley to our right, we sat at our ease astride our wiry steeds and sped cheerfully down the winding road to Goudet, feeling that if our mode of progress was less romantic than Stevenson's, it had compensations, for there was nothing that tempted us to tarry on our way.

"Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Château Beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between them." The scene was indeed one of singular beauty, the fertile fields and shaggy woods being in pleasant contrast to the barren country through which we had been moving. While still a mile away from the place, we foregathered with two peasants trudging uphill to St. Martin. I was glad to talk with them, as I desired to know which of the inns was the oldest. There were three, I was told, and the Café Rivet boasted the greatest age, the others being of recent birth, and none were good, my informant added, supposing that we intended to lodge for the night.

To the inn of M. Rivet we repaired, this being the only auberge that Goudet possessed at the time of Stevenson's visit. We found it one of the usual small plastered buildings, destitute of any quaintness, but cleaner than most, and sporting a large wooden tobacco pipe, crudely fashioned, by way of a sign. The old people who kept it were good Cevennol types, the woman wearing the curious headgear of the peasant folk, that resembles the tiny burlesque hats worn by musical clowns, and the man in every trait of dress and feature capable of passing for a country Scot. The couple were engagingly ignorant, and had never heard of Scotland, so it was no surprise to learn that they knew nothing of the famous son of that country who had once "hurried over his midday meal" in the dining-room where we were endeavouring to instruct Madame Rivet in the occult art of brewing tea. The Rivets had been four years in possession of the inn at the time of Stevenson's visit, and I should judge that the place had changed in no essential feature, though I missed the portrait of the host's nephew, Regis Senac, "Professor of Fencing and Champion of the Two Americas," that had entertained R. L. S. In return for our hints on tea-making, Madame Rivet charged us somewhat in excess of the usual tariff, and showed herself a veritable grippe-sous before giving change, by carefully reckoning the pieces of fly-blown sugar we had used, a little circumstance the cynic may claim as indicating a knowledge of the spirit if not the letter of Scotland.

V.

It was late in the afternoon when we continued our journey from Goudet, intent on reaching that evening the lake of Bouchet, which Stevenson had selected as the camping-place for the first night of his travels. The highway to Ussel is one of the most beautiful on the whole route, lying through a wide and deep glen, similar to many that exist in the Scottish Highlands, but again unlike all the latter in its numerous terraces, that bear eloquent witness to the industry of the country-folk. Every glen in this region of France is remarkable for this handiwork of the toilers, and the time was, before the advent of the sporting nawbobs, when in some parts of the Scottish Highlands similar rude stonework was common in the glens.

CHÂTEAU BEAUFORT AT GOUDET

SPIRE OF OUR LADY OF PRADELLES

To those who have not seen this work of the poor hill-folk it is not easy to convey a proper idea of its effect on the landscape. In these bleak mountain regions the sheltered valleys and ravines are best suited for growing the produce of the field, but as the soil is scant and the ground too often takes the shape of a very attenuated V, it is impossible to cultivate the slopes of the valley in their natural condition; so, with infinite labour and the patience of their stolid oxen, the Cevennols begin by building near the banks of the stream a loose stone wall, and filling in the space between that and the upward slope with a level bedding of earth. Thus step by step the hillside is brought into cultivation, and the terraces will be found wherever it is possible to rear a wall and carry up soil; indeed, they are to be seen in many places where it would have been thought impossible to prepare them, and out of reason to grow crops upon them. Often they are not so large as an ordinary bedroom in area, and such a space one may see under wheat. A hillside so terraced looks like a flight of giant steps, and it is a unique spectacle to children of the plains to descry, perhaps on the twentieth story, so to say, a team of oxen ploughing one of these eerie fields.

Along this road, where on our right the terraces climbed upward to the naked basalt, and on the other side of the valley, now flooded with a pale yellow sunset that picked out vividly children at play tending a scanty herd of cattle on the hillside, our donkey driver of old had some of his bitterest experiences with that thrawn jade Modestine. We, fortunate in our more docile mounts, made excellent progress to Ussel, after walking a good two miles on foot. The road beyond that town was lively with bullock wagons, heavily freighted with timber, and carts, mostly drawn by oxen, filled with women returning from the market at Costaros, a little town on the highway between Le Puy and Pradelles; bullocks and people—the former to our embarrassment—being greatly interested in the wheel-travellers of these seldom cycled roads.

When we arrived at Costaros, a town that is drab and dismal beyond words, the evening was wearing out under a leaden sky, promising the stragglers from the market good use for their bulky umbrellas, and we had still eight kilometres of rough country roads between us and the lake. Stevenson, in his heart-breaking struggles with the wayward ass, must have crossed the highway in the dark some little distance south of Costaros to have arrived at the village of Bouchet St. Nicolas, two miles beyond the lake; and as we urged forward in the rain, which now fell pitilessly and turned the darkling mountains into phantom masses smoking with mist, we could appreciate to the full the satisfaction with which he abandoned his quest of the lake and spent his first night snug at the inn of Bouchet. As we wheeled through the mud into the large village of Cayres no straggler appeared in the streets, that steamed like the back of a perspiring horse; but a carpenter at work in a windy shed assured us that the chalet on the shore of the lake had opened for the season, and in our dripping state we pressed thither uphill, feeling that two miles more in the rain could not worsen our condition. It was a weird and moving experience—the ghostly woods on the hillside, the tuneless tinkle of bells on unseen sheep, the hissing noise of our wheels on the moist earth—and our delight was great when we heard the lapse of water on our left. For nearly a mile the latter part of the road lay through a pine forest, where the ground had scarcely suffered from the rain, but the way was dark as in a tunnel, and glimpses of the lake between the trees showed the water almost vivid as steel by contrast.

VI.

"I had been told," says R. L. S., "that the neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout." He travelled in the days before the Syndicat d'Initiative du Velay, which I shall ever bless for its chalet by the Lac du Bouchet, whose lighted windows two weary pilgrims descried that night with joy unspeakable. Our arrival was the cause of no small commotion to the good folk who kept this two-storied wooden hostel. We were their first visitors of the season, and it was clear they hailed us with delight, despite the lateness of our arrival. Candles were soon alight in the dining-room upstairs, a fire of pine logs crackling in the open hearth, the housemaid briskly laying the table, the mistress bustling in the kitchen, doors banging cheerily in the dark night as the master went and came between outhouses, fetching food and firing for which our coming had suddenly raised the need. Our bedrooms opened off the dining-room, and were well if plainly furnished, the floors being sanded, and we had soon made shift to change our sodden garments as well as the limited resources of wheelmen's baggage would allow. Above all was the ceaseless noise of the lake, that seemed to lend a keener edge to the chilly air.

THE INN AT GOUDET

Where Stevenson was entertained by the old man and woman who still conduct it

We could scarcely believe it was the middle of June in the sunny south of France as we sat there shivering before the spluttering logs in a room "suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise." But a deep sense of comfort was supplied by the savoury smells that issued from the lower regions of the house. Our blessings on the head of the landlady and the whole French nation of cooks were sincere, as we regaled ourselves with an excellent meal of perch, omelet, mutton chops, raisins, almonds, cheese, lemonade and coffee. Imagine yourself arriving after nine o'clock at night at a lonely inn anywhere in the British Isles and faring thus! Moreover, the tenants of the chalet—the two women especially—were the most welcome of gossips, and the elder had a gift of dry humour that must have served her well in so wet a season. For three weeks it had rained steadily, she said, and she feared it was nothing short of the end of the world. When we told her that we had come from Le Monastier by way of St. Martin and Goudet, she was highly amused, and the younger, a rosy-faced wench, laughed heartily at the thought of anybody visiting such places. The lake of Bouchet—ah, that was another matter! Lakes were few in France, and this one well worth seeing. There were many lakes in Scotland! This was news to them, and they wondered why we had come so far to see this of Bouchet,—as we did ourselves when next morning we surveyed a tiny sheet of water almost circular, no more than two miles in circumference and quite featureless. It is simply the crater of an ancient volcano, and receives its water from some underground springs, there being no obvious source of supply. The lake, at an altitude of 4,000 feet, is higher than the surrounding country.

VII.

When we awoke in the morning and made ready for our departure the room was filled with the smoke of burning faggots, as though a censer had been swung in it by some early-rising acolyte; and the fire was again a welcome evidence of the landlady's thoughtfulness, for the outlook was grey and the early morning air bit shrewdly as the tooth of winter. Had the day promised better, we should have struck south from the lake to Bouchet St. Nicolas, at whose inn Stevenson uncorked a bottle of Beaujolais, inviting his host to join him in drinking it; and the innkeeper would take little, saying, "I am an amateur of such wine, do you see?—and I am capable of leaving you not enough." But the way thither is no better than a bullock-track, and several miles of similar road lie between Bouchet and the highway; so with a lowering sky ominous of more rain, and the knowledge that for three weeks the country had been soaking, we determined not to risk the bullock-track, and retraced our path to Costaros, passing on the way numerous ox wagons laden with timber.

The whole countryside was sweet with the morning incense of the faggot fires burning on many a cottage hearth. We overtook several young people driving cattle out to the pasture lands, and noting that without exception they carried umbrellas, our hopes of a good day were not high. But by the time we had reached the Gendarmerie, that stands at the crest of the hill on the high road out of Costaros, and were chatting with one of the officers whom we found idling at the door, the wind was rising and heaped masses of sombre clouds were being driven before it across the sky, though in their passage they disclosed no cheering hints of the blue behind. The gendarme admitted that the rising wind might be a good sign, but he was not very hopeful, and seemed to be more interested in meeting two travellers from a country he had never heard of than in discussing the weather. There are parts of France, especially Normandy and Brittany, where, to confess oneself a Scotsman is to be assured of a heartier welcome than would be accorded to one who came from England; but Stevenson's boast that "the happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotsman" counts for little in these highlands of the south, where few of the village-folk have ever heard of Scotland.

The road south of Costaros even on a bright summer day must appear bleak and cheerless, and that morning our chief desire was to move along it as quickly as we could. Yet, as we advanced, the scene was not without elements of beauty, and the mists that veiled the distant mountains gradually lifting, produced a transformation entirely pleasing, while ere long there were great and welcome rifts in the grey above, and patches of blue sky heartened us on our way. By the time we had reached the hamlet of La Sauvetat the sun was peeping out fitfully, and on our right it suddenly flooded with amber light a meadow, yellow with marigolds, where cows were pasturing, attended by a small girl who was playing at skipping-rope.

VIII.

We had again joined the track of R. L. S., where, now armed with a goad, he drove his donkey. "The perverse little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must even go with pricking." We had but to sit in our saddles, and wheel rapidly down the long and exhilarating descent to Pradelles, a very tumbledown village with a great shabby square lying at an angle of almost forty-five degrees. The town occupies a little corrie on the hillside, and the ground slopes quickly on the west to the river Allier, beyond which the country rises again in mighty undulations as far as the eye can reach. For all its slanternness—perhaps, in some degree, because of that—Pradelles is a place of interest, perched here at an altitude of 3,800 feet above sea-level.

OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE

"Just at the bridge at Langogne a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, 'D'où 'st-ce-que vous venez?'"—R. L. S.

THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET

"An amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire."—R. L. S.

More than any other place we saw in our journey, this old mountain town wears an unmistakable "foreign" appearance, and one walks its streets with the feeling that one is moving cautiously along the sloping roof of a house. Among its tumbledown buildings it still possesses fragments of considerable historic value, such as its ancient hospice, and a gateway from the top of which a village heroine killed some Huguenot heroes by throwing a stone at them while they were leading an assault against its walls. In the church of Nôtre Dame this episode in the history of the town is commemorated by a mural painting in vivid colours, the stone which the devout Catholic maiden is hurling at the devoted heads of the besiegers being large enough to warrant the assistance of a steam crane. The interior of the church is very quaint and unusual, and I am sorry that Stevenson did not yield to the urging of the landlady of the inn to visit Our Lady of Pradelles, "who performed many miracles, although she was of wood," for his impressions of the church could not have failed to be peculiarly piquant. The miraculous image of the virgin is a wooden doll, dressed in lace and set on the high altar. Pilgrims come in large numbers to its shrine every fifteenth of August; and one of the spirited paintings on the wall depicts the rescue of the idol from a burning of the church which, I should guess, took place about the time of the Revolution. Evidently the rescuers of Our Lady were not prepared to submit her to the crucial test a sister image at Le Puy survived—"burning for thirty-six hours without being consumed." Many and unfamiliar saints look down at us from the walls, and at the west end there is a loft such as might be seen in some of the very old Scottish churches, occupied at the time of our visit by a group of women, members no doubt of some pious confraternity.

R. L. S. has some picturesque notes on "The Beast of Gévaudan," whose trail he first struck at Pradelles; for we were now in the wild and uncultivated country of Gévaudan, "but recently disforested from terror of the wolves," whose grizzly exploits in the way of eating women and children seem to have engaged the imagination of our traveller. If the wolves have gone, they have left in their stead a flourishing progeny of wolf-like curs, who infest the highways and byways in extraordinary numbers, to the embarrassment of the wheelman.

IX.

From Pradelles to Langogne is a long and deep descent, and while walking our machines down an unrideable path, a young woman on a terrace near the road came forward to greet us, tripping unexpectedly over the tether of a goat, and landing softly and naturally on the ground, where after her moment's surprise she smilingly asked, "Où allez vous promener?" more usually our bucolic greeting than "D'où 'st-ce-que vous venez?" the latter "sacramental phrase," on which Stevenson remarks, being possibly suggested in his case by the odd appearance of the traveller and his beast of burden.

The bridge across the Allier at Langogne, where Stevenson met the "lassie of some seven or eight" who demanded whence he came, is now a crazy ruin, and a serviceable modern structure spans the river some little distance to the west of it. Near this place he camped for the night. He furnishes no information about his stay at Langogne, where, I should judge, he slept at one of the inns. The town must have altered greatly since he rested there, as it is now on the railway line to Villefort, and a considerable trade in coal seems to be carried on. It is also a popular summer resort, though one is at a loss to account for its attractions to holiday makers. Its church dates from the tenth century, and contains in a little chapel on the right, below the level of the nave, the image of Nôtre Dame de Tout-Pouvoir, which our landlady at the Cheval Blanc assured us was très vénérée, and the housemaid who conducted us thither took advantage of the occasion to tell her beads before the statue, keeping a roving eye on us as we wandered about the church.

X.

Stevenson's track now lay somewhat to the west of the course of the Allier, as he made for the little village of Cheylard l'Evêque, on the borders of the Forest of Mercoire, and in this stage of his journey he was more than usually faithful to his ideal of travel: "For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints." There was no need for his quitting the highway, since his further objective lay due south through the pleasant valley of the Allier. But his diversion among the by-ways was rich in adventure, and furnished him with material for perhaps his best chapter, "A Camp in the Dark." He had the good fortune to lose his way after nightfall, and to be forced to camp in a wood of pines in happy ignorance of his whereabouts. When next morning he did reach Cheylard he was fain to confess that "it seemed little worthy of all this searching." With a less keen appetite for losing ourselves in a maze of muddy bullock-tracks, we pressed forward through the fresh green valley to Luc, and here rejoined the path of our adventurer once more. We had the road almost to ourselves, and among the few wayfarers I recall was a travelling knife-grinder, whom we passed near Luc engaged in the agreeable task of preparing his dinner, the first course of which, potage au pain, was simmering in a sooty pot over a fire of twigs. A nation of gourmets, verily, when the humblest among them can thus maintain the national art in the hedges.

VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC

"Why anyone should desire to visit Luc is more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose."—R. L. S.

LA BASTIDE

"At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river."—R. L. S.

"Why anyone should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than my much inventing spirit can suppose." Thus our vagabond. But journeying at a more genial season of the year, we found the neighbourhood of Luc not devoid of beauty. The valley of the Allier is here broken into wide and picturesque gorges, and in many ways the scenery is reminiscent of Glen Coe, where Alan Breck and David Balfour dodged the redcoats. But late in September it would bear a very different aspect, and Stevenson tells us that "a more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines. The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady." There is now a railway station at Luc, the line running near the road all the way to La Bastide and as we continued southward that sunny June day, it was only the shrill noise of the crickets and the unusual quilt work of the diligently husbanded hillsides that told us we were not looking on a Perthshire landscape. In a sweet corner of the valley lies La Bastide, a drowsy little town despite its long connection with the railway, which existed even at the time of Stevenson's visit.

Here, he tells us, "I was directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardèche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows." Thither we shall follow his steps, more closely than usual, as the road is too steep to admit of our cycling. For some distance the route lies through a great forest of pines, but when the crest of the hill is gained a far-reaching prospect greets the eye. "The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine wood," writes R. L. S., "and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering in veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect; and, indeed, not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had walked in twisted footpaths in and out among the beeches and up and down upon the channelled slopes." Only when the snow comes down and mantles these abundant hills would this description not apply. It is a perfect picture of what we saw. Presently we noted with no small satisfaction the white statue of the Virgin, which, standing by the highway at a point where a side road strikes northward through the pines, "directed the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows." He describes the pine wood as "a young plantation," but in the intervening years the trees have grown into a mighty forest, dark and mysterious, and the statue of Our Lady was so overshadowed by branches rich with cones, that it was impossible to get a satisfactory photograph of it. "Here, then," he continues, "I struck leftward, and pursued my way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence." On our equally secular cycles we followed the same track, the roadway being dotted on each side with bundles of faggots gathered by the silent monks, probably for the use of the poor.

XI.

"I have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than the monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a Protestant education," says Stevenson, as he recalls the feeling produced within him by the clanging of a bell at the monastery while he was not yet in sight of it. No bells clanged as we descended the road which Father Apollinaris was still in the act of making when Stevenson encountered him. We emerged at length from the shelter of the trees into a wide hollow of land, from which on every side the hills rose up, and where on our right were the outer walls of the monastery, plain plastered buildings, with little barred windows on the ground floor and a row without bars on the second story. On our left was a large saw-mill, where steam saws were giving shrill advertisement of their use. Several monks were among the workers at the mill, and a brown-coated figure was walking along the road that opened on our left beyond the timber sheds to some large white buildings which, as we afterwards learned, comprised the farm belonging to the monastery. The first impression was not exactly to touch one's feeling for romance. Trappists in the timber trade suggests a heading for a "snippet" periodical, and if the monks were silent, here at least were noises that smote unpleasantly on the ear.

ROAD TO OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

Made by Father Apollinaris "with his own two hands in the space of a year."

THE MONASTERY

"Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I and my pack were received into Our Lady of the Snows."—R. L. S.

The buildings of Our Lady of the Snows are quite devoid of any architectural beauty. They are set four-square in the hollow, and the hills trend gently upward on every side richly clad with trees, for the monks have reforested much of the surrounding land, which is the property of the fraternity. The south side is occupied by a long, two-storied building, which contains the main entrance—a plain, whitewashed, barn-like structure—and buildings of a similar type adjoin it east and west, while the north side of the quadrangle is filled by the more pretentious masonry of the church, the chapter-house, and other religious offices, though even here the essential note of the architecture is austerity, the clock-tower being devoid of decoration and purely utilitarian.

When endeavouring to photograph the buildings while the sun shone, an old man with a very red face, a very white beard and a very dirty white blouse came along, leaning feebly on his stick. He was delighted on being asked to become part of the picture, and begged me to wait a moment while he fixed on his left arm his plaque, whereon I read in brazen letters, "Gardien de la Propriété." This aged and infirm defender of the monastic estates was as proud of his plaque as if it had been a medal won in war. There must be few attacks upon the property of the monastery, which he informed me extended as far as we could see in this windswept hollow of the hills, if our friend of the snowy beard and ruddy face stood for its defence! We were cheered to learn from him that there would be no difficulty in visiting the monastery, and if we wished we might be able to pass the night there. This we desired most heartily for various reasons, but chiefly because it was now close on six in the evening, and days are short in these latitudes.

XII.

We were told to go round to the chief gateway, and there to summon the Brother Porter by ringing the bell. This we did, with something of that "quaking heart" to which Stevenson confesses in the same act, for the clamour of a bell that one rings in a great silent building seems fraught with news of an offence for which one stands to receive the penalty. Nor do your spirits rise when a little shutter in the door is opened, and a grizzly-whiskered face in a brown hood peers through demanding your business. All was well, however. The Brother Porter admitted us to the courtyard, and went to summon one of the novitiates who, as Guest Father, would do us the honours of the monastery. He was, as I should judge, a young man of five-and-twenty, who came to us through a door on the right of the entrance that admitted to the hospice. Wearing the white flannel habit of the monks, with a black scapular hanging loose and bulky below the neck, he was of medium stature, his shaven face pleasant and comely, and his dark eyes of that unusual brilliance which Stevenson noted as "the only morbid sign" he could detect in the appearance of the monks. Our host bowed ceremoniously in shaking hands with us, and immediately escorted us across the trim garden to the monastic buildings at the other side of the quadrangle.

During their period of novitiate, which lasts for three years, the monks have still the liberty to talk with strangers or with the lay brethren, but when their final vows are taken they are supposed to be inarticulate, except in performing the religious offices of each day. The Guest Father would in two years more be qualified for the silent life; meanwhile, he exercised his power of speech with so much grace that one felt truly sorry so excellent a talker should contemplate with cheerfulness the voluntary and useless atrophy of his divine gift. Very reverently he led us into the church, which is a plain but elegant building with a vaulted roof, the walls being whitewashed, and the woodwork, of which there is not too much, chastely carved. A number of good pictures are hung on the walls, and there is a series of statues of the saints on brackets, executed with some taste, and entirely free from the usual tawdry colouring of similar objects in French Catholic churches. The altar also is in welcome contrast to the common doll-show of the ordinary church, and although the oft-repeated references to the simplicity of the whole with which our excellent friend pointed out the various features of the place approached almost to affectation, one must bear ready witness to the apparent sincerity of these poor monks in their efforts towards a simpler circumstance of worship than the Roman Catholic Church in general practises.

Trappist Monks gathering roots for distilling

A Peep into the Library

OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

The chapter-house is in keeping with the church in point of restraint in decoration, its beautifully panelled walls giving the apartment a genial touch of warmth by contrast with the cold white of its groined roof.

The library, which occupies a spacious room on the upper story of the north wing, is stocked with some twenty thousand volumes, chiefly in Latin and French, but including an excellent collection of works in Greek, religion and history being naturally the chief subjects represented. When we remember that many of the monks are men of no intellectual gifts and of small learning, being drawn largely from the peasant class and the military, we may doubt if the treasures of the library are in great request. The librarian, at least, must be a man of bookish tastes, since the collection is arranged in perfect order. Our guide assured us that the monastery possesses a copy of Travels with a Donkey, but he did not discover it for us.

The refectory is a large and bare chamber occupying the lower story of the east wing. Long narrow tables of plain wood stand around the room, and on these are laid the simple utensils of the meal. The monks sit on a rude bench, and for the greater part of the year they take but one meal in twenty-four hours; but during the summer months, when one might suppose their needs to be less, they, by special indulgence, go so far towards temporising with the flesh as to eat twice in one day.

R. L. S. was moved to a little disquisition on the subject of over-eating when he contemplated the dietetic restraint of the Trappist brethren. "Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly," he writes; "and though each is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and the cheerfulness of manner of all whom I beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady of the Snows. This, at least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must live healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in colour, and the only morbid sign that I could observe—an unusual brilliancy of the eye—was one that rather served to increase the general impression of vivacity and strength."

On the topmost floor of the east wing we were shown the dormitory, a long and, as I recall it, a somewhat low-roofed room, divided into numerous little cubicles, each enclosed on three sides, and screened from the passage by a curtain of red cloth. The couch consisted of a single mattress laid on boards, with the scantiest supply of bedclothes. Each of these little compartments bore in painted letters the monastic name of its occupant, and here every night, after the toils and vigils of the day, the brethren lay themselves down at eight o'clock in their ordinary habit of dress, being in this respect less fanatical than other fraternities of the same order, who sleep in their coffins, and even in unduly ready graves. "By two in the morning," says R. L. S., "the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided among different occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory all day long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet, and occupied with manifold and changing business. I know many persons, worth several thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of their lives. Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind and healthful activity of body. We speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish manner."

XIII.

On our way back to the hospice we learned with regret that Father Apollinaris, "so good and so simple," had been dead five years, and the right of the monastery to the title of Our Lady of the Snows was clearly established by the information that in the winter months it is buried for weeks on end, and our young friend of the shiny eyes shivered as he spoke of the neige énorme, which he is doomed to see every winter that he lives.

MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD

"From Bleymard I set out to scale a portion of the Lozère."—R. L. S.

RUINS OF THE HÔTEL DU LOT

On the Villefort-Mende road, at La Remise, near Le Bleymard

In the hospice the apartments for the use of visitors and retraitants are situated. To the right of the gateway on the ground level are the kitchens and storerooms, and a door opening at the foot of the stair admits one into a small and barely furnished room, where supper had been prepared for us. A small table covered with American cloth, with chairs set about it to accommodate perhaps eight or ten guests, were the chief items of furniture. There were a few prints of a religious character hung upon the walls, and to the right of the fireplace stood a little bookcase, containing, however, no works of interest. The meal served to us was well cooked and savoury, and as an excellent omelet formed its pièce de résistance, with soup, potato salad, walnuts, figs and cheese included, it needed none of the profuse apologies for poverty of fare with which it was set before us.

We were afterwards shown our bedroom on the floor above, a fairly commodious room containing two iron bedsteads, with a more liberal supply of bedclothes than we saw in the dormitory of the monks, a small table and two chairs. A crucifix stood on the mantlepiece, and, as in some hotels, a printed sheet of regulations was fixed on the wall near the door. One may suppose it to have been a copy of that which Stevenson noted, for it wound up with an admonition to occupy one's spare time by examining one's conscience, confessing one's sins, and making good resolutions. "To make good resolutions, indeed!" comments R. L. S. "You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your head." So far as we could judge, the south wing at the time of our visit sheltered no other strangers than ourselves; nor did it appear there were any weary, world-worn laymen living here in retreat. At the time of Stevenson's sojourn among the monks there was quite a little company in the hospice, an English boarder, a parish priest, and an old soldier being some of the acquaintances he made in the little room where we had supped. But there is a constant and increasing number of visitors to the monastery, and immediately below our bedroom there was a large and well-stocked apartment that gave evidence of this. Here we found a varied supply of crucifixes and rosaries to suit all purses, samples of the different liqueurs distilled by the monks, and picture post cards in abundance. The Brother Porter, a simple boorish fellow, in vain spread his bottles in the sight of two who were not patrons of the stuff; but we reduced his stock of post cards and his rosaries. He took the money like a post office girl selling stamps.

XIV.

When we took our places in the little gallery that extends across the west side of the chapel to hear the monks chanting the last service of the day, Compline and Salve Regina, we found that there was at least another visitor, in the person of a stout and blue-chinned curé. The white-robed monks were seated in their chairs in the choir, books upon their knees; while the organist in an elevated position on a level with the gallery played, unseen by us, "those majestic old Gregorian chants that, wherever you may hear them (in Meredith's fine phrase) seem to build up cathedral walls about you." Paraffin lamps shed a dim, uncertain light, and the rich full voices of the singers resounded weirdly through the white-walled chapel, the door opening now and again as some of the lay brothers entered and, crossing themselves, bowed wearily towards the altar, moving to their places below the gallery. After the elevation of the Host, and when the service was almost ended, the organist came down, and we noticed that in making his way out of the chapel he hung back a little in passing the choir screen, that he might not meet on his way to the door any of the brethren who were now slowly leaving.

Of a similar service Stevenson writes: "There were none of those circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over, and the hour of sleep had come; and when I remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry night." The effect of it all on the sentimental traveller was summed up in these fervent words: "And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love."

This, indeed, must be the impression all robust and unfettered minds will receive from a visit to Our Lady of the Snows. It is true that in their busy saw-mill which stands to the west of the monastery, and where the timber from the hills is turned to commercial use by the monks and their lay assistants, in their well-managed farm some distance westward, in the surrounding fields, in their many workshops—in these they have varied occupations, and of a manly character, but the terrible uselessness of it all is ever present to the mind of one coming from the stress and struggle of the zestful world. Poor men! in their sullen way they may believe they have chosen the better part; but, simple and devout as they may be, they are the real cowards of life, the shirkers of the battle we are meant to fight.

Malavieille, a mountain sheiling

Scene of "A Night among the Pines"

"Buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine woods, between four and five thousand feet towards the stars."—R. L. S.

ON THE LOZÈRE

We slept the sleep of tired men in our room upstairs, and heard none of those hourly bells Stevenson records. Our young friend, whose monastic name I foolishly omitted to ask, called us before eight in the morning, and after providing a capital breakfast, bade us a ceremonious good-bye, watching us from the door until the pine woods enclosed us.

XV.

We made a swift descent to La Bastide, and by way of Chasseradès, where Stevenson slept in the common bedroom of the inn, reached Le Bleymard late in the afternoon, passing through a country of bare hills and poor villages clustered in gusty hollows or hanging like swallows' nests on craggy slopes. The valley of the Lot, rich and beautiful westward to Mende, possesses no elements of charm in the neighbourhood of Bleymard, and we found that town so mean and featureless, that we had no wish to pass the evening there. The inn we wanted was, so a crippled girl told us, at La Remise, on the high road, and we must have passed it. We remounted our cycles and retraced our path across the river, a distance of perhaps three furlongs, and lo! there stood the charred remains of the Hôtel du Lot, where we had hoped to rest ourselves. We had passed the place without noticing it, and the view of its gaunt and smoky walls, now that they had acquired so personal an interest, chilled our hearts, for the need to rest and refresh ourselves was pressing. It was after sundown, and there lay between us and Pont de Montvert a mountain higher than Ben Nevis.

Opposite the unlucky Hôtel du Lot stood a small auberge, kept by one Teissier. Two men were drinking absinth at a table by the doorway. One was a thick-set fellow, wearing eyeglasses, and clothed not unlike a foreman mechanic in England. The other was the familiar dark French type, thin of features, eyes bright as those of a consumptive, his beard ample and of a jet black, against which his ripe red lips showed noticeably. He was dressed like a clerk or commerçant. They made us welcome at their table, and we fell at once to discussing the situation, from which it was evident we could not hope to cross the Lozère that night. Some tourists had experienced a bad time traversing the mountain the previous Sunday, and as we could not hope to do more than reach the Baraque de Secours by nightfall, it would be madness to attempt the descent into the valley of the Tarn after dark, the road lying in many places along the lip of a precipice. Besides, this wayside inn was very well managed, said the absinth drinkers; they had lived there since being burned out across the way, a statement that cheered us not a little, as every other feature of the place was extremely uninviting.

The landlady, who had shown no interest in us whatever, I found busy at a large cooking-range in a tiny kitchen, which opened off the common sitting-room, and served also for the living-room of the servants and familiar loungers. She was a woman of austere countenance, displaying like so many middle-aged Frenchwomen a considerable moustache; but I noticed that her teeth were white. Yes, she would be glad to supply dinner if we were to stay overnight. We were, I confessed without enthusiasm; whereupon she specified glibly the resources of her kitchen. We could have soup, trout, jugged hare, chicken, fillet of beef, potatoes, pastries, cheese, and other things, and by naming one dish and connecting it to the next with et puis, an aldermanic banquet seemed about to be conjured up from the dirty little room and its greasy stove. The common room of the inn had a sanded floor, and was furnished with a plain deal table, round which some country bumpkins were sitting on rush-bottomed chairs drinking beer and spitting freely in the sand. A few cheap oleographs nailed on the dingy walls were the only efforts at decoration. Two drab and unattractive girls gossiping with the customers appeared to be the staff of the hotel.

I returned to the Frenchmen outside, and found that my companion, anxious not to enter the place until the last moment, was playing at a game resembling bowls with some village urchins, though understanding not one word of their speech. But he came up in a little while to learn the results of my inquiries within, and soon we were all engaged in a very entertaining discussion. It appeared that the Frenchmen were concerned in the zinc mines near Bleymard, him of the oily clothes being chief engineer, the other business manager. I suppose they would be the two best conditioned residents in the district, and here they were lodging at an hotel which, apart from cooking, was below the standard of comfort to be found in a crimp's den in the region of Ratcliffe Highway. The Frenchman is a wonderfully adaptable creature: give him a table to drink at, a chair to sit upon, and a bed anywhere under a roof, and he can contrive to be happy.

The Baraque de Secours

"The Lozère lies nearly east and west; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises upwards of 5,600 feet above the sea."—R. L. S.

ON THE LOZÈRE

M. l'Ingénieur, although he spoke no English, had seen something of the world, and had even been to Klondyke. He could not understand why anyone should have wandered to such a hole as this—for pleasure! But he expected that next year's guide-books would describe Bleymard as notable for the ruins of the Hôtel du Lot. A wag, obviously. If we wanted to see places worth looking at, there was Nice and Nîmes, said his friend M. Barbenoire. Together they extolled, with a rare gush of adjectives, the beauty of these places, and promised to show us picture postcards that would lure us into visiting them. Tourists did come sometimes to climb the Lozère, from the top of which in clear weather one might see the Alps. The engineer laughed merrily at this, and said the story was as much legend as the exploits of the beast of Gévaudan. He discussed in a very practical mind the question of miners' wages, and thought that the Bleymard zinc workers were better off with four francs a day than English miners with five or six shillings.

Sooner than we had expected dinner was declared ready, and we went inside with no great avidity; but to our surprise we found the meal laid in a little room at the other end of the drinking den, tolerably clean though dingy and tasteless in its appointments. There we were joined by the wife of M. Barbenoire and two immense dogs of unfamiliar breed. The maid who served us was engagingly free from the usual formalities of the table, and between the courses would sit coyly on the knee of the engineer, munching a piece of bread; but for the rest, ours was no Barmecide feast. The aldermanic banquet appeared in all essentials save the serving, and we fared so well that we began to hope our bedroom would even be comfortable.

When, later in the evening, we took our courage in both hands and penetrated to the upper story by way of a spiral iron staircase through the kitchen roof and along a dark lobby of loose boards, we were heartened not a little to find in our room two good beds, clean and curtained. Sleep was thus assured, though the smell from the stable through the wall was redolent of rats. It was "a wonderful clear night of stars" when we looked out of our window before retiring, and we went to bed determined upon an early start. The bellowing of the oxen in the stable and the shouts of the buveurs below did not come long between us and the drowsy god.

XVI.

Alas! at dawn next day we looked forth on a blank wall of mist backing the ruins across the road. Not a hill was visible. We sought our beds again, and by nine o'clock the outlook was only slightly improved, the nearest hills, now resonant with sheep-bells, being in sight. The engineer comforted us with the assurance that this was the common weather in June, the best time of the year being from July to October, but he thought the mists might clear before noon. Presently it began to rain, and during the whole day there was not half an hour of clear weather. At times the atmosphere would thin a little, only to show us heavy clouds condensing on the higher hills. Thus prisoned in our room, we contrived to be comfortable, and I believe that another day would have left us wondering why we had dreaded staying at the inn, so soon does the human mind adapt itself to circumstances. The rain-sodden streets actually provided entertainment. We watched with interest the coming and going of shepherds and their flocks, the former armed with commodious umbrellas and their sheep shorn in a way that left a lump of wool upon their backs making them comically like little camels. Many bullock wagons loaded with shale passed by, and we noticed that the slightest touch with the driver's wand served to direct the team, whose heads were, to quote our hero, "fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice." Children played out and in the stables and among the ruins, and an old man, wearing the usual dress of the peasant, with pink socks showing above his sabots, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and a stick under his arm, wandered aimlessly to and fro in the rain most of the day. The stage-coach from Villefort to Mende rested for a time at the inn, causing a flicker of excitement, and in the evening again the mine officials were there to bear us company.

The engineer proved himself a thorough-paced sceptic of the modern French sort. His opinion of the country-folk was low—hypocrites, fools, money-grubbers all! Holding up a five-franc piece, he averred that for this they would sell mother, daughter, sister; and then similarly elevating a bundle of paper-money, he exclaimed: "Voilà, le Grand Dieu."

"This is a Catholic countryside?" I said.

"Yes," he replied, "but that makes no difference."

"There is one Protestant in Bleymard," put in Barbenoire,—"myself!"

"And he isn't up to much," added the cynic.

"A cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocurès sitting among vineyards."—R. L. S.

Bridge over the Tarn at "Pont de Montvert of bloody memory," and view of the Hôtel des Cevennes where Stevenson stayed.

XVII.

"We shall set out at five in the morning," I said to the landlady before going upstairs, and the engineer signalled to us as we left the room the outstretched fingers of his right hand twice; wherein he proved something of a prophet, for it was nearer ten o'clock than five before we determined to risk the mountain journey, the sky being clear in parts and the rain clouds scudding before a high wind, that promised a comparatively dry day.

On the bridge across the Lot at Bleymard we were hailed by a man in labouring clothes, who smiled broadly and said, "Me speak Engleesh." As we had not met a single Frenchman between Orleans and this spot who pretended to have any knowledge of our native tongue, we tarried to have speech with this cheery-faced fellow, whose white teeth shone through a reedy black moustache. But his lingual claims did not bear inspection. Beyond saying that he had visited London and Liverpool, and knew what "shake hands" meant, and that English tobacco was better worth smoking than the French trash—a hint which I accepted by presenting my pouch—he could not go in our island speech; and so we had to continue our chat in French that was bad on both sides, his accent resembling a Yorkshireman's English, and mine—let us say an Englishman's French. He was certain we should have no more rain, as the wind was in the north, and if it kept dry to twelve o'clock we could depend on a good day. The weather prophet is the same in all lands, and we had not left him half an hour when we were sheltering from a sudden downpour.

For some miles we had to plod upward on foot in a wild and rocky gorge, with the merest trickle of water below. Yet every corner where a few square feet of clover could be coaxed into life had been cultivated by the dogged peasants, and patches were growing at heights where one would have thought it difficult to climb without the ropes of an Alpinist. Many of these mountain plots were miles away from any dwelling, a fact that conveys some idea of the barren nature of the country.

The tiny hamlet of Malavieille, about half-way up the mountain side, is the highest point permanently inhabited. It is a mere handful of dark-grey houses, covered on slates and walls with a vivid yellow fungus. Here the upland fields were densely spread with violets, narcissi and hyacinths, and a few dun cows were browsing contentedly on this fragrant fare, while a boy who attended them stood on his head kicking his heels merrily in the sunshine. He came up as we passed, staring at us stolidly; and when we asked if the snakes, of which we had just encountered two about three feet long, were dangerous, he answered, "Pas bien," and more than that we could not get him to say, though he walked beside us for a time eyeing curiously our bicycles.

XVIII.

When we had come within sight of the Baraque de Secours, we had reached a sort of table-land reaching east and west for some miles. Eastward lay the pine woods where our vagabond spent one of his most tranquil nights as described in his chapter, "A Night Among the Pines." It was there that, awaking in the morning, he beheld the daybreak along the mountain-tops of Vivarais—"a solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day." And it was there, too, that out of thankfulness for his night's rest he laid on the turf as he went along pieces of money, "until I had left enough for my night's lodging." Some of it may be there to this day, for there is small human commerce at this altitude, a shepherd or two being the only folk we saw until we arrived at the shelter which we had seen for more than half an hour while we cycled arduously toward it.

The baraque is a plain two-storied building, with a rough stone wall and porch enclosing a muddy yard. It stands at a height of over five thousand feet, being thus fully five hundred feet higher than Ben Nevis. To the west the Lozère swells upward, a great treeless waste, to its highest point, the Pic de Finiels, 5,600 feet above sea-level; while a splendid mass of volcanic origin uprears its craggy head some little distance to the south-east. "The view, back upon the northern Gévaudan," says Stevenson, writing of what he saw as he passed near this point, "extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning." And then in a little, when he began the descent towards the valley of the Tarn, he says: "A step that seemed no way more decisive than many other steps that had preceded it—and, 'like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared on the Pacific,' I took possession, in my own name, of a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf rampart I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet." As he makes no mention of the baraque, I venture to suppose that it had not then been built, for one so eager of new experience would not have missed the opportunity of resting on his way at this high-set hostel. A dead sheep—one of several we had seen on the mountain—lay on the road by the gate, and propping our bicycles near it, we picked our way through the mud and knocked at the door.

Waterfall on the Lozère, on Stevenson's route between Finiels and Pont de Montvert

In the valley of the Tarn: Scene of Stevenson's camp under the chestnuts on the hillside

A gruff voice bade us enter. We stepped into a smoky room, with an earthern floor, containing a rough wooden table and two rude benches, and in a corner a small round table, a few chairs and a plain wooden dresser. The mouth that had emitted a very gutteral "Ongtray" belonged to a man of small stature but brigandish appearance, who was seated at the smaller table eating industriously. We asked for lemonade and biscuits, but the fellow stared at the words and spoke in a patois that was Greek to me. But when I explained more sententiously that we desired something to eat and drink, he disappeared up a wooden stair, and we knew that a bottle of atrocious red wine, which we would welcome as so much vinegar, would be forthcoming. Meanwhile, the man's wife—a fair-haired little woman with cheeks like red apples, dressed in the universal black of the French country-wife—came in, leading a youngster by the hand. I repeated to her our wants, which she immediately proceeded to meet by breaking four eggs into a pan, the shells being dropped on the floor, and lo! an omelet was well on the way by the time her husband in his sabots came clattering down the stairs with the undesired wine, a few drops of which we used to colour the clear cold water we took in our tumblers from a pipe that ran ceaselessly into a basin set in the wall of the room that backed to the rising land.

There is one respect in which the Cevennols have progressed since Stevenson went among them. He writes: "In these Hedge-inns the traveller is expected to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid." Not so had we found it in any of the inns we visited, all had risen to the dignity of knives and forks; but here at this house in the wilds our table was laid precisely as Stevenson describes, and the bread being hard, it was a temptation to break it across the knee like a piece of wood. We had almost finished our meal when, after some whisperings between the man and woman, the fellow dived into his pockets and produced a great clasp knife, which he opened and handed to us.

While we sat and carried on a somewhat faltering conversation—for both man and woman spoke the dialect of Languedoc and were superbly ignorant—two men entered of the same brigandish type as the landlord, and, speaking better French, proffered their services as guides if we desired to scale the Pic de Finiels. This we had no desire to do, especially when they were frank enough to state that the view from the top was of very little interest. But they urged us to see the magnificent view over the entire range of the Cevennes from the more westerly peak, the Signal des Laubies. This, however, would have taken us some two hours, and we had a long way to travel that day. We were curious to know whether the baraque was tenanted in winter, and one of the guides told us that during the winter the whole of the uplands around us lay deep in snow, the roads being quite impassable. This shelter was only open from the beginning of June to the end of September, when its keepers retired downhill again to Malavieille. R. L. S. crossed the mountain on the second last day in September, so that the snows would soon be lying on his track. When we resumed our journey again we were once or twice beguiled into thinking that we saw some of the snows of yester year lying among the grey and lichened rocks, but a nearer approach turned the drifts into flocks of sheep, which the sombre background rendered snowy white by contrast.

XIX.

We went forward into the country of the Camisards along a well-made road which gangs of labourers were leisurely repairing. So good are these mountain roads, and so diligently tended, that one is inclined to think they are used chiefly for the transit of stones to keep them in repair. That on which we travelled has been made since Modestine and her driver footed it through this same valley. In less than a mile from the baraque it begins to sweep swiftly downward. Stevenson thus describes his descent: "A sort of track appeared and began to go down a breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley through falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of descent, and the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet. The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere."

"CLARISSE"

The Waitress at the Hôtel des Cevennes, from a photograph supplied by the Pasteur at Pont de Montvert

"The features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride."—R. L. S.

If his descent was thus, how much more so ours on our whirling wheels? We encountered numerous cattle-drovers, whose herds spread themselves across the path and rendered our progress somewhat perilous, as neither hedge nor stone stood between us and the abyss. There is but little population in the valley, and that centred in two small hamlets, though we observed a number of deserted cabins which Stevenson also notes. The river, too, as it nears the larger Tarn was all his magic pen had pictured; here it "foamed awhile in desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot with watery browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so changeful and delicate a hue: crystal was not more clear, the meadows were not by half so green."

Our road brought us at length to Pont de Montvert "of bloody memory," which lies in a green and rocky hollow among the hills. To Stevenson "the place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an indescribable air of the south." Why so, he was unable to say; as he justly observes, it would be difficult to tell in what particulars it differed from Monastier or Langogne or even Bleymard. One of the first buildings that the traveller encounters is the little Protestant temple perched on the rocky bank of the river, and perhaps it was again the Protestant education of R. L. S. that led him to note a higher degree of intelligence among the inhabitants than he had found in the purely Catholic villages. For my part, with the best will to mark the difference, I found little to choose between the Catholic and Camisard townships, unless it were a more obvious effort after cleanliness in some of the latter.

XX.

Pont de Montvert is memorable as the place where the Covenanters of France struck the first blow against their Romish persecutors; here they "slew their Archbishop Sharpe." The Protestant pastor, a fresh-faced man about sixty, with a short white beard, and wearing no outward symbol of office, but dressed in an ordinary jacket suit and cloth cap, we found in his home in a building by the river-side near the bridge. Directly across the rock-strewn course was the Hôtel des Cevennes, where Stevenson sat at the "roaring table d'hôte," and was pleased to find three of the women passably good-looking, that being more than an average for any town in the Highlands of France. Our pastor—his wife and golden-haired daughter also—was more interested in discussing Stevenson's travels than the religious condition of his district, a subject on which my companion, pastor from "the Celtic fringe," was athirst for information.

To my various questions regarding the position of the Reformed Church I received the barest answers; there was no glowing enthusiasm chez le pasteur for the Camisards who a stone's-throw from where we sat stabbed with many superfluous thrusts the Archpriest Du Chayla, their most brutal persecutor. But Stevenson and his donkey—ah, that was another matter! He knew all about them to the year, the day, the hour of their quaint and curious visit; he was himself only two years established in his charge at the time. And Clarisse! We knew, of course, what Stevenson had said of her? Would we care to see her photograph? She was now married, and settled in another town with a considerable family growing around her. One felt that after a quarter of a century, and with a family thrown in, Stevenson would have resolutely refused to look on the counterfeit presentment of Clarisse. But, less scrupulous, we chose to see her portrait, and the pastor was good enough to present me with a copy, as he possessed several which he had procured three years before when ordering one for an Englishman who had gone over the trail of R. L. S. The carte shows the table-maid of the hotel as still possessing some of the featural charms so minutely and faithfully noted by our author.

"What shall I say of Clarisse?" he writes. "She waited the table with a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey eyes were steeped in amorous langour; her features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostrils spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and with training it offered the promise of delicate sentiment.... Before I left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. She took it like milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking at me steadily with her great eyes; and I own the result upon myself was some confusion. If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays; but that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years."

When I look again at the photograph, I fear that even this hope for her who was "left to country admirers and a country way of thought," has not been fulfilled.

THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNÈDE

"It was but a humble place, called La Vernède, with less than a dozen houses and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. There, at the inn, I ordered breakfast."—R. L. S.

The pastor came with us to point out Du Chayla's house, which stands on the river side westward of his own, the spire of the modern Catholic church showing above the roof. Perhaps it was only natural that he should look upon so familiar an object without any show of emotion, though my fellow-traveller set it down to the cold Christless teaching of the Eglise libérale, to which section of the French Reformed Church Pont de Montvert is attached. In that three-storied house, with its underground dungeons and stout-walled garden trending down to the river, the Archpriest carried on "the Propagation of the Faith" by such ungentle methods as plucking out the hairs of the beard, enclosing the hands of his Protestant prisoners upon live coal, "to convince them," as R. L. S. quaintly observes, "that they were deceived in their opinions." On the 24th July, 1702, led by their "prophet" Séguier, a band of some fifty Camisards attacked the house of the Archpriest, to which they at length set fire, and thus forced Du Chayla and his military guard to attempt escape. The Archpriest, in lowering himself from an upper window by means of knotted sheets, fell and broke his leg, and there in the garden, where a woman was to-day hanging out shabby clothes to dry, the Covenanters had their vengeance of stabs. "'This,' they said, 'is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister imprisoned in your cursed convents.' Each gave his blow and his reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the dawn." Save for a new roof, the building remains much as it was two hundred years ago.

XXI.

The road, for close on two miles out of Pont de Montvert, goes uphill past the Catholic church—the town being now about equally divided in the matter of religion—and then it is a long and gentle descent to Florac. In no respect has the road changed since Stevenson wrote of it, nor is there any likelihood that it will be altered ere the crack of doom. "A smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I went in and out, as I followed it, from bays of shadow into promontories of afternoon sun. This was a pass like that of Killiecrankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in the sunshine far above."

The slopes of the valley have been terraced almost to the sky-line, not for baby-fields of wheat, but to furnish ground for chestnut trees, that clothe the hills with rich and sombre foliage, and give forth "a faint, sweet perfume," which tinctures the air with balsamic breath. R. L. S. goes into raptures over these chestnuts;—"I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of how they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the pillars of a church; or, like the olive, from the most shattered bole can put out smooth and useful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old.... And to look down upon a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old, unconquerable chestnuts clustered 'like herded elephants' upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature." It was on a terrace and under one of these trees that he camped for the night, having to scramble up some sixty feet above the place he had selected for himself, which was as high as that from the road, before he could find another terrace with space enough for his donkey. He was awakened in the morning by peasants coming to prune the trees, and after going down to the river for his morning toilet—"To wash in one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or semi-pagan act of worship"—he went on his way "with a light and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced."

Some little way from where he had slept he foregathered with an old man in a brown nightcap, "clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint, excited smile," who said to him after a while, "Connaissez-vous le Seigneur?" The old fellow was delighted when the donkey-driver answered, "Yes, I know Him; He is the best of acquaintances," and together they journeyed on, discussing the spiritual condition of the country-folk. "Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, he and I came upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place, called La Vernède, with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt, and here at the inn I ordered my breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stonebreaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl."

We found this little hamlet even smaller than we expected, some half-dozen houses and a tiny place of worship, the whole lying below the level of the main road, so that one could have thrown a stone on their roofs, well-tilled fields and meadows stretching down to the river. A cantonnier who was busy breaking stones by the roadway helped us to identify the place, and was proud to confess himself a Protestant, in common with the little handful of his fellow-villagers. The country grows richer and more fruitful as we approach Florac, passing on our way the old castle of Miral and a picturesque church compounded of an ancient battlemented monastery and some modern buildings with a tall tower.

IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN

"The road led me past the old Castle of Miral on a steep."—R. L. S.

NEAR FLORAC

"Past a battlemented monastery long since broken up and turned into a church and parsonage."—R. L. S.

The influence of a country on its people suggested to R. L. S. an interesting comparison as he journeyed through "this landscape, smiling although wild." "Those who took to the hills for conscience sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts," he writes; "for once that they received God's comfort, they would be twice engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright and supporting visions.... With a light conscience, they pursued their life in these rough times and circumstances. The soul of Séguier, let us not forget, was like a garden. They knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge that has no parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they might be certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the person." A singularly inapposite comparison. It was not in pleasant valleys such as these, or in cosy little towns like Pont de Montvert, that the Camisards fought out their war with "His Most Christian Majesty Louis, King of France and Brittany," but on the bare and rocky plateaus westward of the Cevennes, and on such mountain-tops as the Lozère. Stevenson had never seen the Causse Méjan or the Causse du Larzac, to the southward of the region through which he travelled, or he would have realised that their conditions were even less likely to foster "bright and supporting visions" in the Camisards than those of the mountain-hunted Scots, though much better from a strategic point of view.

XXII.

Florac is a small town of white houses, cuddled between the eastern front of the Causse Méjan and the western foothills of the Cevennes, with the river Tarnon, joined by the Mimente to the south, running northward on its outskirts. There are only two thousand inhabitants, but the number and excellence of Florac's hotels are accounted for by its being an important centre for tourists visiting the gorges of the Tarn, which, totally unknown to the outer world at the time of Stevenson's journey, are now admitted to possess the finest scenery in Europe. Our French guide-book frankly stated that Florac is a place "of few attractions," but R. L. S. makes the most of these in a sentence or two, describing the town as possessing "an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill." The old castle is quite without interest, and is indeed the local prison, while the alley of planes, called the Esplanade, is a dusty open space, with many cafés lining it, and the grey, featureless Protestant Temple at its southern end.

"It is notable, besides," he adds, "for handsome women, and as one of two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards." I do not recall having noticed an unusual number of handsome women, though the wife of the Free Church minister was quite the prettiest French woman we saw in the Cevennes, and the Established Church pastor's wife perhaps the most cultured. R. L. S. found the townsfolk anxious to talk of the part played by Florac in the days of the Camisards, and was delighted to see Catholic and Protestant living together in peace and amity. But it may be that the conspicuous absence of all windows from the lower parts of the Protestant churches is a memorial of times when the adherents of the reformed religion were subjected to the prying eyes and perchance the more dangerous attentions of the Catholics without. Most of the public officials were named to us as Protestants, and the religious differences are as strongly marked between the two sects of the latter as between them and their townsmen of the Roman communion. The larger and State-supported church is Rationalistic, corresponding to our Unitarian, and the smaller a Free Church, with a symbol of the open Bible above its doorway.

In what we might call the Free Manse, really an extension of the church for the housing of the minister, a door communicating between the place of worship and the domestic apartments, we found M. Illaire and his wife at play with their children—homely folk, who gave us a cordial welcome, the heartier for the fact that Mme. Illaire had stayed for a year in that "quaint, grey-castled city, where the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and beat"—Stevenson's own romantic birth-town. She could thus speak our native tongue, and my companion, for once in a way, needed none of my interpreting. M. Illaire, an essential Frenchman, swarthy of features, slight of build, voluble and gesticulative, discoursed with shining eyes of Protestantism, but was something of a pessimist, and seemed to think that at best a cold, bloodless Dieism would rule the intellectual France of the future. I gathered that, as in the old days of enmity between the Established and Free kirks of Scotland, there was no traffic between the two Protestant churches in Florac, for Mme. Illaire confessed that she had never seen the inside of the Temple, which we had thoroughly inspected earlier in the afternoon, receiving the key from the pastor's wife, whose husband unfortunately was absent on a visit to Montpellier.

FLORAC

"On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac. It is notable as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards."—R. L. S.

XXIII.

The route of R. L. S. now lay along the valley of the Mimente, which branches eastward a little south of Florac, and penetrates a country very similar to that traversed between the Lozère and this point. It was only a few miles from Florac that he spent his last night à la belle étoile in the valley of this little river, noting in one of his finest sentences the coming of night: "A grey pearly evening shadow filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into each other; and the darkness was rising steadily like an exhalation." At Cassagnas he was in the very heart of the Camisard country, where there is little to engage one but the historic associations of the district. At St. Germain de Calberte, six miles to the south-west, reached by a rough and difficult road more suitable for the foot than the wheel, he slept at the inn, and the next afternoon (Thursday, 3rd October) he accomplished the eight remaining miles through the waterless valley of the Gardon to St. Jean du Gard—"fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours."

There came the parting with the companion of his travels, Modestine finding a ready purchaser at much below prime cost. "For twelve days we had been fast companions," he writes on his last page: "we had travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy by-road. After the first day, although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race and sex; her virtues were her own. Farewell! and if for ever—— Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had sold her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his example; and being alone with the stage driver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion."

We are to imagine R. L. S. thus tearfully occupied in the stage-coach bearing him east to Alais, an important industrial town on the main line northward through Le Puy, whither there is no call to follow him. We have the romantic regions of the Causses and the Tarn gorges still to explore. Our way, no longer a pilgrim's path, lies westward.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

"Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone. If you go in company, or even in pairs, it is no longer a walking tour in anything but name. It is something else, and more in the nature of a picnic. A walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is of the essence; because you should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that as the freak takes you, and because you must have your own pace, and neither tramp alongside a champion walker, nor mince in time with a girl. And then you must be open to all impressions, and let yourself take colour from what you see. You should be as a pipe for any wind to play upon."

I.

Thus wrote Stevenson in one of his essays, but I doubt if he ever put into practice this engaging theory of his. He came nearest to being alone when he undertook his famous tour through the Cevennes; yet a donkey, and one of so much character as his Modestine, is company of a sort. When he made the first of his little journeys with a literary end in view, he had a companion after his own heart in the late Sir Walter Simpson, to whom the first of his books, An Inland Voyage, is dedicated. That was, however, an enterprise of some adventure, and it was well that the author had a companion, for had he fared forth alone in his frail canoe, as did his great exemplar John MacGregor, in the Rob Roy, it is doubtful if An Inland Voyage—not to say all that came after it—had ever been written. In a letter sent from Compiègne during the voyage, he gives a very cheerless picture of the business: "We have had deplorable weather, quite steady ever since the start; not one day without heavy showers, and generally much wind and cold wind forby.... Indeed, I do not know if I would have stuck to it as I have done if it had not been for professional purposes." I suspect that no less potent an influence than "professional purposes" in raising his courage to the height of the occasion, was the companionship of "My dear Cigarette," as he addresses Sir Walter, whose canoe had been named Cigarette, that of Stevenson sporting the classic title Arethusa. Fortunately for the reading world, the voyage, despite its discomforts, had happy issue in one of the most charming books that came from the pen of the essayist, and although hints are not lacking of the shadows through which the canoeists passed, the sunshine of a gay and bright spirit is radiant on every page.

BOOM ON THE RUPEL

"Boom is not a nice place."—R. L. S.

VILLEVORDE ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL

"The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the unfavouring air."—R. L. S.

As it had been my pleasant fortune in the summer of 1903, together with a friend, to follow the footsteps of Stevenson in his travels among the Cevennes, and the pilgrimage having proved plentiful of literary interest, it seemed to me that one might find in a journey by road along the route of "An Inland Voyage" as much of interest, and certainly some measure of personal pleasure. Moreover, with the disciple's daring, often greater than the master's, I desired to test the plan of going alone. But it was more by happy chance than any planning of mine that I betook myself, with my bicycle, to Antwerp at precisely the same season that, eight-and-twenty years before, Stevenson and his companion set out upon their canoe voyage by river and canal, from that ancient port to the town of Pontoise, near the junction of the Seine and Oise, and within hail of Paris.

In the preface to the first edition of An Inland Voyage, its author expresses the fear that he "might not only be the first to read these pages, but the last as well," and that he "might have pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain, and found not a soul to follow in my steps." That others have been before me in my late pilgrimage is more than probable, although I have found no trace of them; but perhaps I have not searched with care, for I would fain flatter myself that here, as in the Cevennes, I found a field of interest where there had been no passing of many feet.

II.

Antwerp seems a town so antique that no change of modern handiwork can alter in any vital way its grey old features. Yet in my own acquaintance with it, on its outward quarters at least, it has taken on surprisingly the veneer of modern Brussels, though by the river-side it remains much as it was when, in the later days of August, 1876, the Cigarette and the Arethusa, with their adventurous occupants, were launched into the Scheldt to the no small excitement of the loungers about the docks. There must have been some excitement, too, in the breasts of the voyagers, but, like the true Scots they were, we can well believe they gave no show of it. Stevenson had never been in a canoe under sail before, and to tie his sheet in so frail a craft in the middle of a wide and busy river called for no contemptible degree of courage. But he tied his sheet.

"I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself," he writes. "Of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same principle, and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a common-place that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we thought."

There is but little of interest up the river, which waters a level, unpicturesque country to Rupelmonde, where the canoeists would bid good-bye to the Scheldt and steer to the south-east up the Rupel, a broad and smooth-flowing stream that joins the greater water at this point. Against the current they would urge their tiny prows until they arrived after a journey of a few miles at the town of Boom, whence the canal extends to Brussels in an almost straight line:

As I made my way that grey autumn morning through the little villages and along the tree-lined highway, the brown leaves flickering down in the cold wind that stirred among the branches, it pleased me to fancy how Stevenson, had his youth fallen in the days of the bicycle, would have enjoyed the privilege of riding on the Belgian footpath, which to us who live in a land where no cyclist dare mount his machine except on the highway affords a delightful sensation of lawlessness. It is well to observe, however, that but for this right of the footpath there would be no cyclist in all Flanders or Northern France, since highways and by-ways there are made of the most indiscriminate cobbles, and in the remote country places a cart on the lonely road moves with as great a clatter as one on the stony streets of Edinburgh.

III.

I was no great way from Boom when I saw advancing a high and narrow structure, drawn by a horse, that progressed to the weird and irregular clangor of a heavy bell, reminding me curiously of Stevenson's moving description of the leper bell in The Black Arrow. When I came up with the horse and its burden, I found the latter to consist of a large circular tank, set on four wheels, with a tall box in front for the driver, above whose head a large bell was suspended. The word "Petrol," painted on the tank, indicated its contents. Here, surely, was something that made the days of the canoe voyage seem remote indeed; the peddling vendor of petrol belongs emphatically to the new century.

THE ALLEE VERTE AT LAEKEN

The head-quarters of the "Royal Sport Nautique" is hidden among the trees on the left of the picture.

THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE

It was at this point, "on the Sambre canalised," that the canoe voyage began in earnest.

"Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that the majority of the habitants have a private opinion that they can speak English, which is not justified by fact." I can heartily endorse our canoeist's opinion of the town, but this linguistic pride of its inhabitants is surely a vanity of the past. I found none—and I spoke to several—who had any delusions as to their knowledge of English, and, indeed, few of them had more than a smattering of French. A pleasant fellow on a cycle, who had insisted on riding close to me through the outlying districts of the town, which are entirely taken up by extensive brickworks, where I noticed the labourers all went bare-footed, I found capable of understanding a few words of broad Scots, and when I said, "Boom, is't richt on?" or "Watter, richt on?" he nodded brightly, and replied in Flemish, which was comically like the Scots.

The Hôtel de la Navigation, where the paddlers put up for the night, and of which Stevenson gives so bad an account, I found no trace of, nor did I tarry any length of time in Boom, since its attractions were so meagre. The "great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over the river," remain the outstanding features of the town, and viewed from the south side of the river, it makes by no means an unpleasing picture.

IV.

The canal was simply packed with barges and great ungainly scows in the vicinity of the town, awaiting their turn to slip through the locks into the freer water of the Rupel, and heigh! for Antwerp, or even the coastwise towns of Holland. It was good to feel as one proceeded along the tow-path that here, in this world of change, was a stream of life flowing onward through the generations serene and changeless. "Every now and then we met or overtook a long string of boats with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or flowerpot in one of the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children." Every day since R. L. S. paddled in this same stretch of water the canal has presented the same picture of life, and thirty years hence, it is safe to prophesy, the wayfarer will find no change, as these canals remain the great highways of Belgium and France for the transport of goods that are in no haste; and when we come to think of it, a great proportion of the commodities of life may be carried from place to place in no gasping hurry for prompt delivery.

Stevenson has many profitable reflections on the life of the canal-folk, with which in the course of his journey he was to become so familiar. "Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise," he writes, "a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It may spread its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands, the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace, as if there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long.... There should be many contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.... I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under heaven that required attendance at an office. There are few callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in return for regular meals." But our philosopher, when he goes on to enhance his comfortable picture of a bargee's life, is scarcely correct in saying that "he can never be kept beating off a lee shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron." For these great clumsy craft know well the scent of the brine, and there are times when the snug outlook on the towing-path, and the slow business of passing through innumerable locks are changed for floundering in heavy seas and a straining look-out for a safe harbour. Not all their days are smooth and placid, and sometimes, we may imagine, the dainty pots of geraniums, that look so gay against the windows as we pass, must be removed to safer places, while the family washing, drying on deck to-day, has to be stowed elsewhere, and the tow-haired children, now playing around the dog-kennel on the top of the hatches, have to be sent below when salt waves break over the squat prow of the vessel.

The journey along the canal bank was to me a very pleasant one, and I had hopes of being more fortunate than the canoeists in reaching Brussels with a dry skin. They had to paddle in an almost continual drizzle, and even made shift to lunch in a ditch, with the rain pattering on their waterproofs. But when I got as far as Villevorde, where gangs of men were labouring on the extensive works in connection with the railway and the new water supply, the rain began, and I was wet to the skin long before I had reached the royal suburb of Laeken, where, for evidence of Belgium's industrial progress, witness the splendid improvement on the canal at this point, soon to become a system of docks and water-ways resembling in extent a great railway junction.