THE COURS D'ÉTIGNY.

37

travellers apartments in the houses of their employers. You hear a sound of small bells; a herdsman is driving his cows to their mountain pasture, or a woman has brought her goat to your door to be milked. Companies of people, men and women, are departing on horseback-each with a guide, who is known by his cap, short jacket and loaded leathern valise strapped in front of his saddle. They are setting out, perhaps, for the beautiful Vallée du Lys, where the meadows at this season are as fresh and flowery as our own in June, or to the Lac d'Oo, a blue pool, high among the mountains, surrounded by dark pinnacles of rock flecked with fields of snow, from one of which a white cataract plunges, roaring, into the lake. Or, perhaps, they are going to the summit called the Pic de l'Anticade, from which you look down into the valleys of Catalonia, or to that called the Port de Venasque, whence look down into those of Aragon and over the mountains of that province. If the company consist of one or three, and these are men, perhaps they are about to ascend the Maladetta. Carriages are drawn up before the doors of the houses; they are waiting to convey the lodgers to the old town of St. Beat, in a narrow rocky gorge of the Garonne, or further on, to the Pont du Roi, on the frontier of Spain, or to St. Bertrand de Cominges, renowned for its ancient Gothic church, or to the Cascade des Demoiselles, on the Pique. A sedan chair, with two strong-limbed bearers, passes through the street; it contains a patient whom they are carrying to the baths; two or three people in thick cloaks, and hoods covering their heads and faces, are walking in the other di

you

38

MORNING SIGHTS AT LUCHON.

rection; they are bathers returning to their lodgings. People are setting out upon a morning walk; a lady and her children are trotting by on donkeys, with women for donkey drivers; they are going to the Cascade of Montauban, or to that of Jaze, or to the terrace called La Sauniere, from which you look down upon Luchon and its green and shady valley. If they are more adventurous, perhaps they are bent upon climbing to the summit of Superbagneres, the mountain from the base of which flow the sulphurous springs that supply the baths. A group of priests, in their black robes and cocked hats, are passing; the priests throng to Luchon, and love to saunter in its shady alleys, and are often seen in the cavalcades that go out upon excursions among the mountains. There go two Sisters of Mercy, in their flowing hoods of white muslin; they are on a visit to the lodging-houses, to ask donations for the hospital of Luchon. Two ragged, brown, slender men, in their red caps, knee-breeches, stockings without feet, and hempen sandals, are driving their loaded asses through the street; they are peasants from one of the neighboring Catalonian villages. Spanish pedlars in laced jackets and small clothes of brown velvet, are moving about the streets, taking off their caps to almost all they meet, and offering their wares. Others of them have piled their glistening foulards from Barcelona, their packages of linen and their silk shawls around the foot of one of the great trees in the street, to attract the attention of the passengers.

When the shadow of the mountain begins to fall on the

ENGLISH AT THE LAC D'00.

39

well-kept grounds below the edge of the forest south of the bath-house, which is at about four o'clock in the afternoon, a crowd of visitors in little groups seat themselves in chairs on the terrace in that spot. Walk among them and you will hear spoken the accented dialect of Southern France; you will hear French; you will hear Spanish, but no English. It is not quite exact to say, however, as my English acquaintance at Geneva said, that the English have not got to Luchon yet. At the Lac d'Oo, which we reached at the beginning of a pelting storm of rain and hail, we fell in with a party from Liverpool, of whom five were ladies, who came, soused and dripping, into the cabin among the rocks where we were taking our luncheon. They were "doing up" the Pyrenees, I think, in a fortnight, conscientiously seeing every thing set down for them to see in their guide-books, and as they were provided with water proof cloaks, they defied wind and weather. They whipped through the list of sights in a space of time that seemed to me incredibly short, and then went off to Toulouse in the night. The English who come here do not stay long, but look at what is remarkable and depart.

Our party have not been so faithful to the duty of sightseeing, contenting ourselves with a selection from the usual excursions. One of these we made to the Pic de l'Anticade. It is a green mountain summit within the Spanish dominions, grazed by cattle under the care of Catalonian herdsmen. The roar of a hundred waterfalls rose at once to our ears from the valley of the Garonne below, where I counted eleven villages lying east of us-Busost and Bïla, and—a Catalan wo

40

THE MALADETTA.

man, who had followed us up the summit to beg, gave us their names, but I have forgotten the rest. Below us eagles were wheeling about the crags; and to the south, where the Garonne came down from the mountains, vast and dense forests reached far down the valley. "In these forests," said our guide, "we go to hunt bears in winter. Wolves too, are found there, and where the rocks are steep, the isard, our mountain goat." To the west of us rose the mountains of Aragon, and, half seen through the mists, the white summit of the Maladetta. Our guide gave us the etymology of the name in this legend:

"Our Saviour," said he, "was passing over the mountain, when he met with a shepherd and his dog. The dog flew at our Saviour and bit him, the shepherd making no effort to prevent it. Since that time a curse has rested on the mountain; it is covered with perpetual snow, and the shepherd and his dog keep their station there yet. They were seen not long since, but, on being approached, they disappeared. You understand now why the mountain is called the Maladetta or the Accursed."

When the autumnal weather begins to grow chilly at Luchon, the visitors generally, if they do not go home, migrate to Bagnères de Bigorre, as we propose to do to-morrow, though the temperature is still soft and genial here.

BAGNÈRES DE BIGORRE.

41

LETTER V.

BIGORRE-PAU-BAYONNE-A JOURNEY TO SPAIN-SAN SEBASTIAN.

SAN SEBASTIAN, Province of Gurpuscoa, Spain,

September 28th, 1857.

SINCE I wrote you last, I have made a short sojourn at Bagnères de Bigorre and another at Pau, to say nothing of a brief stay at Bayonne. Bagnères de Bigorre, a pleasant watering-place, is too much like Bagnères de Luchon, in most that is characteristic, to need a very particular description. Like that place, it lies high, in a cool atmosphere. At the foot of a long hill break out, I think, nearly a dozen warm springs, of different temperatures and different degrees of mineral impregnation, each of which has its building fitted up with baths, and each of which asserts its specific merits in healing certain ailments, so that whatever be your malady, it will go hard but you will find some practitioner of medicine to recommend one or the other. Broad paths, embowered with trees, some of them planted long ago, lead from one spring to the other, along rivulet or hill side. Here you meet the visitors to the place, whether they come for the waters or the air, idly sauntering; here you meet with patients carried in sedan chairs, or resting on the