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EXCURSIONS ABOUT PAU.

PART I.

EXCURSIONS ONLY REQUIRING ONE DAY.

It is astonishing (and few people ever think of it) what can be done from Pau, with a little activity, and with a change of horses, in a single day, between 5 A.M. and II P.M. In the Argelès direction, it is not difficult (by taking the early morning train to Lourdes, and hiring a carriage and post-horses there) to visit Cauteretz, the lac de Gaube, Barèges, Gavarnie, and even the Cirque, and from either of these places to return to Lourdes for dinner, in time for the train which reaches Pau the same evening. All this will be easier still, and shortened by at least two hours, in the course of 1871, when the railway will be completed to Pierrefitte, 12 miles beyond Lourdes.

In the Eaux-Bonnes and Eaux-Chaudes district, by breakfasting at either of those two places, and changing horses at Louvie, you can easily dispose of eight hours in the mountains, and come home before eleven o'clock at night.

Half of the beautiful valley d'Aspe can also be visited in one day by breakfasting at Oloron.

It is hard to tell exactly what is the price of a carriage and horses at Pau, as it varies often; but in general, all over the Pyrenees, you can drive everywhere with four horses for 1 fr. per kilomètre (8 kilomètres=5 miles).

I

With eight hours to spare at the Eaux-Chaudes, a true lover of the mountains could manage to walk or ride all

round the Pic du Midi. With the same time at the EauxBonnes, he could climb the Pic de Ger (8,573 feet), or else ride over the col de Tortes to Argelès, dine there, and return to Pau by Lourdes, all in one day.

You can spend six hours at Biarritz without sleeping out, though the trains are so slow. But all these excursions will be fully described in the following pages, beginning by those in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, and all the favourite places for pic-nics.

SECT. 2. PIÉTAT.

There is no place more popular than this for pic-nics, as it is near, and the view is superb. But as there is no inn on the spot, only a few scattered and very poor houses, where you may get plates and a few glasses, you must take everything with you.

Distance, 8 miles by the hills; a little more by Pardies or by Gan. You can drive the three ways; but the first gives you the finest view of the mountains.

Pass the bridge, and about half a mile beyond, at the Croix du Prince, leaving to the right the Eaux-Bonnes road, you turn to the left. In a few minutes, just after passing a little bridge, the road again divides: the left branch would take you to Nay. Go to the right. Here the Pyrenees rise with great majesty in the southern horizon, their bluish tints and snows forming a most happy contrast with the verdure and leaves of the foreground. (See the hill and villa of Guindalos to the right). At one mile and a half from Pau you thus reach the foot of the hills, where you leave on the right the Tout-y-croît valley and road, and ascend to the left. Now the road gradually and continually rises, winding round the south-western or Pyrenæan side of those long wooded hills of which the northern slope appears so well from Pau. As you approach their summit (about 700 feet above the

valley of the Gave), the view becomes immense, first to the south, where the Pyrenees seem to have doubled their height, but especially to westward, where above a perfect sea of hills the more humble and blue summits of the Basque provinces die away towards the Atlantic in a most hazy distance.

After leaving to the right (three miles from Pau) the De Lassens graceful villa, and a little farther, but on the left, the sunny abode and vineyards of M. de Castarède, you begin to descend, and soon pass (right) the little inn of Amounette, beyond which the Pic du Midi d'Ossau entirely disappears behind the Louvie mountains. But as you advance, the Bigorre ranges begin to look very grand on the left, about thirty miles off.

You then reach the summit of another small hill, pass a solitary pine, and descend in earnest, with a magnificent view of the Pyrenees before you (6 miles from Pau). Look at the Chapel of Piétat, which suddenly appears, a mile off, and perched on the top of a barren eminence, with a few trees round it.

At 7 miles from Pau you meet the Lourdes and Oloron road, at the 27th kilomètre from the latter. There is a spring to the left. Just one mile of gradual ascent now takes you to Pietat. The Chapel (8 miles from Pau) replaced an old church built in memory of Adalbarde, Duke of Périgord, killed in the seventh century by robbers in the Pardies woods below, and considered a kind of martyr. This old church was destroyed during the wars of religion. In the seventeenth century, the Pardies country having been visited by every calamity, hailstorms, lightning, epidemics, &c., a poor shepherd, says tradition, when feeding his goats on the hill, saw three mysterious apparitions of the blessed Virgin, who told him that if the inhabitants, now reduced to eat grass, would erect a chapel there, all their calamities would cease. So in 1664, permission having been obtained from the Bishop of Lescar, the building was

begun and finished in three months. From that time no more misfortunes happened, and miraculous cures without number having rendered famous the holy spot, pilgrims began to flock to the chapel from every part of the country. It was sold during the Revolution in 1789, but the pious and deeply Catholic inhabitants of Pardies protested, and finally succeeded in obtaining from the Commissioners of the Directory leave to preserve their beloved chapel, and to have mass said in it. On Trinity Sunday a whole army of pilgrims goes up to Piétat. Such is its history, condensed into a few words from the remarkably able and conscientious work of Denys Shyne Lawlor, Esq.* M. Justin Lallier also says, in his Bains des Pyrénées,' that miraculous properties are popularly attributed to the waters of a fountain quite close to the chapel.

The splendour of the view from this dismal hill cannot be exaggerated. Only Perpigna and Morlaäs come up to it. There are three melancholy crosses standing at the end of a long and straight avenue of trees, on both sides of which the wilderness extends so as to let you see the whole country, plains, hills, and Pyrenees, without a single obstacle. There are a few houses, mostly locked up; so is the chapel; and here and there, sad, old, and motionless, you meet fantastical gipsy-looking women selling flowers, or ready to seize on your horses to keep them in order, as soon as you have dismounted. Give each of them ten sous and a blessing, and they will open the chapel door. But the inside is uninteresting.

To return to Pau, you have the choice of two carriage roads besides the one you came by.-1st, You can descend due east, passing through the woods of Bédat, to the village of Pardies (2 miles), whence it is 8 miles to Pau by the left bank of the Gave, and about the same if you cross it by the suspension bridge 2 miles below Pardies. 2nd, You can

*

Pilgrimages in the Pyrenees and Landes. Longmans, 1870.