(10,600 feet, s.). You enter a region of box-wood, and the gorge opens at Pragnères (5 miles from Luz). An awful gorge on the left leads up to the Pic Long glaciers (10,483 ft.), whilst on the right the eye meets nothing but gloom, precipices, and snow, in the dismal and lofty solitudes of Cestrède and Bué, over which you can walk to Cauterets in nine hours by the Col de Culaous (9,000 ft.).

You pass a few elms, and after admiring the glaciers of both Cirques (Trumouse to the s.E., and Gavarnie to the s.) you reach the village of Gèdre (8 miles from Luz, 3,214 ft.). Board and lodging at Palasset's inn. If you are a botanist, call on M. Bordères.

After Gèdre the road improves. A few beautifully managed zigzags take you round the western side of the Coumélie, and you disappear like insects among those prodigious and countless blocks of gneiss, called Le Chaos. The real chaos by which creation began could scarcely look more formidable. Half a mountain must have fallen there (not longer ago than ten centuries, according to geologists). See the snowy terraces of the Cirque de Gavarnie to the south.

At length, looking westward, you catch a glimpse of the Vignemale glacier (4 miles long); you cross the Gave one last time over a graceful bridge, and find yourself before the door of the Hôtel Belou at Gavarnie (13 miles from Luz, 56 from Pau). You here stand at a height of 4,380 feet above the sea level.

South of the village the stupendous Cirque shows its frozen precipices of limestone and snow. A man could not be seen at all on its summit, even with the most powerful telescope, and on its terraces a nation would be lost. Nowhere are distances, heights, and proportions so deceptive. The foot of the Cirque is almost 4 miles off, yet it looks 15 minutes' walk to it. In height 1,000 feet seems 100, and the boulders fallen from above-some as large as houseslook like pebbles. No one could ever guess the true

height of the waterfall, said to be the highest in the world (1,380 feet). In fact, the more you see, explore, and study Gavarnie, the more bewildered you are by its magnitude. A stone dropped from the top of the Pic du Marboré (10,600 feet, the last to the left) will fall 5,500 feet into the Cirque, whose summits average 9,000 feet.

The carriage-road stops at the village, where you will find any number of ponies and donkeys ready to take you to the end of the Cirque (4 miles). There is an inn (La Baraque) 2 miles beyond the village. From the Baraque it is three hours' walk to the Brèche de Roland (9,200 feet), and six to the Mont-Perdu (11,000 feet) via the Astazou pass.

All the Passet family are excellent guides. Ramondia pyrenaica found on the schistose rocks above the left bank of the stream, 300 yards below the village of Gavarnie, says my friend Ch. Packe, in his excellent 'Guide to the Pyrenees.'

It is nine hours' walk from Gavarnie to Cauterets by the Col d'Ossouë (9,000 feet), near the Vignemale, a thoroughly Alpine excursion, with splendid glacier scenery. (Guide necessary.)

A mountaineer with only one day to spare at Gavarnie, ought to walk all round the summit of the Cirque from west to east. I know nothing in the Pyrenees more sublime than those gigantic precipices seen from above, from their immaculate and cold windy summits, 'pareils à ces sauvages demidieux du nord, à ces héros glorieusement tombés, qui n'entr'ouvrent les nuages dont sont formées leurs demeures fantastiques que pour laisser voir un instant leurs pâles figures au guerrier Calédonien.' * But a pleasant week might be spent here chamois-hunting, sketching, botanizing, etc. The Hôtel Belou is clean and comfortable; climate cool, even in midsummer, and the sky particularly pure and blue. Even ladies often stay there days and days together.

* De Chausenque.

SECT. 12.

CAUTERETS AND LAC DE GAUBE.

Same road as Gavarnie as far as Pierrefitte (1,663 feet. See Sec. 11). Hôtel de la Poste. Here (35 miles from Pau), instead of turning to the left towards Luz, you take the fine road winding up to the right in graceful curves: it is a masterpiece of engineering. Maiden-hair fern is found in the fissures of the rocks (right) a mile above Pierrefitte. The torrent occasionally appears foaming below, between walnuts, lime-trees, and ash-trees. There are a few green meadows and farms, almost hanging over the precipice: on the whole, this gorge is one of the most precipitous and gloomy in the Western Pyrenees. Delicious air, after the heavy one of the plains, of which every vestige is soon left behind. A few pines appear on the torn and abrupt slopes of the Viscos peak (left).

Now you reach the Limaçon (3 miles from Pierrefitte), where the road climbs in two or three beautiful curves up a mass of limestone débris fallen from the wild summits above. Beyond this the gorge opens into a green basin covered with vegetation, the torrent runs more smoothly and silently, and after looking at the Monné (8,937 feet, w.), whose barren slopes form such a striking contrast with the pine forests of Péguère before you, and the verdure below, you enter Cauterets, 6 miles from Pierrefitte, 41 from Pau. Height= 3,254 feet. Cold and wet, but healthy and bracing. Hôtel de France, d'Angleterre, &c. Guides and horses without number. Very hot saline and sulphurous springs, said to have been visited by Cæsar, and certainly by Rabelais. Upwards of 15,000 persons succeed each other at Cauterets in the three summer months. There are eleven sources,

To go up to the Lac de Gaube and return to Pau the same evening, you must ride from Cauterets, and leave it at the very latest at 12 o'clock. You cannot drive.

Gently rising at first, on the left bank of the torrent (s.),

E

you come to La Raillère, an imposing bathing establishment. Even horses drink the waters. You then leave to your left a very beautiful cascade, and the long and wooded valley of Lutour, which leads to several desolate and frozen lakes (Estoum-Soubiron); then you ascend to the right, along the snow-white cataracts of the Gave. The gorge you enter is grand in the extreme, the peaks on either side being black with pines, wherever their granitic points or precipices allow a tree to stand. The lynx, now extinct, used to live in these immense forests. Lovely flowers. Three short miles (from Cauterets) take you to the Cérisey waterfall, and about 20 minutes after, very steep zig-zags place you on the Pont-d'Espagne, above and below which the torrent rushes madly down in thundering falls, a hundred times sketched and photographed. Magnificent pine forests. Shed and refreshments. From here 6 hours' walk would take you to the Spanish baths of Panticosa, over the Col du Marcadaou (8,800 feet), and through glorious pine forests. But you must turn sharply to the left (south), and mount amid wild glacier-worn rocks, and silent dismal pines, with here and there a red one. Keeping on the right bank of the stream, you reach (almost 8 miles from Cauterets) the Lac de Gaube, a cold and blue basin of water, one mile across, and 5,866 feet above the sea. There you find an inn (opened towards the middle of May), and a marble monument commemorating the death of an English couple on their wedding tour. (They were drowned.)

South of the lake rises in snowy grandeur the huge and triple-peaked Vignemale, whose highest summit is barely seen to the right (10,820 feet), and was ascended in mid-winter from Gavarnie (11th of February, 1869) by the writer. (See the Times of February 27th, 1869.) In summer it is easy. The glacier on this side is small, but much crevassed; the eastern one-not seen from here—is 4 miles long, and full of séracs and crevasses as large as any in the Alps. The hollow, rounded depression you see on the left of the petit

Vignemale, is the Col d'Ossouë (9,000 feet), leading to Gavarnie (7 hours from here).

The Vignemale is composed of limestone, granite, and clay-slate, and is the fourth highest peak in the Pyrenees. The trout in the lake are very good. (Cold for bathing).

By leaving the Lac de Gaube at 4 o'clock, and Cauterets at 6 o'clock, you can return to Pau towards 10 o'clock p.m. N.B. The lake is always accessible by the end of April.

SECT. 13.

PAU TO EAUX-BONNES, AND THENCE TO EAUX-CHAUDES, BY THE COL DE GOURZY OR COL DE LURDÉ.

1. COL DE GOURZY. (Horses can go.)

N.B. The names of plants are taken from my friend Jam's guide to Eaux-Bonnes.

This is a long journey for one day (about 12 hours in all), but quite practicable by posting it and changing horses at Louvie.

Twenty-eight miles to Eaux-Bonnes (see Sect. 9), which you must leave at 12 o'clock at the latest.

South of the Hôtel de France you see a precipice, and above it a dense forest of beech-trees, with dark pines higher up. That is the way to the Gourzy.

All over this forest there are zig-zags, which begin at the south-western angle of the Jardin Darralde, where you ascend to the left on easy inclines (Promenade Jacqueminot), leaving to the right the Promenade Horizontale. There is no view for an hour and a half, when you suddenly reach an open grassy slope, where you are to turn to the right (w.). Here the view northward is most extensive; you have all the valley d'Ossau, with its river and villages, below you; and a little farther on you see the plains and Pau itself.

You find a cabane, plenty of boxwood, venerable old pines,