Part 13

As to the gourd. The gourd is the universal vessel used throughout these mountains, and its use extends from an indefinite distance upon the Spanish side (where it is universal) to the towns of the plains upon the French side: to Oloron that is, Mauléon, Foix, St. Girons, and the rest. It is a leather bottle of an oval shape, made in all sizes from a quart to a gallon, and this picture represents the structure. It is in three parts: the oval leather case (_a_), which is made of goat’s skin with the hair inside; the top (_d_), which is made of goat’s horn, with a mouth from an inch to half an inch across, and the nozzle (_e_), which screws on to this top and is pierced by a tiny hole (_g_), through which one drinks, also made of goat’s horn. There is a fourth part if you will, the little stopper (_h_), which screws on to the nozzle, and is made of the same material and tied by a string to the mouth of the gourd for fear of losing it. On the inner edge of the leather bottle are two leather loops through which to pass the string, by which the whole thing is carried over the shoulder.

Remember that the name for this invaluable instrument (one has a right to call it invaluable, for it saves the lives of men) is _Gourde_ on the French side, and _Bota_ upon the Spanish. This detail is not unimportant, for in many French villages they have never heard of a _Bota_, and certainly in no Spanish villages have they ever heard of a _Gourde_. It is in this convenience that one carries one’s supply of wine. The horn nozzle on top (_g_) screws off, the wine is poured into the mouth (_d_) through a funnel, until the gourd is completely full; one then screws the top (_g_) on again, and the little stopper (_h_) into that. When one wants the wine to pour into one’s mouth or into one’s mug, one screws off no more than the little stopper which protects the hole in the nozzle. If you can learn the proper way of drinking out of the small hole pierced in the horn-work, do so. It saves an infinity of delays, and it is the universal method of drinking throughout the Pyrenees. Here is one of those practical things in the trade which you can never get by book learning, and which one can only learn by doing them, nevertheless I will describe it.

Unscrew the little stopper (_h_) and let it hang by its string; take the double horn top piece (_d_ and _g_) in the left hand, and grasp with your right the bottom of the leather bottle; tilt the whole up, squeeze slightly with your right hand, held high in the air, and let the thin straight stream of wine from the little hole (_g_) go straight into your open mouth; then (to paraphrase Talleyrand’s famous phrase to the Maker of Religions), “if you can possibly manage it,” let it go down without swallowing; if you swallow you are lost.

For Talleyrand well said to the Maker of Religions, after having described to him how, to found a religion, he should first suffer obloquy: how he should be ready to stand alone and the rest of it, then added, “If you can possibly manage it,” work a few miracles: and this kind of drinking also seems at first miraculous. But it can be accomplished; all it needs is faith, and that strength of will which overcomes the subconscious reactions of the body.

Do not swallow. When you think enough has poured down your throat, do three things all at the same time: relax the pressure of your right hand, tilt the gourd that you are holding upright, and put the forefinger of your left hand smartly down upon the hole in the nozzle. For the first few hundred times you will spill upon yourself a little wine, but in the long run you will learn, and you will drink as neatly and as cleanly as any Basque or Catalan.

If you do not learn to use this instrument thus, you will be compelled to carry a glass, which is not only difficult but dangerous; and if you compromise by using the gourd, but pouring the wine into a cup, it would either take you infinite time through the nozzle, or else you will have to unscrew the main top piece (_e_) of the gourd, and if you do that too often it will certainly leak.

These are the elements of the use of the gourd, but, like all things noble, the gourd has many subtleties besides. For instance, it is designed by Heaven to prevent any man abusing God’s great gift of wine; for the goat’s hair inside gives to wine so appalling a taste that a man will only take of it exactly what is necessary for his needs. This defect or virtue cannot be wholly avoided, but there is a trick for making it less violent, a trick advisable with an old gourd, when one is starting out on one’s journey, and absolutely essential with a new one. This trick consists of pouring into the gourd somewhat over half a pint of brandy and shaking it well up and down, and after that carrying it for a few hours, jolting about and irrigating all the hairy inwards of the bottle as one goes. But do not imagine that the brandy so used can be drunk; when you have thus used it for a few hours it must all be poured away, for it is wholly spoilt. By the way, if you can get an old gourd second-hand that does not leak, it is far preferable to a new one; all things really worth having are better old than new. As to the price of a gourd, you will not get a small one of a quart or two for less than 8 to 10 francs, nor a large one from a quarter to a half gallon or upwards at less than an extra 3 or 4 francs for every quart. Gourds are not things to haggle about. Satisfy yourself that it does not leak and be grateful to get a sound one. It will last you all your life. As to weight, a gallon is ten pounds: a quart is two pounds and a half.

Further, you will find very often that when your gourd is empty, especially if you have carried it empty upon a cold and misty morning, the inside sticks together, and when you try to blow it out through the mouth (as is advisable, before pouring in the wine), no effort of yours can swell it; the trick is to put it before a fire and warm it gently; after it has warmed about ten minutes, it will swell easily.

As to the sack, nothing is more difficult than to advise upon this matter. Some men to be happy must carry a block, and pencils, and colours, and brushes. Others cannot live without combs. Nothing is really necessary besides bread and meat. Each traveller must decide his own minimum, but I can give advice both as to the shape and the weight of the sack. The people of the hills, when they carry a sack, carry a light bag slung by a strap over the shoulder, and for a light weight, up, say, to seven or eight pounds, that is the most practical equipment: thus what we call in England a satchel, and what the French call a Havresac does very well. For anything heavier a knapsack is often advised; but there are disadvantages in the knapsack: it is complicated, one cannot get at it without taking it off, and it is hot to the back. If you will be at the pains of a knapsack, always have one that is watertight in material, with a large overhanging flap, and never burden yourself with a knapsack which has outside pockets. The value of a knapsack for heavy carriage is that the weight of it comes right down on to the build of the body. Weight is quite a different thing, when it sags, backward or sideways, from what it is when it presses right down upon the framework of a man’s bones. That is why all those used to carrying very heavy weights habitually carry them upon the head or the shoulders, the human body is built for taking a strain in this way down the length of the bones. Now if you carry the haversack by a strap over the shoulder, any appreciable weight, even one so small as ten kilos, becomes a grievous burden after a short distance. Light weights, under that amount, can be so borne, but directly _upon_ the shoulders weights up to forty pounds can be carried without destroying a man’s marching power, and indeed both French and English armies have often repeatedly climbed the mule tracks of these very hills carrying such weights in this fashion.

It must, however, be remarked in connexion with the knapsack that it will not save you fatigue unless the weight bears right down upon the crest of the shoulder blades, and in order to ensure this, make certain of three things. First, that the shoulder straps come well down the knapsack, so that a good part of the weight is above the point where they are sewn on; secondly, that your knapsack is so packed that the weight is at the top, that no heavy things sag towards the bottom; and thirdly, that you have strings or straps going from the shoulder straps in front to a belt round your middle, whereby you can brace up the knapsack whenever it begins to lean away backwards. Every soldier knows the difference between a knapsack fitting close to the back and coming well above the shoulder, and one that drags away backwards.

To have said so much about the knapsack may mislead some of my readers. I would not advise it; it is only necessary if for some reason or other you want to carry weight. If you are wise, and content to take only the necessary, a haversack slung at the side from the shoulder will do perfectly well, and it has the advantage of being get-at-able at any moment. You may balance the weight of it by carrying the gourd slung over the other shoulder.

As to sandals—Many an Englishman will understand the need of the gourd and the sack who will not understand the advantage of sandals. All the Pyrenean people, for the matter of that, most Spaniards, travel not in leather boots but in cloth slippers with a sole made of twisted cord, and to these the French give the name of sandals. But, as in the case of the gourd, the name suddenly changes on the Spanish side. In France you must ask for _Sandales_, in Spain for a pair of _Alpargatas_. The advantage of these is a thing of which you can never convince a man the first time he attempts these mountains, but he is sure enough of it at the end of his first day. For some reason or other, the loose stones and the pointed rocks of a mule path make travel upon foot intolerably painful and difficult if it is too long pursued in ordinary boots. With _Alpargatas_ on, you do not feel the fatigue of a track that would finish you in 5 miles if you tried to do it in leather. And conversely, oddly enough, a high road with a good surface soon becomes as intolerable in Alpargatas as is a mule track in boots. There is nothing for it but to leave your boots at the nearest town, if you propose to return to it, or if you do not, to carry them with you and change from one footgear to the other as you pass from the mountain to the road, and from the road to the mountains.

Remember that, in Alpargatas, you will _always_ end the day with wet feet. Let not that trouble you. They dry at once before the camp fire and they do not shrink. The reason you will always have wet feet is that in every few miles of hills you have to cross a marshy place or a stream. But though it is easy to dry Alpargatas in a few minutes, it is advisable to change socks at night, while those you have worn during the day dry before the fire.

As to the blanket—No more than any of the inhabitants can you go through these hills without a blanket. It is often of the greatest use in the changes of weather during the day, it is absolutely necessary at night. Were you to take it from England, you would certainly take one that would be too heavy, or if you took a light one, one that would be too cold. The people of the Pyrenees who have thought out these things slowly for thousands of years, have ended with the right formula. They have a thin, close, narrow blanket, which just protects a man and protects him as much by its double fold with the air between as by its texture. Get one of a neutral colour, a sort of dark slate grey is the commonest, and pay from 30 to 50 francs for it.

With these five things, a pannikin from England, a gourd, a sack, sandals, and a blanket, you are equipped. You cannot take less, you need not take more, and if you take more you will certainly repent it.

I have said nothing about tents. The tent like twenty other luxuries is taken for granted in England. I have heard of people roughing it in various mountains who took with them not only a tent, but an india-rubber bath, a Norwegian kitchen, and for all I know, collars as well. But many a man who will have had the sense to get rid of his luxuries when he begins scrambling, will be reluctant to give up the tent, for it seems necessary to be at least dry. Now the arguments against having a tent have always seemed to me final, so far at least as the Pyrenees were concerned.

You are dealing here with a great expanse of mountain in which weather is very variable, but in which you do not have snow or prolonged furious weather during the months you are likely to travel in. This argument is enforced by the peculiar structure of the mountains. Everywhere in the Pyrenees you can find either rock shelter—and you find this much more frequently than in any other part of the world I have ever seen—or dense forests, or, on the bare upland sweeps of grass, those stone cabins of the shepherds, upon the shelter of which the inhabitants largely depend. These, of course, are not very near one to another, but they are always marked on the 1/100,000 French map, under the title of _Cabanes_. The owners, when they have owners, never mind one’s using them, and the only drawback about them is that sometimes you make certain of using one particularly far from mankind, and discover it to be all in ruins. One way with another I have never known three nights upon the Pyrenees which could not be passed in succession without a tent, if the rules which I shall give for camping were properly observed; and that is the experience also of those who have spent their whole lives in these mountains.

Next, let it be remarked that a tent is a great hindrance, it is either very light—in which case it is always fairly useless—or it is heavy, in which case there is an end to your free going. As will be seen later, when I speak of the way of settling for the night, there need never be occasion for such a shelter, which, moreover, in high winds is more troublesome than an animal or a child.

If your equipment consist in no more than a gourd, pannikin, blanket, sack, and sandals, what is your provision to be?

You must never make your provision for less than forty-eight hours, and it is better to make it for sixty. However modest is your plan, always allow for two nights on the mountain and for the better part of the third day as well. Remember that you will start in the early morning from the shelter of a roof, that you will therefore have a whole day before you dependent upon your own resources, that if you are making anything of an effort you will certainly camp the first night, but if the weather goes wrong or you miss your way or come upon any accident, you may very well have to spend the second night out, and if you do this, the chances are in favour of a long tramp and scramble on the third day before you reach human beings again. All this will be clearer to the reader when I come to speak of the accidents of weather in these hills, but I may here mention as an example of the truth of what I say that two companions and myself were once held for exactly twenty-four hours in a space of not much more than a square mile, and almost within earshot of a high road and a village, and that yet it was merely a piece of good luck towards evening—a fog lifting just at the right place for a few moments—that saved us from spending a second night out of doors. In work of this kind the chief part of strategy is to secure your retreat, but you cannot make even one day’s excursion without your retreat involving at least another day and perhaps two. Therefore, inconvenient though it be, you must have ample provision.

The first element of this provision is bread, and you will do well to allow a pound and half per man per day. Those are the rations of the French army and they are wise ones. If each man of a party carries a four-pound loaf, you have just enough, but not too much for accidents. A man must have bread, he can do without meat, and at a pinch he can do without wine, but I know by experience that he cannot depend upon any form of concentrated food to take the place of the solid wheaten stuff of Europe. Half a pound of bread and a pint of wine is a meal that will carry one for miles, and nothing can take their place. For meat, you will carry what the French call Saucisson, and the Spaniards, Salpichon. You will soon hate it, even if you do not, as is most likely, hate it from the bottom of your heart on the first day, but there is nothing else so compact and useful. It is salt pig and garlic rolled into a tight hard sausage which you may cut into thin slices with a knife, and it is wonderfully sustaining. If you like to carry other meat do so, but you can live on salpichon and it means less weight than meat in any other form.

These two, bread and saucisson, are the essentials of provision, but other provision hardly less essential should be added to them, and the first of these extras is _Maggi_. Maggi is a sort of concentrated beef essence, sold both in France and in England, and to be got anywhere in the French towns, but you will do well to make quite certain by laying in a good stock of it in some large town, such as Bordeaux or Toulouse or Paris itself, on your way south: I have known the grocers of a Pyrenean town to be out of it. The essence is packed in little oblong capsules which you buy by the dozen, at about 2_d._ a capsule, and you will do well to start with three or four dozen a man. They keep indefinitely, they weigh next to nothing, and the great advantage of them will be seen in what follows. You can, with two capsules to a quart of water, make in a few moments a hot and comforting soup which quite doubles the nourishment of your bread; with three capsules to a quart of water you have a very strong soup, which will bring a man round a corner of extreme fatigue. It is a food which can be prepared in a moment under almost any conditions, and one which is invaluable when you find yourself lost, especially if you are cut off by thick weather, or in any other way exhausted. It may seem an insignificant detail to tell the reader how to prepare so simple a meal, nevertheless I will do so. It took me a little time to learn, and he may as well be saved the trouble. Each little cylinder of extract is contained in two gelatine caps which fit together, you pull these off, you drop the essence into a little water while it is warming, but it will not melt of itself, you must crush it and mix it thoroughly with the water, and then add more water, still stirring till you have full measure. It needs no salt in the proportions I have given.

Further, you will do well to fill the little curved receptacle in the pannikin with methylated spirit, and to carry an extra provision of this in your sack. A pint is enough for many days, and very often you have no occasion to use it at all, but you may be caught in some wet place, or in a rocky piece where there is no wood, or in one way or another have a difficulty in making a fire; and even where you have plenty of wood, a drop or two of the methylated spirit makes you certain of the fire catching even in wet weather; of that I shall speak when I come to camping. By the way, take plenty of English matches and of two kinds, fusees and others, and if you are carrying a sack and not a waterproof knapsack, wrap your matches in a little square of india-rubber cloth, for if there is one thing that imperils a man more than another, it is to be caught in the hills without the means of making a fire.

As for brandy, the people of the hills themselves discourage its use; it is, on the whole, best to have some with you, only you must not depend upon it; it is quite honestly, under the circumstances of climbing, what some foolish fanatics think it under all conditions, that is, a medicine. If you take it when you do not need it it will fatigue you, especially in high places. Such as you do take carry in a flask. The gourd, as I have said, spoils it utterly.

Here then you have the rules for equipment and for provision, and I will sum them up before continuing.

For equipment: Haversack or knapsack, a blanket, sandals, a gourd, a pannikin fitted with spirit lamp and spirit vessel, four pounds of bread for each man, a pound of sausage, a pint of methylated spirits, and matches; to which you may add, if you will, a length of candle, and one of those little mica lanterns which fold into the shape of a pocket-book, and three or four dozen capsules of Maggi. Fill your gourd with wine as full as it will hold, you will need it. So much for equipment and provision.