Part 16

There is, indeed, a short cut which strikes the valley much higher, but it is difficult to make and involves the climbing of two cols. For this short cut the directions are as for the last, until your path along the Laurhibar has struck the wood; there, instead of leaving it when it turns south, and instead of going east (as above), you must keep to the track. It will cross the stream, still going due south, wind up between an open space through the woods, and will point before you lose it to the climb over the shoulder of the Pic d’Escoliers; it is a stiff climb of nearly 2000 feet from the point where you crossed the stream and very steep. The 2000 feet or so are climbed in under two miles. When you get to the shoulder of the peak a steep southern slope lies before you, diversified and made perilous by rocks, and separating plainly into an eastern and a western valley. Between you and the eastern valley (which is that you must descend) are steep rocks; they can be turned, however, by going to the _right_ of them, but the whole place is precipitous and difficult. The advantage appears when once you are down on the floor of the valley (which is but 1000 feet from the peak), for you come within a mile to a clear path, and once you have come to this, you are in another two miles, at the village of Larrau, which is the terminus of the great national road, and stands in the last upper waters of the valley.

If you approach the Soule by the more ordinary way you will come by train through Puyoo, change there, and take the train for Mauléon; and Mauléon, as I have said, is the capital of the Soule. But the true mountain town is Tardets, half-way up the valley. Tardets is the market town for all the Basques of the hills, and you can never have enough of it, both of its heavenly hotel, of which I shall speak when I come to speak of hotels, and for its universal shops, and for its kindly people. It stands in an opening of the lower hills, just before the valley narrows and enters the high mountains, and you may reach it from Mauléon by a tramway which runs up the river as far as Tardets and then turns off to the left and goes round to Oloron.

If you approach the Soule in this manner, making Tardets your starting-point, you will do well to equip yourself in that town and then to continue up the valley some five miles past Licq, until you come to the fork of the river. It is an unmistakable point, because a very definite rocky ridge comes down and separates the two sources of the river Saison, which is the river of the Soule. The branch to the right (as you go southward) leads up the valley to Larrau, of which I have just spoken, and the high road follows it; the one to the left (which is the main stream and is called the Chaitza) has no main road along it, but a good mule track, very clear and plain, and leading at last to the village of Ste Engrace, which lies at the extreme end of the valley and gives the whole district its name.

Ste Engrace was a saint of the persecution of Diocletian. She was martyred in Saragossa, and the name of the village is one of the many examples of the way in which the southern influence overlaps these hills. I have said that the Spanish sandal is used to the very foot of the French Pyrenees, and so is the wine-skin which is common to all Spain, and so is the Spanish mule. Here you may see the Spanish saints as well reaching beyond the summits.

From where you leave the main road and go up the Chaitza valley to Ste Engrace is a distance of 8 or 9 miles, and in this valley, in its upper waters, is to be found one of the wonders of the Pyrenees, and also one of the main passages into Spain.

The wonder is the gorge of the Cacouette; the passage is the twin passage of the Port d’Ourdayte and the Port Ste Engrace, and near them to the west are two easier ports.

The Cacouette is a cut through the limestone such as you might make with a knife into clay or cheese, with immense steep precipices on either side, and apart from the track above the cliffs there is some sort of tourist’s way along the cavernous ravine for those who admire such things. Of the two ports, the one path goes up the western side of that cleft in the limestone (which drops 1500 feet into the earth), and the other goes up the eastern side. To take the road up the western side, you leave the Ste Engrace road 3 miles after leaving the great highway, by a lane which goes off to the right and drops down into the valley; it is quite plain, and is the only road so leaving the main track, so that it cannot be mistaken. It climbs the opposing hill, and if you follow it through all its windings it will take you to the Port Belhay, or to the Port Bambilette, both under a mountain called Otxogorrigagne, and both easy. But if you continue just above the limestone precipice, you will come into a very striking circus of rock just under the watershed, up which your path perilously climbs to the summit and the frontier; this is the Port d’Ourdayte.

The Port Ste Engrace, though not half a mile distant from it, is reached in quite a different manner, and the separation between the two is due to this limestone gorge, which cuts off one path from the other.

If you are going to try to cross by Ste Engrace, sleep at the village before starting. There is a good comfortable inn kept by people of the same name as those who keep the inn at Elizondo, Jarégui. It is so steep and difficult a bit that if you were to attempt to do it in one day, without sleeping at Ste Engrace, you would hardly succeed unless you already knew the mountain well, and mist, which is the fatal difficulty of these western Pyrenees, will more commonly catch you in the early afternoon than at any other time in the day, so that you had better make your ascent before noon. When you have slept at Ste Engrace you will find the path the next morning winding round through the woods, at the base of the hill opposite the village. One must ask the way to the start of this path, and it is not always clear after the first two miles; one has now and then to cast about for it a little, but at last it emerges upon a high grassy slope, which runs all the way to the crest of the hill and the frontier. The path does not follow the straight ascent of the hill, it curves nearer and nearer to a precipice which is the same as that climbed by the neighbouring paths of the Port d’Ourdayte; for ten dangerous yards it runs on a tiny platform right along the gulf and makes over the crest into the further Spanish Basque valley, whose capital is Isaba.

Of this valley I can say nothing, for I have not succeeded in crossing the Ste Engrace, though I have twice tried, but I am told that Isaba is among the best of these little mountain Basque villages or towns for entertainment and for cleanliness, and all Basque villages and towns are cleanly. There is a good posada. From Isaba also a high road runs into the higher valleys of Navarre and to Pamplona.

Near this territory of the Soule, and partly included in it, are two great districts where a man may spend many days at his ease in camp there. The first is the great forest of the Tigra, which stretches to the west of Tardets and is full of rocks, rivers, and adventure. You may take it at its greatest width, counting one or two open spaces, to be 8 or 9 miles, and at its greatest length, from the Peak of the Vultures to St. Just, to be much the same. Its high places, some of which are bare peaks, some clothed with woods, range for the most part round about 3000 feet, but the highest point—of which I have never heard the name, and which is on the very south of the forest, just passes 4000 feet. Tardets is always at hand on the one hand, St. Jean Pied-de-Port rather further on the other; from both one may re-provision oneself.

Another and still larger district lies on the further side of the valley to the north and east of Ste Engrace itself. It is the great mass of wood, mainly beech, which stretches all over the hills between this last Basque valley and the Val d’Aspe, next to the east, which is the frontier valley of Béarn. These woods have no common name, they are intersected by clear spaces, notably round the higher peaks of the forest, but they make a district of their own stretching eastward and westward from Lourdios to Licq, northward and southward from the frontier nearly to Lanne, and thus measuring not much less than 10 miles every way, in French territory alone.

There is no forest in which it is easier to lose one’s way than this great stretch of upland. This is especially true in the Souscousse district, due east of Ste Engrace; there is here a labyrinth of complicated valleys, and what seems on the map so easy a passage from the Soule into the Val d’Aspe is in practice nearly impossible to find. To camp in and to explore, this forest is even better than the Tigra; for its summits are higher, and its views more unexpected and remarkable. There are points in it which are more than 6000 feet in height, and the great Pic d’Anie, the first of the really high mountains of the chain, stands high above them, just beyond the southern limit of the trees.

[Illustration: THE BASQUE VALLEYS]

II. THE FOUR VALLEYS (BÉARN AND ARAGON)

[Illustration]

Four valleys in the Pyrenees count together in travel upon foot. They are the Val d’Aspe and the Val d’Oussau on the French side, and the valleys of the rivers Aragon and Gallego on the Spanish side.

These four form a unity for the reason that in one place (which is just to the south of the watershed) they are, without too much difficulty, approachable one from another.

Many historical accidents have also served to unite these four valleys. One pair of them made the platform for that great Roman road to which allusion has so often been made in this book, and which ran from the French plains over what is now called the pass of the Somport, right down through Jaca to Saragossa. The parallel pair of valleys just to the east, the Val d’Ossau and the valley of the Gallego, on the Spanish side, though no highway ran along them until quite recently, had a similar historical unity which bound them both together, and bound a pair of them to the two sister valleys upon the west. For the eastern part of what later became the kingdom of Aragon, the county of Sobrarbe, stretched from the valley of the Gallego eastward, and was a natural line of defence southward against the Mahommedans; while the Val d’Ossau to the north of it was reached by an easy pass and must have formed—though we have no exact historical record of it—a good road for the parallel advance of armies.

It must never be forgotten that when an army is advancing in great numbers it is of paramount importance for it that the host should be able to concentrate before action. But roads, especially roads over mountains, compel men to march in long strings, so that the head of the column will have arrived at a particular point hours before the tail of it; and what is more, the deployment of the column, that is the getting of it all into a front perpendicular to its line of advance, takes time in proportion to the length which the column had before it began to deploy. This accident it was, for instance, which destroyed the French and their allies at Crécy, for though they greatly outnumbered the English they had come up in columns too long to deploy in time. Now it evidently follows from this principle that armies on the march, even under the rudest conditions, will attempt to follow parallel roads. To find two roads parallel to one another and leading to the same field of action is to halve the difficulties of transport and of deployment. But it is very difficult (under primitive conditions) to find two parallel roads which are near to one another, and unless the lines by which the army advances are near to one another the advantage of the alternative routes will disappear in proportion to their distance one from the other. In mountain regions it is especially difficult to find two passages parallel to each other and yet in close neighbourhood. This is precisely the advantage afforded by the trench of the Gallego continued in the Val d’Ossau to the east, and in the trench of the Aragon continued in the Val d’Aspe to the west. Two hosts using the old mule paths could leave Sallent on the Gallego and Canfranc on the Aragon at dawn of one day, and both would meet at Oloron in the French plains before the evening of the morrow; on the southward march a host could assemble in the plains of Béarn, separate to use these two easy passes, and meet at Jaca at the end of the second day.

It is fairly certain therefore—much more certain than a thousand of the historical guesses that are put down as truths in our textbooks—that the easy pass between the Gallego Valley and the Val d’Ossau was twin throughout the Dark Ages to the great Somport pass not 8 miles westward of it. Abd-ur-Rahman must have used both and so must the Christian knights when they came so often to the relief of Aragon in the heavy and successful fighting against Islam which marked the tenth and eleventh centuries.

To appreciate how close these two parallel tracks were to each other one has but to remember that the gap between the Val d’Aspe and the next easy pass westward—right away at Roncesvalles—there is a matter of 40 miles. Between the Val d’Ossau and the next easy pass eastward there is a gap of indeterminate length according to the definition of the term “easy,” but there is at any rate no notch over which one could take any armed force until one gets to the Bonaigo, quite 60 miles away. All between is the mass of the highest and most rugged ridges of the Pyrenees, over which certain paths have always existed, indeed, and over which, in two places at least, at Gavarnie and at Macadou, the French propose to drive roads, but no gap in which was ever passable in the Dark and Middle Ages for a great number of men.

I have said that these two parallel trenches were not only twin in history for the use of armies, but were also communicable one from the other just south of the watershed. North of it, indeed, the Val d’Aspe and the Val d’Ossau, though one can be reached from the other, only communicate by very high and rocky ridges, the easiest of which is the Col des Moines. But on the south side there is one accidental easy passage. You may go all the way from the Somport to Jaca and find nothing but the most difficult mountains on your left, and all the way from the Pourtalet (which is the pass at the top of the Val d’Ossau corresponding to the Somport) down to Sandinies and find nothing but difficult mountains on the right, save just at the beginning of the descent where this accident of which I speak occurs. Its feature is a lateral valley called the Canal Roya which takes its name from the streak of intense red scoring the side of its principal peak.

This lateral valley points right away eastward from the trench of the Aragon, it is nowhere precipitous along its stream (a rare advantage in the Pyrenees) save in one spot where a quite low precipice is easily outflanked along the grassy slopes above it. And the end of that valley consists in a sort of semi-circular ridge of grassy steep banks in three places of which ridge, at least, a man or a beast can walk over without difficulty or danger. These three places are the Port de Peyréguet, the Port d’Anéou, and the col of the Canal Roya. This last is the principal one, the easiest and the lowest. Each is within half a mile of its neighbour, and on the further side one comes down quite easily by large steep slopes of meadow to the valley of the Gallego. The Port de Peyréguet and the Port d’Anéou bring one down just on the north of the flat dip of the pass, the col of the Canal Roya just on the south of it; but whether one comes down just north or south of the flat Pourtalet pass is an indifferent matter. The travelling in all three cases is little more than a walk.

These “gates” up the Canal Roya from the Val d’Aragon into the parallel valley of the Gallego knit the whole four valleys into one system, and to this day their customs and their inhabitants have very much in common, and the two valleys, which were the core and heart of Aragon and the origins of its crusade southward against the Mahommedans, count in history and in local geography with the two valleys which were the heart and origin of Béarn up to the north.

The Val d’Aspe, which is the most important of the four, is that valley in the Pyrenees where the characteristics of the range are most strongly marked. It might serve as the type of all the others. You cannot see the opening of it southward from Oloron without appreciating that you are approaching something distinctive and singular in landscape. It is so clean-cut and so obviously an invitation to the crossing of the hills. The gorges which divide into separate flat steps every Pyrenean valley, are nowhere more marked than here. The village of Asasp which stands at the first of them is singularly characteristic of such an entry; the gap through which the old lake broke is so clear, the walls through which the Gave runs are so perfect.

Somewhat further on when yet another gorge has been passed there opens out one of those circular and isolated spaces of which Andorra is the historical example, and which in greater or less perfection are characteristic of all these hills.

This plain, which still recalls in its contours the old lake which created it, and of which it is the floor, is more regular and more complete than any of the many _jasses_ and “_plans_” which distinguish the other vales. It is even more striking than that of Andorra. It nourishes five villages which might easily (had not the great international road run through them for 2000 years) have federated to form an independent commonwealth as the eight villages of Andorra federated to form one. Indeed this circus, surrounded by almost impassable hills which meet at either end in narrow Thermopylæ, was very nearly independent at the close of the Middle Ages, and when it appealed against the king for the preservation of its customs, these were preserved by the authority of the king’s court.

Of the small towns or large villages which this little secluded corner of the world contains, Bédous is that which will seem the capital to the wayfarer, for it is the only one which stands upon the main road; it is the terminus of a railway which will soon be finished, and of which nearly all the track is already made. Bédous, by this time, must also have more population, as it certainly has more wealth than any of the surrounding places. But Accous is the true capital of the five, and it is pleasurable to hear with what reverence the villagers of the farms around speak of Accous as though it were an Andorra-viella or a Toulouse. All this wonderful and silent plain is marked with long lines of poplars which enhance by their straight lines the immensity of the heights around them.

If one will pass some days in this singular valley it forms an excellent place from which to explore the high passes into the Val d’Ossau, and the bases of the two great mountains which, to the east and to the west, neither visible from the floor of the valley, are, as it were, its guardians: the Pic d’Anie and the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. The man who does not desire to cover much ground but who wants thoroughly to know some very Pyrenean part of the Pyrenees will do well to stop at the Hotel de la Poste at Bédous, and thence climb at his leisure up on to the platforms from which spring these isolated and dominant masses of rock.

The Pic du Midi remains in one’s mind more perhaps than any of the isolated mountains of Europe. It is quite savage and alone, and you must fatigue yourself to reach it. There is no common knowledge of it and yet it is as much itself as is the Matterhorn. The Pic d’Anie, though it is less isolated, stands even more alone and has this quality that it dominates the whole of the seaward side of the Pyrenees for it is much higher than anything westward of it. Also it is the boundary beyond which the Basques and their language have not gone.

Beyond this plain of Bédous, when you have passed the southern “gate” of it, you come into a long, deep and winding gorge which leads you at last to Urdos, and Urdos is and has been since history began the outpost of the French in these hills. It was the Roman outpost and the mediæval one, and it was the outpost through the Revolutionary wars.

Napoleon, who in everything recognized and imitated the example of Rome, and who, for that matter, caused the Empire to rise again from the dead, determined that a modern road should go again where the old Roman road had gone. He determined this in connexion with his Spanish wars, and decreed in 1808 that a way for artillery should cross where the legions had gone. But Europe, as we all know, would not upon any matter accept in the rush of a few years the constructive desire of Napoleon and of the Revolution. It has taken more than three generations to do not half the vast work they planned, and this road, which like almost every good road over the Alps and the Pyrenees has Napoleon and the Revolution for its origin, waited till past the middle of the nineteenth century before it reached so much as the summit of the port.