Part 20

At the second torrent which comes down this slope into the river—or rather the second stream, for they are quite small—the telegraph wire, which has hitherto followed the path, will be seen going over to the right, up a somewhat steep side valley. This is at a point about 4 miles from Hospitalet. You have but to follow that line if it is fine weather, and you will come right over the ridge and down on to the Spanish side of the Andorran hamlet, Saldeu. If it is misty on the heights you will almost certainly lose the line, and possibly your life as well. Nevertheless the crossing can be made even in bad weather by going somewhat further south to the point called the Port d’Embalire. To find this needs a certain care. Note with your compass the trend of the Ariège; it curves round more and more as you follow it, and when it begins to point _due south_ (which it does after a perceptible bend) you may note a fairly plain track coming down from the opposite side of the valley: it comes down and strikes the Ariège at a spot almost exactly 2 miles from the place where the line of the telegraph left the stream. Here opposite the road turn sharp up away from the Ariège (which is now but a tiny brook) and go _due west_ by your compass right up the mountain, which is here nothing but a steep grassy slope, and you will strike the Embalire.

It is one of the few crossings which can be made in any weather, because you will find upon that slope, a little way up, the beginnings of a made road; that road was never completed. It has never been metalled, but it is culverted and graded, and is as good a guide as the best highway in the Pyrenees could be. Probably it never will be finished, for the Andorrans are opposed to an easy entry into their country; but so long as its platform remains, one can never lose one’s way upon the Port d’Embalire. The further side is a steep and easy descent over a sort of down, and one finds Saldeu by this longer route about 4 miles from the summit. Whether one has followed the telegraph line or come over by the Embalire, the two tracks join at Saldeu, and the rest of the way is identical with that which you will come to by Fontargente, that is, through Canillo and Encamps to Andorra the Old.

Easy as the way is, however, it should be remembered that it is a long day from Ax, for counting every turning, it is not far short of 30 miles, and more than half of that is uphill. Ax stands at about 2000 to 2400 feet (according to the part of the steep town one measures from) and the summit of the Embalire is almost exactly 8000 feet. There is no break in the rise from one to the other.

The interest of Andorra lies in its survival, and the recognition it receives of being an Independent European State. All these enclosed valleys of the Pyrenees led a more or less independent life for centuries; from a decline of the Roman power until the union of Aragon and Castille on the Spanish side, and on the French side in some places, up to the Revolution itself, they boasted their own customs and could plead their own law.

The violent quarrel between Madrid and Aragon, in which the independence of Aragon was fiercely destroyed, affected the greater part of the Spanish valleys, and killed their independence; but it did not attack the Catalan valleys—of which Andorra was the most secluded and remote, and therefore Andorra survives.

One may study in Andorra what all these valleys were in the long period of local and natural growths between the very slow death of the Roman bureaucracy, and the rapid rise of the modern. The French, through the Prefect of the Ariège (as representing the Crown of France, which in its turn inherited from the county of Foix) claim a partial control over the Andorrans who pay to the Government in Paris £40 a year in fealty. The Spaniards have a hold on it through the Bishop of Urgel, who is not only their Ordinary but also their Civil Suzerain: he gets only £18 a year from the embattled farmers.

The Andorrans have all the vices and virtues of democracy clearly apparent. They are very well-to-do, a little hard, avaricious, courteous, fond of smuggling, and jealous of interference. Also in Andorra itself one great shop supplies their external needs, and conducts all their international exchanges. Catalan, a provincial dialect in Spain, is here the national language. They are divided, as are all Catholics, into Clericals and Anti-Clericals, the Clericals making, I believe, a working majority, and there is not among them, so far as one can see, a poor man or an oppressed one.

From Andorra the Old, a good open path leads through the narrow gates of the country, down on to the valley of the Segre, and so to Seo de Urgel.

* * * * *

Though it is but a few hours’ walk from Andorra to Urgel, it is as well to pass the remainder of the day and the night at Urgel, especially if it is the first Spanish town you have seen, as it is the first for many people who cross the mountains at this place. You will certainly find nothing more Spanish along the whole range. This lump of a town with its narrow oriental streets was the pivot of the Christian advance into Catalonia. The Carolingian armies came pouring through that easiest of the passes, the Cerdagne, enfranchised Urgel, first of all the Mozarabic Bishoprics, and may be said to have refounded its Christian existence. For some reason difficult to discover Urgel fossilized quite early in the Middle Ages. No line of travel, no road linked up the long valley of the Segre, the armies and the embassies of the French knew nothing of Lerida, and it is characteristic of Urgel to-day that even to-day there should be no great road beyond it up the valley.

From Urgel your road back into France through the upper valley of the Noguera Pallaresa, and the Val d’Aran is difficult to discover in its earlier part, unmistakable in the high mountains; which is the reverse of the rule usual in other crossings of the hills.

You must go down the high road which runs south of Urgel until you come, in something over a mile, to Ciudad, which is that hill-pile of white houses, once fortified, which rises over against the Cathedral city.

There you must ask the way to Castellbo, which is two or three hours away up a torrent bed, and you must go up this torrent bed by way of a road.

If you start early from Urgel you will be at Castellbo well before noon, and the hospitality of the place is so great that you will wish to stay there. There is only one drawback to eating at Castellbo which is that you have after it to make a passage of the mountains which, though here not very high, well wooded and fairly inhabitated, do not bring you to proper food and shelter until you have gone close on 20 miles and have reached Llavorsi in the further valley of the Noguera; and so, if you stop to eat your mid-day meal at Castellbo, it is quite on the cards that you will have to camp out in the hills and that you will not make Llavorsi until noon of the following day; for the col in between, though it is very easy, is higher above the sea than the Somport.

From Castellbo you have but to ask for the village of St. Croz, which is perched upon a height just up the same valley, but from there to the port the way is difficult to find for the very reason that there are no _physical_ difficulties. It is all one long ridge of wooded grass like a down, with rather higher peaks to the right and to the left and with more than one indication of a path several directions. A good rule, however, for finding the exact place where you should cross, is to make for a spot due north-west from the village of St. Croz, and this spot is further distinguished by the fact that it is on the whole lowest upon the whole saddle. It is a mile and a quarter or a mile and a half from the village, and as you go to it over the easy grass you get a superb vision of the Sierra del Cadi barring your view of Catalonia and standing up against you much higher than ever it seemed from the floor of the Cerdagne. No hills in Europe look so marvellously high.

As the saddle of this port, which is called the port of St. John, is so long and easy it might seem indifferent at what point one crossed it; it is on the contrary very important to get the _exact_ place and for this reason, that on the further or north-western side of it there is a profound ravine densely wooded, if one does not make the _exact_ spot one has no path through this wood. That means hours of delay and one may very well come out upon the right instead of the left bank of the ravine; in which case in order to find the trail for Llavorsi at the bottom of the valley one may have a precipitous descent into the ravine and a bad climb out of it on the other side. Look, therefore, carefully for the path which begins to be clearly marked the moment the saddle is crossed, and follow down it until you come to a steep rock which overhangs the main stream at the bottom of the valley. This main stream is the Magdalena and runs not quite 2000 feet below the summit of the port. The trail is very distinct when once one has reached the valley; small villages are passed; it climbs up on the left bank to avoid a precipitous place and comes down to the water again at a place where the Magdalena falls into the main stream of the Noguera.

Here you must descend to the floor of the valley and take the road which is being made and which will in a few years form another great international highway up the valley of the Noguera. The road runs all the way on the left or eastern bank of the stream, which is broad and rapid and confined by very high steep hills upon either side. Three miles from the place where the path descended to the junction of the Magdalena and the Noguera, you will find another large river coming in. The road crosses by a wooden cantilever bridge where one pays a toll (I think of ½d.), and once across one is in the unpleasing village of Llavorsi.

The valley opens somewhat and is called Anéu, having on the left the exceedingly rugged and tangled chain of the Encantados, a wilderness of rocky peaks and lakes—and on the right a clear ridge which cuts off this country-side from the Val Cardos and the Val Farreira, both wild districts at whose summits is a bit of country as lonely as the Upper Aston.

All the way from Llavorsi up this Anéu valley the new road runs. I have not visited it for four years, and by this time it must be nearly finished, at any rate it is perfectly straight going and in all between 10 and 12 miles, with the exceedingly filthy village of Escaló about half-way.

It is not easy to give advice about sleeping in this walk from Urgel to Esterri. The distance between the two towns in a straight line is less than thirty miles, but the perpetual turning of the path makes it quite forty by the time one has reached Esterri, and what with the casting about for the right crossing on the port and the height of that crossing, it is too much for anyone to try and do in one day. Even if one were to sleep at Castellbo it would not mend matters much, for Castellbo is but a sixth of the distance, if that, and I would not recommend sleeping at Llavorsi. I have said that if one ate at Castellbo in the morning, it would mean camping out in the woods below the port of St. John and this is perhaps the best plan after all: to leave Urgel on the morning of one day, to camp in the deep woods above the Magdalena and to sleep at Esterri, on the night of the second day. There is a good inn at Esterri, where everything is comfortable and clean, and the whole place is more civilized than any other town or village in the Pallars.

The next day you will go over the Pass of Bonaigo into the Val d’Aran, unless you prefer the much less amusing walk by the new road up over the Port de Salau to St. Girons. It is less amusing because it gets you into France almost at once, whereas the walk into the Val d’Aran keeps you in Spain and shows you a very interesting geographical and political accident of the Pyrenees.

The town of the Val d’Aran is called Viella, and it lies 20 miles west by north of Esterri, between the two there is no obstacle but a high grassy saddle called the Port of Bonaigo the summit of which is exactly 3283 feet above the floor of the Noguera at Esterri, and the interest of which lies in this, that it stands right upon the junction of that “fault” which was mentioned in the first division of this book.

The Bonaigo is the exact centre of the Pyrenean system. On your left as you cross it, to the south that is, is the Saburedo, which is the last peak of the western branch. To your right upon the north the hills lift up to the Pic de l’Homme, which is the terminal peak of the eastern branch, and the ridge uniting these two branches runs in a serpentine fashion north and south with the saddle of the Bonaigo for its lowest point.

You will reach the summit, going easy from Esterri, in about three hours, and thence you will see, if the weather is clear, the distant snow of the Maladetta to the west, and in the vale at your feet, the first trickling of the Garonne. For by the twist the watershed here takes, you are crossing geographically from Spain into France, though the valley of the Garonne before you is still politically Spanish. The descent upon the Val d’Aran is somewhat steeper than the ascent from the Noguera, a path of sorts begins at the foot of it, and runs down the Garonne to the first hamlet, the name of which is Salardú. At Arties, a road begins, and 5 miles further on you come to Viella and to rest.

In Viella there is nothing but oddity to note: the oddity of a French valley governed by Spain. You are quite cut off, you will hear no news, and the only sign that you are on the north of the mountains will be the great and excellently engineered road leading down the Garonne from gorge to gorge and reaching at last the French frontier at a narrow gate where is the “King’s Bridge.” Some miles further on is the French railway-head at Marignac. An omnibus starts in the early morning from Viella at whatever hour it pleases and gets down to the French railway in time for the mid-day train, but whether you take it or walk down on foot, you had better stop at Bosost, not half-way down, and there take the whittle woodland road westward over the frontier by a very low gap called the Portillon and so saunter into Bagnères de Luchon, the noisy and wealthy capital of luxury. To come into Luchon suddenly after such a journey is as sharp a change as you can experience perhaps in all Europe. Do not forget before you reach Bosost to look up the gully which comes in from the left at a place called Las Bordas, some six or seven miles from Viella. This gully is that of the true Garonne, the fork of the river which we saw having such strange adventures rising on the wrong side of the main watershed of the mountains, burrowing right through them in a tunnel and coming out upon the northern side; surely the only river in the world which behaves in such a fashion.

The walk which I have just described will have shown you most thoroughly all the wild north-western corner of Catalonia, and have taught you Andorra as well. Whether you take Cabanes for your starting place, entering Andorra by the difficult passes of the Aston, or whether you take Ax for your starting place and enter by the easy pass of Embalire, you will not make the whole round to Luchon in the best weather under six days, and indeed a man who has but a week in which to begin to learn the Pyrenees, might very well choose this little square of them for his first introduction.

[Illustration: THE CATALAN VALLEYS & ANDORRA]

VI. CERDAGNE

[Illustration]

The Cerdagne forms a district quite separate from the rest of the Pyrenees. Its scenery differs from that of the rest of the range, its facilities for travel, its politics, everything in the place is different; and though both valleys are Catalan, it is well not to include in the same summary a description of the Cerdagne and a description of the Roussillon.

The Cerdagne is the only broad valley in the Pyrenees, and it is a broad valley held in by walls of high mountains. All the other trenches which nature has cut into the range, are, without exception, profound and narrow. They expand occasionally into enclosed circles of flat land, the floors of ancient lakes, with a circle of steep banks all around, first wooded, then rocky, and reaching almost to Heaven. But these solemn circuses of secluded land, held in by narrow gates at either end, and small compared with the rocks around them, have a totally different effect upon the mind from those produced by such a landscape as the Cerdagne. You here have a whole country-side as broad as a small English county might be, full of fields, and large enough to take abreast a whole series of market towns. This is the sort of plain, which, were it bounded by hills, rather low like our English downs, would seem a little country by itself: a place large enough to make up one of our European divisions, like the counties of England, or the minor provinces of France. A broad river valley, such as decides a score of places scattered over Western Europe, here binds many households all united historically and defines a corporate condition for a fixed community of men.

This picture is framed in two great lines of hills roughly parallel to each other, and the effect when one comes upon it out of the last of the narrow valleys, may be compared to the effect upon a child’s mind when he first sees the sea.

In order to perceive the full contrast of this exception in the Pyrenean group, it is best to approach it from the west; whether you are coming on foot over the foothills of the Carlitte groups down on to Mont Louis or Targasonne, or whether you are coming by the high road over the pass of Porté, there comes a point in your journey where, after so many gorges and narrow cliffs, the hills here suddenly cease at your feet and you see the whole sweep of the Cerdagne as broad as a field of corn; you will have seen nothing like it all your way from the first foot hills of the Basque and the shores of the Atlantic.

On the eastern side, beyond the plain, you see the long ridge which is among the highest of the Pyrenees, and which stands steeply out of the flat. It stretches, as it were, indefinitely away into Spain and was called for centuries by the Mohammedans, and still is, the Sierra del Cadi. At its feet are a group of villages and towns, Saillagouse, Odeillo, Bourg Madame, Puigcerdá (with its curious little isolated hill), Angoustrine, Palau, Osseja, Nahija, Err, and Caldegas, and that fascinating territory Llivia, which stands enclosed, making a little island of Spanish territory in the midst of French.

The structure of the Cerdagne explains its history. It is a slightly sloping shelf upon the Spanish side of the watershed, but the watershed here is not as it is everywhere else a steep ridge with rocks, it is a large imperceptible flat which, for the first few miles upon the northern side, slopes quite gently down towards the valley of the Tet, and on the south side slopes still more gently and easily away towards Spain. The Segre, the last and largest tributary of the Ebro, rises in this gentle plain in innumerable rivulets, which joins innumerable other rivulets at Llivia, and then receives the river of Val Carol, the river of Angoustrine, and the little river of Flavanara below Puigcerdá. There is in the whole extent of this plain no natural feature to form a frontier, and (as its upper waters form the only approach to the province of Roussillon) Mazarin, when the treaty of the Pyrenees submitted the Roussillon to the French Crown, claimed as a sort of right of way, the upper stretch of this wide plain.

The negotiations were not difficult, the frontier was drawn just so as to give the French Government everywhere the road down the Val Carol and up by Mont Louis to Perpignan. It was not the frontier between two civilizations or languages, the few square miles of the French Cerdagne, which is geographically Spanish, are Spanish also, Catalan Spanish, in customs, hours, architecture, and even cooking. It is Spanish in everything save the functions of government; and here you see just what differences government can and cannot make in a country-side. Government, where it exists against the will of the governed, effects nothing; but here there is no such friction, and you may compare the contented Cerdagne, which takes its orders from Paris, with the contented Cerdagne that takes them from Barcelona and Madrid. The subtle effect of the contrast is sufficiently striking; it is seen in the type of roadway, the paving of courtyards, in clocks that keep time upon one side and not upon the other, and in a certain hardness, which French assurance breeds, and which the Spanish ease avoids. It is a good plan as one enters the Cerdagne to take the by-road which leads straight across the plain from Urgel to Saillagouse. This by-road, when you have pursued it for about a mile, enters the isolated Spanish district of Llivia, and when you reach that town you find yourself in Spain, although all the villages round you in a circle are French villages. You have the Spanish delay, the Spanish tenacity, and the Spanish disorder. On coming out of it again, and immediately over the stream on the first village, the influence of the distant prefecture and of a strong hand upon the local community is apparent.