Part 4

The Spanish side is again remarkable for true rivers running in considerable valleys everywhere east of Navarre. Though the rainfall is less upon the southern side than upon the northern, yet, because the catchment areas are broader, the streams running at the bottom of the Spanish valleys are larger and more important. A glance at the map will show upon the French side a whole series of parallel river valleys running down from the summit into the plains to join the Adour or the Gironde. Armagnac and Béarn are crowded with them. A man going eastward from Bayonne to Pau, from Pau to Tarbes, from Tarbes to Toulouse, will cross more than forty streams all spreading out like a fan from the central axis of the Lannemezan Plain; a man going eastward below the Spanish foot hills from Melida, let us say through Huesca to Lerida, will find but half a dozen of such water crossings. Again, you have between the Soule and the Labourd, between the Val d’Aspe and the Val d’Ossau, between the Val d’Aure and the Garonne, distances of 8, 10, or at the most 12 miles, but the distance between neighbouring Spanish valleys (if we except the near approach of the Gallego and the Aragon), is always much greater. Between the Noguera and the Segre, for instance, there is at the nearest point, 20 miles; between the two Nogueras, another 20; between the last of these two rivers and the Esera, quite 20 more. The whole Spanish side with the exception of Navarre is thus built up of considerable valleys, comparable to those of the Tet and the Ariège alone upon the northern slope.

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The details of Pyrenean structure will concern a man travelling on foot more than do these general lines, though the whole aspect of the range must be grasped before one can understand its details. The separate peaks and valleys, the intimate structure of the range is remarkable everywhere for its abruptness. It is this physical feature in the Pyrenees, coupled with the absence of snow, which gives them the highly individual character they bear.

Fantastic outlines are not to be discovered in these hills so frequently as in the Dolomites, nor are wholly isolated hills common, though such few as exist are very striking, but for day after day a man wandering in the Pyrenees sees cliffs more regularly high, a greater succession of rocks more precipitous, and a more permanent succession of connected summits above him than in any other European range.

The absence of snow is a further sharp characteristic in the range. The essential feature of an Alpine landscape is the snow; and it is not only the essential feature of that landscape to the eye, it is the condition which controls the lives of those who inhabit, and of those who visit, the valleys. You can still wander a trifle in Switzerland. Even to-day I have come to villages where foreigners were still thought comic, and an ignorance of the German tongue was still thought amazing. But though you can wander, your wandering is strictly limited. Above a certain line you can go forward only with technical knowledge and in a special way. You are upon ice or snow. All climbing in the Alps depends upon this, and most of travel as well. A man may pass many days for instance in the upper valley of the Rhone, and then pass many days more in the upper valley of the Aar, but to go from one to the other he must take one of two strictly defined paths, unless he is willing to undertake special work requiring technical knowledge and particular aids. The hills between the two valleys are not a field for his exploration; they are a great mass of impassable and unapproachable land, all frozen, and diversified only by very narrow valleys inhabitable nowhere but at their base. No one could lose himself for many days upon the Wetterhorn, the Jungfrau, or the Finsteraarhorn; you can approach these mountains for the glory of the thing, but they are not a country-side. Now in the Pyrenees almost all the surface of the mountains, say 250 miles by 60, is at your disposal. It is this and a local custom of live and let live which make the pleasure of them inexhaustible; and which, combined with certain protective methods of their own, make it certain that the Pyrenees will never be overcome or changed by men. They are too large.

This surface of some 15,000 square miles is diversified in a manner fairly continuous throughout the chain. The valley floors are given up to cultivation in their lower part, their upper parts consist of damp close pastures, and between the two types of level are to be found, as we shall presently see, sharp gates of rock through which the river saws its way in a gorge. Above the valley floor, and at the end of it, where the stream springs out below the watershed (such springs bubbling up suddenly through the porous rock are called Jeous), steep banks of two, three and four thousand feet, broken almost invariably here and there into precipices, forbid the way; and these, in perhaps half their extent, are covered with enormous woods of beech below (mixed often with oak) and of pine above.

When you have climbed up these slopes through the forest or over the naked rock, you come, in the last heights, either to large grassy spaces, which often sweep right over the summit of a lateral ridge, and sometimes extend over both sides, even, of the main watershed (as between the Val d’Aran and Esterri) or else—more commonly—upon a jumble of jagged rocks and smooth, perpendicular or overhanging slabs, which defend the final secrets of the range.

The succession of these features is nearly universal. The only places where they are modified are the two lower ends of the range. There the rocks sink, the hills are rounded, the precipices disappear in the last Basque valleys, while the Alberes at the other extremity of the chain against the Mediterranean are at last mere toothed rocks. All between (with the exception of the Cerdagne, which is a country to itself) is built up in successive bands of valley floor, steep forest, or steep rock, broken with limestone precipices, and finally on the highest ridge sweeps of grass or jagged edges of stone.

It is this character in the last ridge of the Pyrenees that determines the nature of a passage over them, and since a passage from valley to valley is the chief business of the day when one is exploring the range, I will next describe these crossings, for the method of them is very different from that of other mountains, and has largely determined the history and customs of their inhabitants.

In other high mountains you will either find snow above a certain level and covering for most of the year most of the passes, some of the passes for all the year, or, as you go further south, you will commonly find many gaps which long years of weathering have reduced to easy slopes, or you will find great differences in slope between the one and the other side of the range; as, for instance, the difference between the long valleys that lead up eastward into the Californian Sierras, and the sharp escarpment which falls eastward upon the desert side of those heights. In all other ranges that I have seen or read of, save the Pyrenees, there is at least great diversity in the opportunities of crossing, whether natural or artificial. There is great diversity, as a rule, in the natural crossings; some are quite easy ascents and descents on either side (as the Brenner Pass over the Alps); some, though difficult, are notably lower than the average height of the range (as the Mont Genèvre from the Durance into Piedmont); some, these more rare, are deep gorges cleft right through the range (as the Danube gorge through the Carpathians).

Now it is characteristic of the Pyrenees that in the main part of their length no such diversities appear, save that there are two kinds of summit surfaces on the high cols, rock and grass: the grass the rarer.

If anyone looks closely at the Somport, especially noting the line which the old track took before the modern road was made, he will agree that it is a pass which, though steep, had no “edge” to it, so to speak. The grass would take any kind of traffic. The same is true of course of the Cerdagne, the only broad valley across the Pyrenees. But the Somport is well to the west end of the range; the Cerdagne is well to the east end. All the main part between could take no vehicle, and has crossings of a kind which I shall presently describe: sharp, the escalade difficult, the first descent upon the far side, or the last ascent upon the near side, steep.

There is perhaps an exception to be found in the case of the Bonaigo, but this pass also presents difficulties to wheels upon its western side, and in the lower valley at the gorge.

In general the crossings of the Pyrenees everywhere display certain characters rare or absent in other ranges, which are _first_ that they are very numerous (a feature due to the absence of snow), _secondly_, that they are very high, _thirdly_, that they hardly ever involve any true climbing, and _fourthly_, that they nearly always involve some considerable care on the part of the wayfarer and are somewhere dangerous either upon the northern or the southern side.

This can be well illustrated by a particular example in the few miles between the Pic D’Anéu and the Canal Roya. Here there is a range no part of which descends much below 2100 metres nor rises much above 2300. There are two distinct saddles where a man can cross on foot, and neither is appreciably lower than the peaks of the range, which are but lumps of rock a little higher than the grassy ridges from which they spring. Any man knowing the country and with a fairly good head could trust himself to half a dozen places westward of the two which I have mentioned (which are called the Col D’Anéu and the Port of Peyreget). Nevertheless the easiest of them, the Port de Puymaret, easy as it is upon the French side, gives some pause upon the Spanish. The traveller finds himself, once over the crest, within a few yards of a rocky edge, beyond which there is apparently nothing but air, and, thousands of feet beyond, the precipices of the Negras. If he will approach that rocky edge he will see that everything below it is easily negotiable, and when he has once reached the floor of the Spanish valley beneath he will perhaps wonder why it seemed so difficult from above. In truth it is not really difficult at all, but the scramble looks dangerous, and it is one which most men, other than regular climbers, would think twice about when they first saw it from above. If all this is true of the Peyreget, it is still more true of the other crossings in its neighbourhood to the right and to the left.

Were the Pyrenees surmountable at comparatively few passages, these would have been so thought out and perhaps improved as to make them regular and well-known passes, which the traveller could easily deal with. It is the very number of the crossings which add to their difficulties. The people who live upon either side are indifferent in their choice among so many difficult passages, and with the exception of one or two quite modern made roads with which I shall presently deal, there are some hundreds of Cols and Ports all having in common a character of difficulty, and few naturally so much more easy than their neighbours as to concentrate travel upon them.

This feature may be summed up in the expression that the crest of the Pyrenees is rather one long ridge slightly serrated than (as in the case of most other ranges) a succession of high mountain groups separated by low saddles.

Of all the accidents that strike one in connexion with the crossing of these hills nothing strikes one more than the accident of time. A Port is always a day and a long day. Here and there quite exceptionally there may be food and shelter upon either side within six or seven hours one from the other; but as a rule if you propose to sleep under cover upon either side, your effort will demand a long summer’s day, and it is best to look forward to a night camp upon the further side of the range.

Before continuing the description of these passages, or any rules by which one should be guided in attempting them, it may be well to speak for a moment of the few practised and conventional tracks.

First of these come, of course, the high roads. At present, over the frontier, these are but four in number (for the low passes to the east of the Canigou may be neglected), Roncesvalles, the Somport, the Pourtalet, and the Cerdagne. Of these the Pourtalet has been but recently opened, and was just before the war still in process of being widened upon the French side. Moreover, it is so nearly neighbouring to the Somport (there is but 8 miles between them), that it hardly affords a true alternative crossing. A fifth high road across the watershed is that which crosses it at Porté from the valley of the Ariège into the Cerdagne, but this road is essentially a lateral one. It lies wholly in French territory, it joins the French road through the Cerdagne, and you cannot go by it down the valley of the Segre. It only crosses the watershed on account of an accidental divergence of this to the south, in the upper valley of the Ariège.

These four carriage roads are all that lead, at present, over the political boundary of the Pyrenees. Another is in construction over the Port of Salau, but it is not finished upon the Spanish side. The French desire several others to go over by the Macadou, Gavarnie, etc., but their own preparations are not completed and the Spanish are not even begun.

Apart, however, from these high roads, which are carefully graded, possess an excellent surface, and are traversable by any vehicle, there are a certain number of crossings which travel has rendered familiar, and whose facility is well known. Thus, the Embalire from the Hospitalet on the upper Ariège into the upper Segre in Andorra is a perfectly easy slope of grass, though high. Again, the Bonaigo, though there have been natural difficulties in the lower valley to be surmounted, and though there is not even a track across it, is a perfectly easy roll of grassy land barely 6000 feet high. A high road leads as far as Esterri on the Spanish side; another goes from France on the northern side, right up the valley of the Garonne, beyond Biella, to the paths at the very foot of the pass, so that the gap between the two highways is but a few miles in length.

The Port de Venasque again, though but a mule track, is constantly used, and, though steep and high (close upon 8000 feet), presents no difficulties at all, and is almost a highway between the two countries. The Port de Gavarnie is similarly constantly used and may be taken like any other mountain path. Certain other passes form an intermediate category. They present no difficulties to one who is acquainted with the neighbourhood, but either the whole path is difficult to trace or its last and highest portion is dangerous, or there are precipices upon its lower slope, or in one way and another they cannot be regarded as constant and regular communications of international travel, though the inhabitants use them continually. Of such a kind is the Port d’Ourdayte; of such a kind are the passages from the Aston into Andorra, and of such a kind are most of the passages just west of the Port de Venasque. If one applied the test of asking where the Pyrenees could be crossed in doubtful weather, not half a dozen places could be found beyond the four high roads; and even if one were to ask in what spots they could certainly be crossed by a stranger without chance of failure, the number of passages would prove less than a score. All the rest of the ridge from the Sierra del Cadi to the Basque mountains is the rocky wall I have described, with innumerable notches more or less practicable, but all difficult, and nearly all requiring a detailed knowledge of either slope.

There are one or two other features needing explanation before I close this introduction to a physical knowledge of the range; thus the reader should be acquainted with the many groups of lakes and tarns which stand just under the highest peaks and ridges in groups: they are highly characteristic of the Pyrenees. There is a cluster of half a dozen at the western base of the Pic du Midi d’Ossau, another cluster surrounding the neighbourhood of Panticosa, another in the summit of the Encantados between the Maladetta group and the valley of the Noguera, another very famous one well known to fishermen high up in the knot of mountains whose summit is the Carlitte, and there are many isolated small lakes which the map discovers. But whether in groups or isolated, one feature is common to all these lakes of the Pyrenees—first, that none is of any size; secondly, that all, or very nearly all, are quite in the highest parts of the hills immediately under the last escarpment; and thirdly, as a consequence, that it is rare to find a lake which the presence of wood and the neighbourhood of habitation render suitable for camping.

It is worth remembering that, unlike most mountain systems, the Pyrenees do not, even in sudden storms, endanger one as a rule by a rapid increase in size of the torrents; one has not to fear spates so much as one might imagine from the multiplicity of the streams on the northern side or the large area of the valleys on the southern. This truth, of course, must not be exaggerated nor too much advantage taken of it. That part of a stream which will be just traversable after several fine days may become just too violent to cross after a few hours of rain, but I have never seen those sudden changes of level from a rivulet to a considerable torrent which one may so often see in British mountains, which are common enough in Scandinavia and even in the Alps, and which are a regular condition of travel in the Rockies.

Why this should be so it would be difficult to say. The great area of forest upon the north might account for regularity upon that slope, but it would not account for it upon the Spanish side. And one would imagine that snow in large masses, which is lacking in the Pyrenees and present in the Alps, would rather tend to regulate the flow of rivers; but whatever be the cause, the evenness of level is what one used to other ranges will first remark when he has to cross and recross under different conditions the higher streams of this chain in summer.

There should lastly be noted the absence of any important glaciers, a feature due to the absence of snow-fields. On the summit of the Cirque de Gavarnie, on the summits of the Pic d’Enfer and the neighbourhood, on the summits of the Maladetta group, and in one or two other parts, there are small glaciers, but they form no general feature in the landscape of the Pyrenees, and have no effect upon travel.

Lastly, the climate of these mountains should be noted: it is a very important part of the conditions which determine travel upon them.

The rain-bearing winds blow from the Atlantic eastward, and if the Pyrenees stood upon either slope equally accessible to the sea, it is possible that the Spanish side would be the more deeply wooded and the best watered. The sudden trend westward of the Spanish coast, however, at the corner of the Bay of Biscay, causes the wet winds from the Ocean to lose most of their moisture to Galicia and the Asturias, before they can strike the Pyrenees themselves from the south, while the same winds, coming around the range from the north, come upon the Pyrenees immediately after leaving the sea. The result of this is that the French side is throughout its length more heavily watered than the Spanish side; but on either side there are three zones which, though not sharply distinguishable one from the other, are sufficiently remarkable.

The first is that of heavy rains, and, what is more important for purposes of travel, of continuous rain and frequent mist. It stretches all along the western end of the range, and only begins perceptibly to change with the heights of the Pic d’Anie and the precipitous barrier of the upper valley of the Aspe. West of this line—that is, in all the Basque-speaking country—you have deep pastures upon either side of the range, and all the marks of the damp in the timber and the mode of building, the vegetable growth and the animals of the place. Snow falls later here than in the other parts of the Pyrenees, for the double reason that the neighbourhood of the sea makes the climate milder and that the hills are less high. In most places, for instance, communication is not cut off between the north and south valleys of the Basques, and men can usually cross from Ste. Engrace to Isaba at all seasons.

The next zone (the eastern frontier of which is very vague) may be said to stretch, according to the year and the accident of weather, certainly as far as the Catalans and the valley of the Noguera on the east, and sometimes as far as the valley of the Segre itself. In all this central part of the range (which may normally be said to include more than half its length) the French or northern side is densely wooded and heavily watered, the Spanish side more dry and bare; but even the French side slowly shows a change of climate as one goes eastward, the forests remain as dense, the rivers as full, but the days are certainly finer and mist less frequent. On the Spanish side the change as one goes eastward is less striking, because the whole climate is drier. It is to be remarked that if mist gathers upon the northern side of the hills when one is attempting a pass, one may fairly count upon its disappearance upon the Spanish side in this section; and, in general, the whole of the southern slope, from the valley of the Aragon to that of the Noguera, is of a dry and equal nature, somewhat barren and burnt, not only from the lack of moisture, but also from exposure to the sun.