Part 7

Another exception and a big one to the rule that the frontier follows the watershed, is, of course, to be found in the French Cerdagne. The true watershed here is coincident with the frontier as far as the Pic de la Cabanette in latitude 42° 35′ 30″. The watershed then goes on over the Port de Saldeu, along the crest of the Port d’Embalire to the Pic Nègre, and there it turns to the east along the ridge across the saddle of which goes the high road over the Col called Puymorens. It follows that ridge, _not_ to the summit of the Carlitte, but to a lower peak called the Madides, three miles to the north-east, runs along two miles of a high rocky ledge to the Pic de la Madge and then there follows a difficult sort of hydrographical No Man’s Land, the centre of which is the great marsh of Pouillouse, nor can you tell exactly where the watershed is for some miles in the forest below that marsh, for the same damp flat ground sends water into the valley of the Tet and into the valley of the Segre. Three miles to the south-west, however, it is clearly defined again in a low rounded lump of wooded land, it passes over the flat Col de la Perche and then follows the crest still going south-west up to the Pic d’Eyne, where again it becomes the frontier, and the frontier it remains until it reaches the Mediterranean.

From the Pic de la Cabanette, all the way to the Pic d’Eyne, France and Mazarin politically took in by the Treaty of the Pyrenees a belt to the south of the watershed and extending down to a conventional line which left Bourg-Madame French and Puigcerdá Spanish; an exception in this is a small strip beyond the Pic de la Cabanette, on the left bank of the Ariège, which, though geographically French, was given to Andorra, so that Andorra might smuggle more comfortably over the passes.

The causes of this annexation of the French Cerdagne by Mazarin are clear enough when one remembers that the Roussillon (which is geographically French) passed to France by the same treaty. There is no way from the valley of the Ariège into the Roussillon except by going round this corner of the Cerdagne, at least no practicable carriage way; the only other way is the difficult and high short cut described later in this book. If the frontier be carefully noted, it will be seen that it is designed merely to preserve a right of passage over this road. Jurisdiction was only claimed by France over the villages, and Llivia, being a town, stands in an island of Spanish territory in the midst of the French Cerdagne, as will be seen later when I speak of this district in detail.

Such is the present political aspect of the Pyrenees, with Toulouse for their great French town in the plains, 60 miles away to the north, Saragossa for their great Spanish town in the plains, 100 miles away to the south, a string of towns just at their feet (Bayonne, Pau, Tarbes, St. Girons, etc.) on the northern side; on the south a rarer and less connected group (Pamplona, Huesca, Barbastro, Lerida, etc.); and against the Mediterranean the district of Gerona, shut in by the Sierra del Cadi (with its outposts) and the Alberes upon the Spanish side, the town of Gerona its capital; the Roussillon, with Perpignan for its capital, shut in between the Alberes and the Corbieres on the French side.

[Illustration]

III

MAPS

One of the first ideas that come to a man when he thinks of wandering about an unknown bit of country is that it will be more fun if he does not take a map. There are places of which this is true: you discover for yourself, and it is more exciting. But it is not true of the Pyrenees. So little is it true of the Pyrenees that those who have no maps, that is, the local peasantry, never traverse a country until they know it well, and when they get into new country learn all they can from its inhabitants, get themselves accompanied if possible, and keep to a path. You will find that the hunters who know the mountains are always local men. The Pyrenees are built in such a fashion and on such a scale that you not only can, but must, lose yourself in the course of any long wandering unless you have some sort of guide to your hand. There is only one kind of travel off the road which you can possibly undertake without a map, and that will be pottering about one small district with a porter, a friend, or a mule to carry a tent and plenty of provisions; but if you are attempting several crossings of the ridges, and especially if you are attempting such a task on foot, a map is absolutely necessary to you.

Whatever kind of map you take with you into the hills, you must also take with you a small compass, and that is why I mention that toy later in talking of equipment. You are perpetually asking yourself, as you compare the map with the landscape, which peak is which, and it is often essential to get the right one on the right bearings. Nothing is easier than to mistake one part of a ridge for another.

If you are in bad weather or in the dark or enclosed, the compass gives you a general direction, as for instance upon the track I describe later in the great wood going to Formiguères, and the compass further tells you at what point your valley begins to turn in a certain direction. Now a bend of this sort is very often the only indication you have for the exact place in which to branch off for a port, or to look for a cabane. Remember the variation, which is on the average for this range about 14 degrees, that is, the true north is 14 degrees to the right of the direction the needle points to.

A map or maps, then, you must determine to take, and it next remains to examine what sort of maps are available for the whole range.

There are but three of the greater countries in the whole world (to my knowledge, at least) which have sufficient and numerous maps, these are England, France, and Germany. I can imagine what reproach and criticism such a statement may bring from those who know the admirable work done in India, and the special but laborious surveys of Italy and of the United States. But I do say (as far as my travels extend) that maps valuable for the purposes of a man on foot and covering a whole country are confined to these three among the greater states. To tell the truth, there is but one large country that possesses perfect ones, and that is our own. Nowhere else in the world (to my knowledge, at least) has a complete survey of every detail of the soil been made, as it has been made under the Crown of the United Kingdom. And if foreigners judge, as they are apt to judge, of our cartography by the excellent one-inch scale map alone, they should remember that we also possess the six-inch, and in some cases the twenty-five inch to supplement it. Neither France nor Germany can boast of such a survey.

Now let me abandon this digression and discuss what maps are valuable in the Pyrenees.

First, upon the Spanish side, there is nothing. Every one who tries to get a good cartographical indication of the approaches to the Pyrenees upon the Spanish side is baffled. Outside of my own experience, I have heard of many attempts and they have all failed. There is indeed a legend of a wonderful military map in Madrid or elsewhere, but I have never seen it, nor have I ever seen anyone who has seen it. There is a good contour map extending outwards from Madrid in various sections, but it does not get anywhere near the Pyrenees. There is a geological map of Spain upon which some people fall back in despair, but it tells you very little about Spain except the geology. It is on an extremely large scale, 1/400,000 if I remember right, and it is horrible to have to use it even for the most general purposes of travel.

There is a large general map of Spain, drawn in Germany, which is equally useless for the pedestrian; it comprises the whole country within a space that could easily be hung over the chimney-piece of a small room.

In a word, there is no map of Spain for the foot traveller upon the Spanish side. Everything of that kind which exists so far is (I again qualify the statement by adding “to my knowledge”) of French workmanship.

It is therefore the French maps which the traveller must consider, and I will detail these in their order with their respective advantages.

It must first be remarked that these maps are to be regarded as official and unofficial; the official ones should be divided into those proceeding from the French War Office and those proceeding from the French Home Office. The importance of this will appear in a moment.

Of the unofficial maps (which are very numerous) the most important by far is that published and printed by Schrader, and this is important only because it gives contours (at rather large intervals, it is true) on the Spanish side as well as upon the French.

The map can be ordered of Messrs. Sifton & Praed, The Map House, St. James’s Street, and costs (pre-war) twelve shillings for the six sheets. Its value consists in giving the traveller details of all the difficult central bit between Sallent and the Encantados. The French contours, as will immediately appear, are easily obtainable elsewhere; but to know the Spanish side, the difficulties of the way between Panticosa (for instance) and Bielsa, Schrader’s map is a great advantage; it is final on the heights, the steepness, and the changes in direction of the way.

The official maps consist _first_ of the War Office maps, the scale of which is 1/80,000 and 1/320,000.

The first thing to appreciate with regard to the French maps, is that all of them, whether from the Home Office or from the War Office (and in a country such as France the work of these two departments is very different), are based upon the 1/80,000 survey. It was this survey, undertaken by the General Staff in the course of the nineteenth century, which formed the basis of every other map that Frenchmen use. Certain of its early details were slightly inaccurate, as the heights of the Pelvoux group in Savoy, which Mr. Whymper, when he climbed those mountains, corrected. It is, however, the best monument of cartography left by the nineteenth century. Nothing has since appeared to rival it in any country upon the same scale. We must except of course the highly detailed large-scale survey of special districts, which may happen to be, by a political accident, autonomous and wealthy. Belgium has a far better map, upon which indeed all modern work upon the Belgian battlefields is based. Switzerland also has a better map. But no such large area as that of the French Republic has upon so small a scale (much less than one inch to the mile), so complete a record of every track, wood, habitation, height, and watercourse.

The 1/320,000 is merely a reduction of this map; it is of service to people who motor or bicycle, to anyone who uses the high road, and who wishes to be able occasionally to wander into by-paths; but for little local details and difficulties it should not be consulted. It is useful advice to anyone who desires to know the Pyrenees that he should consult before leaving home a map of the whole range upon the 1/320,000 scale, but travel in the hills with the 1/80,000 scale.

The disadvantage, however, of the military map, accurate though it is, and full of detail though it is, lies in two points inseparable from the early conditions under which it was produced; the first of these is the use of one colour, that of printers’ ink, so that the line marking a stream, a wall, or a path are similar; the second derives from this, and is the confusion of so many small details, all in _one_ colour and in black. There are no contour lines. The hatching, though bold, does not give exact heights, save where such heights are marked in figures, and what with the lines marking the paths in mountainous districts, the water-courses, the roads, the marks indicating the rocks, habitations, etc., the 1/80,000 map tends (though it still remains the best map for a very careful student, e.g., for a soldier on manœuvres) to be somewhat crowded and confused.

An appreciation of the demerits of these maps, and perhaps a certain rivalry between the two departments, led the French Home Office to undertake an Ordnance Map of its own. This map is in various scales, of which the sheets showing the Pyrenees—the only ones that concern us—are in 1/100,000 and 1/200,000. Let me explain the general qualities of both and the advantages and disadvantages attaching to either of these.

Both are in colours, giving water-courses and lakes in blue, woods in green, roads in red, etc., and that is an enormous and immediate simplification upon the old-fashioned black map.

Both are brought up to date with more care than the military map; both are less crowded with detail, and both indicate such civilian necessities as the telephone, telegraph, post-office, etc. On the other hand, neither contains hatching—the only true way of representing a country-side to the eye—and neither give that minute and exact multiplicity of markings which it is the boast of the military map to afford. The civil map is more practical, the military map more full of duty and more accurate.

It must finally be remembered that the scale of the civil maps, even of 1/100,000 is so small as to impede the setting down of details such as we have on a one-inch Ordnance Map. It is three to four times smaller superficially than our official map in England. Nevertheless, for reasons that I shall presently show, it is on the whole the best map to carry in the Pyrenees.

The 1/200,000 map is but a reproduction on a smaller scale of the 1/100,000 map. It has the great advantage of contour lines, but the scale is so small and the contours so pressed together, that, though it is invaluable for giving a general and plastic impression of the chain (to look down on a general map of the Pyrenees on this scale is like looking down on a model of the French side of the range), it is of little use for telling one, as a contour map should tell one, exactly how much higher this spot is than that other spot. When you are climbing and you wish to identify your position, you have usually to estimate comparative heights on a delicate scale and at a short distance, for which the 1/200,000 map is of very little use to you.

One way of using the contours of the 1/200,000 which is laborious, but not without value, is to trace the _deeper_ contour lines in some particular district, which you are specially studying. These deeper contour lines stand out much more clearly than the intermediate faint ones, which, as I have said, are too numerous for a mountain district. They can be followed clearly even in the dark shading of a steep ridge, and are set every hundred metres apart. When such a tracing has been made, neglecting the finer intermediate lines, you have a good working relief plan of the mountain you propose to deal with.

Of all the area open to the climber and the man on foot in the Pyrenees, that upon the Spanish side of the frontier is the larger and wilder, and this for two reasons. First, because property and its attendant limitations is more developed upon the northern slope, so that the vast areas common to all, are, if anything, vaster upon the southern side, and secondly, that the formation of the range between the ramparts above the Ebro and the main chain, covers a larger space than that between the main chain and the French plains. Yet, as I have just said, it is on the Spanish side that proper maps are lacking, and one must do the best one can to supplement them by the French extensions.

A common plan guides all the French maps in their delineation of territory south of the frontier. Colours, contour lines, hatching, and every detail are omitted. Heights are given in certain cases (but those are rarer of course than on the French side). The names of towns and, in some cases, their telegraphic and postal communications are marked, but upon the whole the Spanish side upon the French maps has far less detail than is accorded for the territory to which the maps directly relate.

However, let me explain the various advantages and disadvantages, for use upon the Spanish side, of the four types of French maps I have mentioned.

The 1/320,000 of the Ministry of War may be neglected; whatever use it has upon the French side, it is negligible upon the Spanish.

The 1/80,000 map of the Ministry of War marks the main water-courses upon the Spanish side, the main peaks, and the main important ports and cols, with their heights, but it does not afford any indication of the shape of the country. It is a bare white space of paper with but few lines traversing it, one or two names, and one or two numbers on each sheet.

On the whole it is better not to use the French military maps for the Spanish side; here it is the maps of the Ministry of the Interior which must chiefly be relied upon. Of these the 1/100,000 map is the best. It is true that the colours, which are so valuable in the differentiation of the French side, are absent upon the Spanish, save in the case of water-courses, which are marked in blue upon either slope of the range. There is no indication of woods upon the Spanish side, as there is upon the French, and as this indication is useful for purposes of camping, the loss of it on the south side is often felt. Moreover, the absence of colour upon the Spanish side often makes one misinterpret the nature of the mountains upon these maps, giving to the whole a bare look, since the rocky and bare spaces on the French side are similarly left uncovered. On the other hand, the 1/100,000 French map does afford upon the Spanish side a very large number of detailed points of information. I will enumerate them in their order.

1. The general shape of the country is indicated by shading, the light being supposed to come (as is the case throughout this series of maps) from the north-west.

2. Steep rocks and cliffs, the presence of which should always be indicated to the traveller, are carefully marked upon either side of the frontier.

3. Paths, the importance of which the reader will presently appreciate, are clearly marked, with all details, as exactly as on the French side.

4. Every habitation is marked, and in the case of villages and towns, the number of inhabitants, the postal and other facilities.

5. Most of the heights are marked, though not so many as on the northern slope, but at any rate the height of every important port, col, and peak appears. In general, it may be said that there is no map of the Pyrenees, immediately to the south of the frontier, equivalent to those of the districts which happen to fall within the French 1/100,000 survey.

This leads me to the principal drawback connected with the use of the French 1/100,000 map upon the Spanish side, which is, that it only includes such Spanish territory as accidentally happens to fall within each square blocked out in the French survey.

The English reader is acquainted, it may be presumed, with the one-inch Ordnance Map, and he will have remarked, how, if it so happens that a little corner of land escapes the regular series of rectangles into which the one-inch Ordnance Map is divided, that little corner of land will have a map all to itself, though the greater part of the rectangular space so marked may be taken up by the sea. In the same way any little bit of French territory which projects beyond the scheme of rectangles into which the whole survey is divided, has, added to it, an outer part completing the map and extending into Spain; where (as for instance on the sheet called “Gavarnie”) the little piece of French territory so projecting is small in comparison with the whole rectangle, a considerable piece of Spanish territory will be included; but where (as for instance on the sheet called “Bayonne”) the frontier very nearly corresponds with the survey, very little of the Spanish side will be included.

From this it is easy to perceive that the maximum amount of Spanish territory in any one map must be inferior either in width or in length to the full dimensions of each sheet, and that the total distance into Spain, which any one sheet can mark, south of the frontier, is less than the width of any one sheet. Now each sheet of the French 1/100,000 map includes 15 minutes of a degree from north to south, that is, about 17 miles. One may say, therefore, that the amount of Spanish territory shown to the south of the frontier in this excellent survey is always less than one full day’s journey. In many parts it narrows to far less than this. There are not a few parts of the range where even for those who make but short excursions on to the Spanish side, this drawback is of considerable effect. For instance, in the easy and pleasant excursion which takes one from Andorra to Urgel, the 1/100,000 map cuts one short at 42° 30′ below Andorra, and 42° 15′ beyond the main road to Urgel, and no small part of the road lies south or west of this limitation.

The 1/200,000 map somewhat makes up for the deficiency of the 1/100,000 map, but not in a complete manner. The frontier sections of this survey (five in number) show Spanish territory to the extent of some 30 miles in the Basque country, they give but a tiny corner of the extreme east of the territory of Aragon, they give over 30 miles for the greater part of the north of that province, but in Catalonia the belt is restricted to far less. Moreover, the Spanish details afforded are much slighter than in the 1/100,000. There is no indication of the relief of the country, no shading, only the principal water-courses and the principal highways and mule roads are marked. But it is here that the 1/200,000 is useful, if one has the intention of walking for some days upon the Spanish side. Thus the direction from Castellbo in Catalonia to Esterri can be roughly drawn upon the 1/200,000 and will not be discovered so clearly in any other survey.

It now remains to sum up the respective advantages of these four maps for the general purposes of travel, and to give a few comments upon the uses of each.