CORRESPONDENCE.

A PYRENEAN HOLIDAY.—IV. TO G-AVARNIE.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] •

SIR,—Amid this dismal autumn rain, it is hard to realise the sunny loveliness of the valley of Argelez, where the two wild forks of the Gave de Pan, the one descending from the glaciers of the Vignemale, the other from the glaciers of the Cirque de Gavarnie, unite, and the widening valley enjoys at once the shelter of the great mountains,—the Pic du Midi de Viscos, as it is called, standing out like a northern sentinel of the higher

range, two or three miles above Argelez,—and also the southern air and southern sunshine shut out by the towering ranges above. Lord Houghton, in the picturesque little poem on the tragic fate of Mr. and Mrs. Patteson, who were drowned in the Lac de Ganbe, under the Vignemale, within a month of their marriage, nearly fifty years ago, touches off Argelez very vividly, and describes our route too :—

" They loiter not where Argelez,

The chestnut.crested plain, Unfolds its robe of green and gold, Its pasture, grape, and grain ;

But on and up where Nature's heart

Beats strong amid the hills, They pause, contented with the wealth That either bosom fills."

Chestnut-crested, Argelez certainly is, but also poplar-peopled. The poplar, France's favourite tree, is nowhere more luxuriant than in the lower valleys of the Pyrenees, sharing the vine- yards with the maple, grouped around the cottages, marking the courses of the rivers, and often turning the approaches to the little towns and hamlets into shady and pleasant boulevards. -Only in the fields of Indian maize the poplars are carefully -cleared away. However, in spite of its exquisite beauty, " we loitered not" at Argelez, but hastened "on and up where Nature's heart beats strong amid the hills," and first, up the western fork of the Gave de Pau, as far as Cauterets, the road being engineered along the side of the mountain at a giddy height above the dark ravine, the stream beneath every now and then flashing into the rapids which Tennyson found, both in appear- ance and voice, so full of memories, when he revisited them, after two and thirty years' absence :—

" All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night ; All along the valley, where thy waters flow, I walk'd with one I loved two-and-thirty years ago ; All along the valley, while I walk'd to-day, The two-and-thirty years were a mist that rolls away ; For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead ; And all along the valley, by rock, and cave, and tree, The voice of the dead was a living voice to me."

We had no such memories, but it added greatly to the interest of the journey to think of the immortal friendship which will be memorable for ever to all who can read the English tongue, and of the sudden flashes of recollection in which it was renewed, in the white foam and uproar of the torrent, after the story of it had long been amongst the greatest of our English possessions.

Our driver's chief object of interest, however, was naturally very different, and was reached just as we passed fairly into the valley of Cauterets, a little beyond Pierrefitte, and saw, as we thought, two lumbering birds swoop down into the valley from the mountain. The postboy was all elation, and explained to us that they were big baskets, containing fifty pounds' weight each, and that they were the means of communication between the mountain works of an English lead and copper company, and the village below from which they get their provision, and to which they transmit' in this way their ore. The baskets slid down along wires, which we could only just discern, and were hoisted up again by a wire attached. We did not loiter at Cauterets even so long as at Argelez, but started off again at once, I riding a stout little &nesse, who was, as our guide assured us, with a mild humour of his own, "daps la fleur de son age," and Henry trudging by my side, "on and up where Nature's heart beat strong amid the hills," and where, I am sorry to say, poor Henry's heart very soon began to beat, if not strong, at least uncommonly fast. The climb to the Lac de Gaube is

-2,600 feet, and to a n an without very sound lungs is exhausting. In spite of three rests upon my d nesse, —rests to him, but not to her, for her poor little hind legs

' gave " alarmingly beneath his weight in descending,—he was quite ill at night with the exertion. A Frenchman and his wife, whom we triumphantly passed on the way, and who did not even attempt to reach the Lac de Gaube, divided their donkey between them on less equitable principles, she taking almost all the fag,—and gasping after him with white face,—and he, uncon-

cernedly enough, almost all the riding. I am rather against -4' women's rights " in England, but in France I really do think

they bear so much more of the burden and heat of the day, that they might just as well have the power too. M. Ferry and his Government would not, I think, long survive it. We toiled on, past gleaming waterfalls, past the Pont d'Espagne, where the branch path to Spain diverges, and where the torrent crushing down from the Lac de Gaube unites with that which -comes from the valley of Marcadou in Spain, in a tumultuous fall, and through steep, desolate pine-woods, till we came suddenly on the wild green tarn at the foot of the Vignemale, fed by a waterfall from its glaciers. This is said to be, if not the largest lake in the Pyrenees, at least among the largest, though the whole circuit of it is only two and a half miles. The cold mists lad been following us up all the way, and arrived soon after us, -so we only saw the little lake perfectly for about five minutes. Then in rushed a blast of what our guide called " brouillard sec," and dry enough it was, though very cold, and whirled about the little tarn, now falling over the glaciers of the grand Vigne- male, now crossing over to our side and resting over the little -" restaurant" by which the loneliness of the lake is spoiled, or settling down upon the rudely bescribbled monument to poor Mr. and Mrs. Patteson. It was a wild and dreary sight, like the scene of a tragedy, though, if Lord Houghton's description is to be trusted, very unlike what it was when Mr. and Mrs. Patteson so thoughtlessly danced together iu midlake on the flat-bottomed old punt, and, he overbalancing himself into the water, she was dragged in, in trying to save him. Lord Hough- ton says :—

• " Oh ! gaily shone that little lake, And Nature, sternly fair, Put on a sparkling countenance, To greet that merry pair,"

but our less romantic selves Nature had no such desire to entrap. She looked not so much " sternly fair," as sternly forbidding, whirling about those " dry mists," as if in a sort of witches' caul- dron, and we were glad to fly very soon ; indeed, Henry was only fit for bed when he got back, though he wrote a most charming letter to " M. le Droguiste," (which, in spite of his real indispo- sition, made me laugh till I nearly cried,) describing in delight- fully pedantic, as well as, I suspect, inaccurate French, the sort of remedy he desired ; to which M. le Droguiste promptly responded with a bottle of black fluid, of which the most part, happily, remains to the present day.

Of all the lovely spots in the Pyrenees, Saint Sauveur, to which we drove from Cauterets, is, I think, the most lovely. It is a hamlet terraced on the side of the mountain, at the month

of the ravine which leads up to Gavarnie, while the valley of Luz, and that up which you drive to Bar6ge, spread at your feet. Thus you have the double enjoyment of a mountain-side, a ravine beneath you, and a fair valley in the mid-distance. The Gave, spanned by a beautiful bridge, which is one o the many gifts of the late Emperor Napoleon to the Hautes Pyrenees, — where the people are still Imperialist almost to a man,—runs in its deep gorge, two hundred feet under you ; on a beautiful shoulder of the opposite mountain stands, just over Luz, a quaint little village church, looking up towards Barege, and a poplared avenue ascending from the little town of Luz connects it with the village and baths of Saint Sauveur. The costume of the women, who wear white, blue, or red hoods, gracefully brought together under the chin, is most picturesque ; and to watch the little pro- cessions of peasants — the men in blue berets, and the women in their hoods—following the religious banners which the priests carry along the steep banks of the stream, is a perfect gallery of living pictures. Never did we meet any peasantry so lively. Even the poor donkey-woman, who, I confess, did her best to flatter me, complimenting me on the bonne foi I had shown in taking her donkey from amongst many competitors, because I had given her hopes in the morning,—" Les Anglais," she said, " sont toujours comme ca,"—and purposely underrating my age by, say, fifteen years, was most graphic in her talk. For instance, when I asked her of her family, she said she had lost both husband and children,—" she lived alone with the four tvalls." And another younger donkey-woman, a rival for my custom, who was defeated by my "bonne foi," and who accompanied us during part of her walk, was even more amusing. She was a little piqued at her defeat, and took it out in chaff of my husband. First, she said he was obviously ?unlade, which he denied, though, indeed, he had hardly recovered from that decoction of "M. le Droguiste ;" whereupon she changed her line, and said he was obviously in the . army, that he had the air and especially the walk of a soldier, as you could plainly see by his " estomac militaire," — the poor estomae was at the time far from martial in its tone,—and then she threw out her stomach and put on an imperious walk, as unlike Henry's as it was possible to be. Afterwards she gave us a little study of the ceremonial procession which had just taken place, chaunting the air led by the priests, with, I fear, a certain levity of mind. But she was a most amusing person, and might have made a fortune, I think, on the stage or in literature, if her destiny had led her to improve her gift of humour. And those who were not humorous in their talk, were so gay and so kindly. There was an old shopwoman who gave us much more in the way of joyousness for our money than the value of the goods we bought of her. How she laughed to see Henry in a crimson Carlist beret, and me in the red hood of a peasant-woman. The people of Saint Saveur were as friendly as its scenes were grand and fair.

And, then, what is there in the Pyrenees, or indeed in the Alps, to surpass the Cirque de Gavarnie P Through gorge after gorge,—one of them called the Grand Chaos, for the desolate-

nese of its ruined rocks,—you drive up to what looks like the gates of some mighty amphitheatre,—the outer walls some 5,000 ft. in height, on whose vast shelves of rock, as some lines I remember, puts it, hosts of superhuman beings might stand to witness some final tragedy of human life. Ledge beyond ledge of mountain, hollowed out in monster semi- circles, each sprinkled liberally with glaciers, and each shelf supported on gigantic walls scored all down with the black lines made by dripping water, while over the lowest of them, 1,200 ft. in height, a lovely cascade leaps on to the green

stage,—one is never weary of gazing at this stupendous scene, at once so like the achievements of elaborate art, and so far beyond the greatest powers of man. Who was it wrote those lines beginning, " Curve beyond curve of moun- tain terrace wild P" They certainly must have been written after seeing some scene like this,—perhaps the Fer-ii-Cheval at Sat, in Switzerland, though even that seems to me nothing

beside the Cirque of Gavarnie. All words are impotent in such a scene as this, but whoever wrote the lines mentioned must, I think, have seen either Gavarnie or a cirque as grand :—

" Curve beyond curve of mountain terrace wild,

Tier above tier of solitary snow, I marvel at these mighty platforms piled As though for witnesses of some great woe.

To this green stage the glaciers slowly creep, And dwindle with the centuries of sun ; To this green stage the eager cataracts leap, Exulting in a life so late begun.

Glad of the earth, the river bounds along, The pine-trees shoot, the mosses clothe the rock.

Is it for this the hosts celestial throng ?

That unseen myriads to those platforms flock ?

—To see the centuries of cold despair, Bursting at length in buoyant gladness there ?"

No doubt that is a little stilted, though it recurs so to my mind ; but only a true poet could help being a little stilted, in trying to describe such a scene as the Cirque of Gavarnie. You reviewed two years ago a book which, I think, first set me longing to go to the Pyrenees,—" The Adventures of Miss Brown, Miss Jones, and Miss Robinson," illustrated by Miss Brown, and I must say how admirable its pictures of these scenes are. The raging mob of donkey-women contending for me at Gavarnie,—I was positively rent from the protection of my husband, and carried off, like Europa on her bull, by one vehement woman whom Henry had to withstand, yea even with an arm of flesh, before he could vindicate me for the donkey actually engaged,—is depicted in that humorous book with a fidelity quite prophetic.—Yours, A WIFE ON HER TRAVELS.