TOPOGRAPHICAL 1NEXACTITUDES
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,--Surely the first essential in a " Travel " article is geographical accuracy, but your contributor of the article " Montserrat " is so hopelessly at sea in elementary topography that he, or she, sacrifices all claim to confidence.
The traveller who enters Spain by the little frontier town of Portbou (Port Bou, but that is a small matter) sees . .
the vigorous pulsing life of Gascony, &c." • Gascony is nowhere near Port Boil ; it is right at the other side of France.
For miles-the train ambles smoothly along the coast." It does nothing of the sort. For five miles after leaving the frontier the train runs through a succession of tunnels and deep- cuttings, giving only the briefest and most infrequent glimpses of the coast, and thereafter it dives inland. .
" To the north towers the mountain which ends the chain of the Pyrenees." There is no mountain which ends the chain of the Pyrenees. The last mountain, the Canigou, is forty miles from the coast, and after the Canigou the chain dies down gradually into a line of hills terminating in Cape Cerbere, only a few hundred feet high.
" Beyond it (i.e., beyond the mountain to the north) the Catalonian plain stretches." Beyond the hills to the north lies the French plain of the Rousillon, totally invisible, of course ; the Catalonian plain is on the hither'side. This sort of carelessness is inexcusable.—rarn, Sir, &c.,
BARCELONA.
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