CHAPTER VIII
THE VAL D'OSSAU
LOOKING south from the terrace at Pau one sees a noble portal in the mountain chain apparently leading to the roots of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. But it is a mistake to suppose that the drainage of those snowy crests can descend at once into the Gave at one's feet. Between the Val d'Ossau and that of the Gave de Pau a region of hills intervenes. Moreover, the valley that gapes does not lead to the foot of that noble pyramid. It leads to Laruns only, and there the broad trough ends, and above that the Gave descends through a cleft painfully cut through intervening strata.
On the railway from Pau to Laruns the first station is at Gan. In this village, as I remember it fifty years ago, there were but two houses with glass windows, the parsonage and a Renaissance dwelling that belonged to Corisande d'Andouins, one of the many mistresses of Henri Quatre. When cold weather arrived, then the peasants closed their shutters, perforated with a few holes—a heart, a cross, an S—and through this opening derived their light. The train clambers up the heights past Buzy, and then all at once bursts on the sight the broad Val d'Ossau—rich, fertile, smiling with maize and vines, and villages, and beyond the Pic du Midi. The Gave d'Ossau descending from the snowy range on the frontier of Spain ran due north, as if to reach Pau in one direct channel, but was arrested by the hills, and turned along the depression at Buzy and turned westward where now goes the branch line to Oloron. But dissatisfied with this bed, it tore at the rocks near Arudy, and sawed for itself the Gorges de Germe, a savage ravine, very tortuous, cut through hills covered with woods. The abandoned bed was taken possession of by man. It lies at a lower level than the actual channel, and the river must have been deflected by immense piles of rubbish brought down from the mountains. At the west end of the church at Buzy may be seen a huge boulder rounded by rolling, used as the pedestal to the village cross. The ancient channel furnishes turf for fuel, and in it are grown beds of rank bulrushes.
Beyond Buzy, on the way to Arudy, is a dolmen already referred to, but not on its original site. When the road was altered it was removed and re-erected.
The train halts again at Arudy, only interesting for the view, and for the tomb of a bishop, and a fifteenth-century church with a reredos.
The Val d'Ossau in its lower parts is a wreck. The mountain spurs on each side were once clothed with magnificent forests of pine.
"The Pyrenees," says Michelet, "exhibit to us the disappearance of the Old World. Antiquity is no more, the Middle Age is at the point of death. The mountains themselves, strange as it may seem, have their very existence attacked. The fleshless peaks reveal the fact that they are in their senile decay. It is not that they have failed to withstand the blows of the storm, it is man who has assisted in their ruin from below. That deep girdle of forests which veiled the nakedness of the ancient mother, has been plucked away by man. The vegetable soil, which the herbage retained on the slopes, is now carried below by the waters. The rock stands up bare; chapped, exfoliated by the glare of the sun, by the tooth of frost, undermined by the melting snow carried down by avalanches. In the place of succulent pastures nothing remains but a dry and ruined soil. The agriculturist who has driven away the hunter, gains nothing thereby. The water which formerly trickled down gently into the valley athwart pastures and forests, now roars down in devastating torrents, and covers the fields with the ruins it has made. A vast number of hamlets in the high valleys have been abandoned, through lack of fuel, and the inhabitants take refuge in the lowlands, flying from the results of their own improvidence.
"In 1673 the mischief done caused alarm. Orders were issued by Government that every inhabitant should annually plant at once one tree in the domain, and two in the communal lands. In 1669 and 1756 and still later new regulations made give evidence to the panic caused by the progress of the evil. But, at the Revolution, every barrier gave way, the population being poor, set to work to enrich itself by completing the destruction of the forests. They climbed, axe and firebrand in hand, to the nests of the eagles, they swung over abysses, hacking and destroying. Trees were sacrificed to the most trivial needs. Two pines were cut down to make one pair of sabots. At the same time the sheep and goats, multiplying, fell on the forests, gnawed the trunks, devoured the young trees, destroyed the shrubs, killed the future. The goat above all, that most destructive of all creatures, and the most daring of all, introduced a reign of terror into the mountains. That was not one of the least of the labours of Bonaparte, when he set to work to control the ravages of this beast. In 1813 the number of goats had been reduced to a tenth of the number that they had been in the year X. But he was not powerful enough to put a finish to the war against Nature."
The pines have been succeeded by boxwood that brings in a certain revenue. It is not cut till the stem has attained a girth of three inches; but it would be well if it were allowed to reach a girth of four or five, as it serves as a valuable cover for young pines where attempts are made to replant. The box never grows very high, but some bushes arrive at the height of fifteen feet, and a girth of trunk of fifteen inches. The wood is made use of for the turning the beads of the rosaries, made at Betharam, Saumur, and Lalouvesc in the Boutierès. It cannot be utilized till the stem has arrived at the diameter of a two-franc piece. In 1892 the boxwood from Laruns sold for 3185 francs, but in 1895 for not more than a thousand francs.
At Louvie Juxon and above Bielle and Bilhères, near the entrance of Benon, are what the French call cromlechs, circles of stones, supposed to be prehistoric monuments. These are, however, very small, the stones insignificant, and the shepherds of the district state that precisely similar stones are planted by themselves about temporary huts of branches and turf that they erect when obliged to spend nights as well as days on the mountain.
Bielle was the ancient capital of Ossau. This valley was a republic under the suzerainty of the viscounts of Béarn. It governed itself, and had its own courts of justice, and absolutely refused to suffer the soldiers of the viscount to enter their little republic. He himself was not recognized till he had sworn to respect its rights and privileges as contained in the ancient fors.
At the present day a candidate for election to the Assembly addresses the electors always as "Messieurs d'Ossau." It was by this title that the princes of Béarn spoke to them. In Ossau there were no nobles; there was no appeal from the judgment of their court to Viscount of Béarn or to the King of France.
The constitution of former days still exists in regard to communal property. This is divided into two categories: the particular mountains belonging to each separate commune, and the general mountains in the canton of Laruns pertain to a syndicate formed of representatives of seventeen parishes. In addition the Ossalois own the lande of Pontlong, of which I have already spoken. In recognition of their having ceded to Gaston Phœbus, or before him to the first viscount who built a castle at Pau, sufficient ground for his castle and park, they obtained the privilege to sit at table with their viscounts.
The valley bottom is fertile, but tillage is pursued only there. Cattle and sheep spend the summer on the high pastures, and the sheep are driven in winter to the Pontlong.
Costume is fast disappearing. On Sunday at Bielle and Laruns may be seen the old women still wearing their scarlet capulets lined with silk and edged with black velvet; the black corset is faced on the breast with crimson silk. A woollen skirt descends in symmetrical folds to a little way below the calf; the leg is clothed in white stockings, unfooted, that widen over the foot. The male costume is quite gone. The only part retained is the beret. It is a pity, for the costume was admirably adapted to the men's life in the mountains. The thick, red, brown, and white jackets, waistcoats, and breeches were of home make and handloom weaving, from the wool of their own sheep, and lasted for years without becoming threadbare.
Even the musical instruments general when there was a dance have gone, the tambouri of six strings, struck by a fiddlestick, whilst a piper played a flageolet of four holes, from which he could draw six or seven notes. The great fête at Laruns is on 15 August, and if the charm of this is gone with the abandonment of the pretty costumes, it is still an animated and gay scene.
At Laruns the broad trough of the Val d'Ossau comes abruptly to an end. Here from the left comes down the Valentin of Eaux Bonnes in a series of cascades, the drainage of the snows of the noble mountains at the head of the Val d'Azun, where they spill westward. But the Gave d'Ossau, that has its source under the Pic du Midi, has sawn for itself a way through rocks, and gushes forth through a notable chasm directly above Laruns. This, the ravine in which lies the thermal establishment of Eaux Chaudes, is by far the most interesting, it gives access to the elevated village of Gabas, and to the Col d'Aneou, by which one can pass into Spain. All the upper part of the course of the Gave is of surpassing beauty, and the Alpine pastures yield rich spoil to the botanist, owing to the variety of geological formation, limestone, schist, granite, and porphyry.
The road to Eaux Chaudes, made in 1847, has been in part superseded by one made later, but for pedestrians it is the most pleasant, as it is the shortest. It enters the Gorge du Hourat, and runs the whole way between precipitous walls of rock, beside the torrent which roars down with tremendous velocity. At one point the road has had to be built up against the side of the precipice as a bridge, to allow a torrent, which falls from a height of several hundred feet, to pass under it, and so join the Gave, the river that has formed the cleft of the valley. At Eaux Chaudes there is little space; in winter hardly any sun, in summer there is a sense of oppression from the contraction of the mountains and the exclusion of distant view. But many delightful excursions may be made from it. Eaux Chaudes owes its origin to Henri Quatre, who required his chancellor, the Bishop of Oloron, to build there an establishment for one of Henri's many mistresses, la Fousseuse, that she might there drink the waters.
The sturdy independence and self-respect of the peasantry of Ossau have been broken down sadly by the influx of visitors. Mr. Blackburn observes truly enough:—
"It is said that English visitors have completely demoralized the Valley of Chamounix, and that the curés are in despair; but whatever sins we have committed in Switzerland, the French people have done worse, the difference between the two nations being this, that the latter enjoy indiscriminate almsgiving, and we do not. The result in this valley is demoralizing to an extent that would scarcely be credited excepting by eye-witnesses. As we drive along we see the peasantry leaving their work in the fields at the sound of approaching wheels, and crouching at the roadside in attitudes of pain and misery; girls and boys leave their play to follow the carriages, and whine for quelquechose; crops are half-gathered, and work of all kinds is neglected during the season of the sous; the cry is everywhere, 'Give, give!'
"A girl of sixteen, well dressed and evidently well-to-do, comes up with a bouquet of wild flowers; she asks ten sous for it (about the wages of a day's work), but will take no less; and on receiving the money will immediately ask for the bouquet back again, to sell to some one else.
"And this is not all, for those of the inhabitants who have not brought up their children to the liberal profession of begging, have invented another ingenious and profitable mode of life, that of turning the cascades in the neighbourhood into penny peepshows, shutting them off so that they can only be, approached by a wicket gate kept by one of themselves."[1]
One of the pleasantest short walks is to the Grotte des Eaux Chaudes, passing before a little cave from which issues a stream that proceeds at once to dash headlong down the crags into the Gave. Beyond this is the large cave opening in the face of a cliff. This grotto is traversed by a stream which may be crossed by a bridge of wood to where, in the depth of the cave, it leaps down out of a fissure in the wall in a cascade. It is probably fed by the drainage of the Plateau d'Anouillas, where the water descending from the Pic de Gers disappears. When the stream has left the cavern it again dives underground, and flows below the rocks in stages that descend to the bottom of the valley, and reappears only just before it enters the Gave. But the finest excursion from Eaux Chaudes is to Bious-Oumettes, a plateau whence a superb view is obtained of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. This peak is 9800 feet high, of porphyry and granite, cleft by a profound vertical fissure, and is perhaps the finest, certainly the quaintest, of the Pyrenean mountains.
Gabas, the last village on the French side of the chain, is a halting-place for travellers and for muleteers conveying goods from Spain. It is a cantonment of custom-house officers; and here may be seen picturesque groups of shepherds in their fleecy jackets, Spaniards in their richly-coloured blankets, and the uniformed douaniers. The path leading to the plateau is lined with fir trees, but on all sides may be seen the ravages of fire, the axe, and winter storm, in charred stumps, twisted or hewn-down trunks, thrown down to be floated by the Gave through its stages to the lower valley.
The distance from Laruns to Eaux Bonnes is much the same as it is to Eaux Chaudes. On reaching the former watering-place—"Je comptais trouver ici la campagne," wrote M. Taine. "Je rencontre une rue de Paris et les promenades du Bois de Boulogne!" It is a place of big hotels, baths, pensions, shops where toys, trinkets, and trumpery are displayed for sale, and, of course, a casino.
"In whichever direction we turn," says Mr. Blackburn, "there are houses built into and often forming part of the mountain, resting on ledges of rock, like to eyries; but so cleverly contrived is the arrangement of the place, so admirably has space been economized, that there is a feeling of freedom about it, quite inconsistent with living in a bird's nest.
"Thus, with the mountains several thousand feet above our heads, and the Val d'Ossau stretching away for many miles at our feet, with rocks overhanging and tree-tops waving, through which we can see the blue sky—with scarcely a foot of level ground anywhere, save the Promenade Horizontale, with cascades and waterfalls at our windows, we find ourselves as comfortably and luxuriously housed as in any modern city."
Speaking of the church Taine says: "Cette église est une boïte ronde, en pierre et plâtre, faite pour cinquante personnes, ou Ton en met deux cents." This box of stone and plaster has disappeared to make room for one of more suitable dimensions in what is caricature of Romanesque.
There is a good carriage road from Eaux Bonnes over a fine pass into the Val d'Aruns and to Argelez. The chief excursion is to the Pic de Gers, 8570 feet high.
The Eaux Bonnes springs have been known for centuries. The Béarnais soldiers wounded in the battle of Pavia in 1525, were sent here to be healed; and for some time after that the springs went by the name of les Eaux d'arquebusades. But they owe their modern renown to the works of Theophile Bordeu. There are seven sources of sulphurated waters, which are good for throat disorders, wounds, sores, and morbid maladies.
The Eaux Bonnes was the scene of a sad accident in 1883, that happened to the Rev. Merton Smith, vicar of Plympton S. Mary, in Devonshire. He had gone to the Pyrenees for his month's holiday, and visited this watering-place. On 8 August he left his hotel at 3 p.m., in his usual spirits, to walk to Eaux Chaudes, and never returned. He had intended to return the same evening.
Nothing could be heard of him. Inquiries were made in all directions, search parties were organized; he could nowhere be found. Months passed, and his disappearance remained unexplained. The Bishop of Exeter was in perplexity what to do. He could not institute to the living without certain knowledge that Mr. Merton Smith was dead, and this knowledge could not be obtained.
Uncharitable tongues wagged. Some said that he had fallen a victim to the fascinations of a Pyrenean shepherdess, and that he was picking edelweiss and playing a flute on some high Alp to the delectation of the damsel. Some said that he had been captured by Roman Catholics and interned in a monastery. Some said that he had been murdered by Ossau mountaineers for the sake of his money.
Not till eighteen months after his disappearance was the mystery cleared up. His body was found on the mountain-side, buried among thick bushes of box that had concealed it. He had apparently been stooping to pick a flower and had fallen over a precipice and been killed instantaneously. His watch and purse were intact. It was by chance only that a woodcutter discovered the remains whilst clearing the boxwood.
- ↑ Blackburn (H,), The Pyrenees. London, 1867.