Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside. Edward Harrison Barker
a row of thatched beehives.
After walking some eight miles, I was not unwilling to take advantage of a village inn. Here I had a meal of bacon and eggs, haricots, cheese and walnuts, with some rather rough Limousin wine. I soon became aware that there was something amiss in the rustic auberge, and catching a dim glimpse of a figure lying in a bed in a small room adjoining, I asked the young woman who waited upon me if anybody was ill there. 'Yes,' she replied dolefully. Then I learnt from her that her father, struck with apoplexy, was lying in a state that was hopeless. There is no escaping the mournfulness of life. When our minds are least clouded the shadow of death suddenly stands between us and the sunshine. I was in no mood to linger at the table.
What a relief to be out again in the sunshine and the light air, to see the Dordogne flashing through meadows where women were haymaking with bare feet!
It was early in the afternoon when I entered the small but active town of Bort. The burg is only interesting by its exceedingly picturesque situation on the right bank of the Dordogne, under a very high hill, capped by a basaltic table, which is flanked towards the town, or rather a little to the south of it, by a long row of stupendous columns of basalt, known as the Orgues de Bort, from their resemblance at a distance to organ-pipes. The basalt here is of a reddish yellow. The table, with its igneous crystallizations, lies upon the metamorphic rock.
I decided to climb to the summit of the prodigious organ-pipes, and to look at the world from that remarkable point of view. For the greater part of the distance the way lay up a tiresome winding road on the side of the hill. A woman, who was tying buckwheat into sheaves, said the distance was 'three small quarters of an hour.' It would have been simpler arithmetic to have said 'half an hour,' but the peasant thinks it safer not to be more explicit than he or she can help. Experience has taught me that 'three-quarters of an hour,' whether they are called little or not, mean an hour or more, and that 'five quarters of an hour' mean an hour and a half, or even two hours. I passed a team of bullocks descending from the moor with loads of dry broom for the bakers, headed by a little old man in a great felt hat, with a long goad in his hand, with which he tickled up the yoked beasts occasionally, not because they needed it, but from force of habit. This goad, by-the-bye, is a slender stick about six feet long, with a short nail at one end, so fastened that the point is turned outwards. A bullock is not goaded from behind, but from the front between the shoulder-blades, and it generally suffices for the animal to see a man in front of him with a stick. Instead of drawing back, as might be supposed, he steps forward at his best pace. Cows and bulls are harnessed, to the wain and plough as well as oxen; they have all to work for their living. English cattle are allowed to grow fat in idleness, and their troubles do not begin until the time comes for them to be eaten. It is otherwise in France.
On the banks were fragrant, mauve-coloured pinks, with ragged petals; but at the foot of the Orgues was a rocky waste, where little grew besides the sombre holly and fetid hellebore.
The view from the top of the cliff made me fully realize the wildness, the sterility, the desolation of nature in this region. Beyond the valley far beneath me where the Dordogne lay, a glittering thread, was the department of the Cantal. The whole southern and eastern prospect was broken up by innumerable savage, heath-covered or rocky hills, with little green valleys or dense woods filling the hollows, the southern horizon being closed by the wavy blue line of the Cantal mountains. To the north-east the sky-line was marked by the Mont-Dore range, with the highest peak of Auvergne, the Puy de Sancy, clearly visible against the lighter blue of the cloudless air. The feeling that prevailed throughout this wide expanse of country was solemn sternness.
I returned to Bort, and as there were still about two hours of light left, I crossed the river and went in search of the cascades, two or three miles from the town, formed by the Rue in its wild impatience to meet the Dordogne. When I was skirting the buckwheat fields of the valley in the calm open country, there was a sweet and tender glow of evening sunshine upon the purple-tinted sheaves standing with their heads together. The Titan-strewn rocks felt it likewise with all their heather and broom. There was no husbandman in the plain, no song of the solitary goat-girl, no creak of the plough, no twitter even of a bird. It was not yet the hour when Virgil says every field is silent, but the repose of nature had commenced.
The dusk was falling when I reached a silk-mill by the side of the Rue, and passed up the deep gorge full of shadows, led by the sound of roaring waters. A narrow path winding under high rocks of porphyritic gneiss brought me to the cascade called the Saut de la Saule, where the river, divided into two branches by a vast block, leaps fifteen or twenty feet into a deep basin to whirl and boil with fury, then dashes onward down the stony channel, to leap again into the air and fall into another basin.
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF THE RUE.]
I reached a rock in the channel by means of a tree that had been laid between it and the bank, and stood in the midst of the seething, broken torrent, from which arose that saddening odour which water in wild commotion gives forth when daylight is dying and the darkened trees stand like mourning plumes. On either hand the forest-covered sides of the ravine and their savage crags seemed to reach higher as they grew darker. Where was I? There was a tree hard by that looked very like the infernal elm beneath whose leaves the vain dreams cluster; but it was probably an oak.
ACROSS THE MOORS OF THE CORRÈZE.
The night being passed at Bort, the next morning I continued my journey by the Dordogne. Again the sky was cloudless. I kept on the right bank of the river—the Limousin side, leaving the Cantal to some future day, that may never come. A little beyond the spot where the Dordogne and the Rue met and embraced uproariously, the path entered a narrow lane bordered by tall hedges chiefly of hazel and briar overclimbed by wild clematis—well termed the traveller's joy, for it is a beautiful plant that reminds many a wanderer of his far-away home.
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE CORRÈZE.]
Then I passed under precipitous naked rocks, with the river on the other hand, skirted by low bushes of twiggy willow that looked like tamarisk from a distance. The sun was now hot, and the ground was again all astir with lizards. Looking upon the path just in front of me, I brought myself to a sudden stop. Had I advanced a step or two more I could hardly have failed to tread upon a serpent that lay dozing in the sun just in my way. I was glad that I did not do so, for I recognised it, by its olive skin with reddish patches, as the dreaded aspic, or red viper. There it lay stretched out its full length, about a foot and a half, either asleep or enjoying the morning sun so much that it was in no humour to move. I do not kill snakes indiscriminately, like the peasants whenever they get the chance, but this one being dangerous, I resolved that it should never take another sun-bath. After being roused by a blow, the creature did not attempt to run, but did battle bravely, fiercely striking at the stick.
The path I had been following with so much confidence dwindled away and was lost. Again the gorge became a deep rift in the rocks, which left no margin on which one could walk. The only way to follow the windings of the stream would have been to wade or swim. Once more I had to own myself beaten by natural obstacles. The Dordogne is a river that cannot be followed throughout its savage wildernesses, except perhaps in a light flat-bottomed boat, and then not without serious difficulties. Anglers might have splendid sport here until they broke their necks, for the trout abound where the shadow of a man seldom or never falls. In the neighbourhood of towns and large villages the fishing is often spoilt by the casting-net.
Having realized the situation, I turned my back to the stream and commenced climbing the steep side of the gorge, choosing a spot where it was well wooded, for the sake of the foothold. For some distance the ground was green with moss and wood-sorrel; but the tug-of-war came when the vast banks of loose stones—hot, bare, and shale-like—were reached. On gaining the plateau, I threw myself down upon the heather and looked at the scene below. The mingling of rock, forest, and stream was superbly desolate. Even the naked steeps of slate-coloured broken stone had an impressive grandeur of their own.
Leaving the Dordogne with the intention