Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces. Mansfield Milburg Francisco
On one side is the great bulwark of the Pyrenees, and on two others the dazzling waters of the ocean, while to the north the valley of the Garonne, west of the Cevennes, is not at all a frigid, austere, frost-bound region, save only in the very coldest “snaps.”
The ranges of foothills in the Pyrenees divide the surface of the land into slopes and valleys every bit as charming as those of Switzerland, and yet oh! so different! And the fresh, limpid rivulets and rivers are real rivers, and not mere trickling brooks, whose colouring and transparency are the marvel of all who view. The majesty of the sea on either side, and of the mountains between, makes the very aspect of life luxurious and less hard than that in the more northerly Alpine climes, and above all the outlook on life is French, and not that money-grabbing Anglo-German-Swiss commercialism which the genuine traveller abhors. He sees less of that sort of thing here in the Pyrenees, even at Pau and Biarritz, than anywhere else in southern Europe.
At Nice, Monte Carlo, Naples, Capri, along the Italian lakes, and everywhere in French, German or Italian speaking Switzerland, one must pay! pay! pay! continually, and often for nothing. Here you pay for what you get, and then not always its full value, according to standards with which you have previously become familiar. The Pyrenees form quite the ideal mountain playground of Europe.
The Basses-Pyrénées, made up from the coherent masses of Navarre, the Basque country, Béarn, and a part of Chalosse and the Landes, contains a superficial area of seven hundred and sixty-three thousand nine hundred and ninety French acres. Its name comes naturally enough from the western end of the Pyrenean mountain chain.
Throughout, the department is watered by innumerable streams and rivulets, whose banks and beds are as reminiscent of romanticism as any waterways extant. The Adour is one of the “picture-rivers” of the world; it joins the rustling, tumbling Nive, as it rushes down by Cambo from the Spanish valleys, and forms the port of Bayonne.
The Gave de Pau commences in the high Pyrenees, in the wonderfully spectacular Cirque de Gavarnie, literally in a cascade falling nearly one thousand three hundred feet, perhaps the highest cascade known in the four quarters of the globe, or as the French say, “in the five parts of the world,” which is more quaint if less literal.
The Gave d’Oloron has its birth in the valley of the Aspe, and is a tributary of the Gave de Pau. It is what one might call pretty, but has little suggestion of the scenic splendour of the latter.
The Bidassoa is one of the world’s historic rivers. It forms the Atlantic frontier between France and Spain, and was the scene of Wellington’s celebrated “Passage of the Bidassoa” in 1813, also of a still more famous historical event which took place centuries before on the Ile des Faisans.
The Nivelle is a tiny stream which comes to light on Spanish soil, over the crest of the Pyrenees, and flows rapidly down to the sea at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, on the shores of the Gulf of Gascony.
The Ministry for the Interior in France classes all these chief rivers as flottable for certain classes of boats and barges through a portion of their length, and each of them as navigable for a few leagues from the sea.
Four great “Routes Nationales” cross the Basses-Pyrénées. They are the legitimate successors of the “Routes Royales” of monarchial days. The “Route Royale de Paris à Madrid, par Vittoria et Burgos,” the very same over which Charles Quint travelled to Paris, via Amboise, as the guest of François Premier, passes via Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. It is a veritable historic highway throughout every league of its length.
The climate of the Basses-Pyrénées is by no means as warm as its latitude would seem to bespeak, the snow-capped Pyrenees keeping the temperature somewhat low. Pau and Luchon in the interior (as well as Bayonne and Biarritz on the coast) seem, curiously enough, to be somewhat milder than the open country between. The Pyrenees, though less overrun and less exploited than the Alps, are not an unknown world to be ventured into only by heroes and adventurers. They are what the French call a “new world” lively in aspect, infinitely varied, and as yet quite unspoiled, take them as a whole. This is a fact which makes the historical monuments and souvenirs of the region the more appealing in interest, particularly to one who has “done” the conventionally overrun resorts of the Tyrol, Egypt or Norway; and the country here is far more accessible. Furthermore the comforts of modern travel, as regards palace hotels and sleeping-cars, if less highly developed, are more to be remarked. One lives bountifully throughout the whole of the French slopes of the Pyrenees, from a table well supplied with many exotic articles of food such as truffles, and salaisons of all sorts, fresh mountain lake trout, and those delightful crouchades and cassoulets, which in the more populous centres are only occasional, expensive luxuries.
Both the valleys and the mountains are equally charming and characteristic. The lowlanders and the mountaineers are two different species of man, but they both join hands in the admiration of, and devotion to their beloved country.
The soft, sloping valleys and the plains below, in the great watersheds of the Garonne, the Aude, the Nive, or the Adour, tell one story, and the terre debout, as the French geographers call the mountains, quite another. The contrast and juxtaposition of these two topographical aspects, the varying manners and customs of the peoples, and the picturesque framing given to the châteaux and historic sites make an undeniably appealing ensemble which the writer thinks is not equalled elsewhere in travelled Europe.
One of the chief characteristics of the chain of the Pyrenees is that it possesses numerous passages or passes at very considerable elevations, being outranked by surrounding peaks usually to the extent of a thousand metres only. These passes are not always practicable for wheeled traffic to be sure, but still they form a series of exits and entrances from and into Spain which are open to the dwellers in the high valleys of either country on foot or on donkey back. They are distinguished by various prefixes such as puerto, collada, passo, hourque, hourquette, brèche, port, col, and passage, but one and all answer more or less specifically to the name of a mountain pass.
The expression of “il y a des Pyrénées,” has been paraphrased in latter days as “il n’y a plus de Pyrénées.” A Spanish aeronaut has recently crossed the crest of the range in a balloon, from Pau to Grenada – seven hundred and thirty kilometres as the birds fly. This intrepid sportsman, in his balloon “El Cierzo,” crossed the divide in the dead of night, at an elevation varying between two thousand three hundred and two thousand nine hundred metres, somewhere between the Pic d’Anie and the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. In these days when automobiles beat express trains, and motor-boats beat steamships for speed, this crossing of the Pyrenees by balloon stands unique in the annals of sport.
The crossing of the Pyrenees has already resolved itself into a momentous economic question. Half a dozen roads fit for carriage traffic, and two gateways by which pass the railways of the east and west coasts, are the sole practicable means of communication between France and Spain.
The chain of the Pyrenees from west to east presents nearly a uniform height; its simplicity and uniformity is remarkable. It is a veritable wall.
To-day the Parisian journals are all printing scare-heads, reading, “Plus de Pyrénées” and announcing railway projects which will bring Paris and Madrid within twenty hours of each other, and Paris and Algiers within forty. New tunnels, or ports, to the extent of five in place of two, are to be opened, and if balloons or air-ships don’t come to supersede railways there will be a net-work of iron rails throughout the upper valleys of the Pyrenees as there are in Switzerland.
The ville d’eaux, or watering-places, of the Pyrenees date from prehistoric times. At Ax-les-Thermes there has recently been discovered a tank buried under three metres of alluvial soil, and dating from the bronze age.
Old maps of these parts show that the baths and waters of the region were widely known in mediæval times. It was not, however, until the reign of Louis XV that the “stations” took on that popular development brought about by the sovereigns and their courts who frequented them.
Not all of these can be indicated or described here but the accompanying map indicates them and their locations plainly enough.
Nearly every malady,