The Roof of France | Page 9

your driver, besides being trustworthiness and sobriety itself, carries a
revolver in his pocket. The Caussenards, or dwellers on these steppes,
are said to be harmless enough, but suspicious-looking tramps from a
distance, who always go in pairs, may sometimes be met. Wayside inns
there are none, and as relays are therefore unattainable, the traveller
must quit civilization as soon as dawn breaks, and contrive to reach it
before overtaken by nightfall. Lastly, during the brief summer, the heat
is torrid, and if you start on your travels towards its close, say the
middle or end of September, today's scorching sun may be followed by
tomorrow's snowstorm. And to be caught in a snowstorm on the
Causses would be an Alpine adventure with no chance of a rescuing St.
Bernard.
Had I been alone I might have ventured, but, as before-mentioned, my
companion was a young French lady confided to my care by her
parents. On the whole, therefore, and with keenest regret, I felt it more
prudent to defer the undertaking, for undertaking it undoubtedly was,
till another year. Next summer, I said to myself, as soon as the snows
were melted, I would again climb the Roof of France. And delightful as
was the society of a bright, amiable, ready-witted girl, I would instead
find a travelling companion of maturer years, and responsible for her
own safety.

There was one compensation within reach. If we could not enter the
land of Canaan, we could at least behold it from Mount Pisgah. So I
engaged a carriage with sturdy horses and a trustworthy driver, and we
set off for the plateau rising over against Mende in a south-easterly
direction, the veritable threshold of the Causses.
CHAPTER III.
A GLIMPSE OF THE CAUSSES.
The drive from Mende to the plateau of Sauveterre is a curious
experience. Here the Virgilian and Dantesque schemes are reversed:
Pluto's dread domain, the horrible Inferno, lies above; deep down
below are the Fields of the Blest and the celestial Paradise.
Dazzlingly bright the verdure, fertile and sunny the valleys we now
leave behind--arid and desolate beyond the power of words to express
the tableland reached so laboriously.
Between these two extremes, Elysium and Tartarus, we pass shifting,
panoramic scenes of wondrous beauty, stage upon stage of pastoral
charm, picture after picture of idyllic sweetness and grace. Long we can
glance behind us and see the little gray town, its spires outlined in
steely gray against the embracing hills, its gardens and orchards bright
as emerald--towering above all, the bare, purple, wide- stretching
Lozère.
The weather is superlative, and the clear, gemlike lines of sky and
foliage are as brilliantly contrasted as in an Algerian spring.
All this time we seemed to be climbing a mountain; we are, in reality,
ascending the steep, wooded sides or walls of the Causse de Mende,
prototype on a smaller scale of the rest--a vast mass of limestone, its
summit a wilderness, its shelving sides a marvel of luxuriant
vegetation.
Every step has to be made at a snail's pace, the precipitous slopes close
under our horses' hoofs being frightful to contemplate. This drive is an

excellent preparation for an exploration of the Lozère. We are always,
metaphorically, going up or coming down in a balloon.
After two hours' climb, the features of the landscape change. One by
one are left behind meandering river, chestnut and acacia groves,
meadows fragrant with newly-mown hay, grazing cattle, and cheerful
homesteads.
We now behold a scene grandiose indeed as a panorama, but
unspeakably wild and dreary.
Here and there are patches of potatoes, buckwheat and rye, the yellow
and green breaking the gray surface of the rocky waste; not a habitation,
not a living creature, is in sight. Before us and around stretch desert
upon desert of bare limestone, the nearer undulations cold and slaty in
tone, the remoter taking the loveliest, warmest dyes --gold brown, deep
orange, just tinted with crimson, reddish purple and pale rose. We are
on the threshold of the true Caussien region. Sterility of soil, a Siberian
climate, geographical isolation, here reach their climax, whilst at the
base of these lofty calcareous tablelands lie sequestered valleys fertile
fields and flowery gardens, oases of the Lozérien Sahara.
Above, not a rill, not a beck, refreshes the spongy, crumbling earth; we
must travel far, penetrate the openings just indicated by the dark- blue
shadows in the distance, and descend the lofty walls of the Causses to
find silvery cascades, impetuous rivers, and fountains gushing from
mossy clefts. The showers of spring, the torrential rains of autumn, the
snows of winter, have filtered to a depth of several thousand feet.
We are not within sight of the grand Causse Méjean, nor of the Black
Causse, or Causse Noir, and only on the threshold