Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine | Page 2

me,
the passionate warble of nightingales, that could not wait for the night,
must have risen from the leafy valley to the ears of the listless
shepherd-boy gathering feather-grass where goats would not dare to
venture, or eating his dark bread in the sun on the edge of a precipice.
Time flowed gently like the river, and I was surprised to find myself at
Lacave so soon. This village is near the spot where the Ouysse falls
into the Dordogne. A little beyond the clustering houses, upon the edge
of a high rocky promontory overlooking the Ouysse, is the castle of
Belcastel, still retaining its feudal keep and outer wall. In this fortress
the English are said to have kept many of their prisoners.
I now left the Dordogne and ascended the valley of the Ouysse. This
stream is one of the most remarkable of the natural phenomena of
France. To judge from its breadth near the mouth, one would suppose
that it had flowed fifty or a hundred miles, but its entire length is less
than ten miles. It is already a river when it rises out of the depths of the
earth. The narrow valley that it waters is a gorge 500 or 600 feet deep
through the greater part of its distance. The traveller at the bottom
supposes, or is ready to suppose, that he is in some ravine of the high
mountains; in reality, it is simply a fissure of the plateau that was once
the bed of the sea. There is no igneous, no metamorphic rock here;
nothing but limestone of the Jurassic formation. The convexities on one
side of the fissure correspond with marked regularity to the concavities
on the other.
For awhile I walked on the lush grass by the brimming river, where in
the little creeks and bays the water-ranunculus floated its small white
flowers that were to continue the race. Then I left the water and the
green ribbon that followed its margin, and, taking a sheep-track, rose

upon the arid steeps, where the thinly-scattered aromatic
southern-wood was putting forth its dusty leaves. The bare rocks,
yellow, white, and gray, towered above me; they were beneath me; they
faced me across the valley; wherever I looked they were shutting me
off from the outer world. No nightingales were singing here, but I heard
the melancholy scream of the hawk and the harsh croak of the raven.
And yet, when I looked down into the bottom of this steep desert of
stones, what soft and vernal beauty was there! Over the grass of living
green was spread the gold of cowslips, just as if that strip of meadow,
with its gently-gliding river, had been lifted out of an English dale and
dropped into the midst of the sternest scenery of Southern France.
As I went on I soon found that the stony wastes had their flowers too. It
would seem as if Nature had wished to console the desert by giving to
it her loveliest and most enticing blossoms. I came upon colonies of the
poet's narcissus, breathing over the rocks so sweet a fragrance that it
was as if a miracle had been wrought to draw it out of the earth. I
walked knee-deep through blooming asphodels, beautiful and strange,
but only noticed here by the wild bee. I gathered sprays of the graceful
alpine-tea, densely crowded with delicate white bloom, and marvelled
at the wanton splendour of the iris colouring the gray and yellow stones
with its gorgeous blue.
Still following the Ouysse, I came to a spot where the valley ended in
an amphitheatre formed by steep hills more than 600 feet high, and
covered for the most part with dwarf oak. In the hollow under the dark
cliffs was a little lake or pool forty or fifty yards from shore to shore.
The water showed no sign of trouble save where it overflowed its basin
on the western side, and formed the river that I had been keeping in
sight for hours. The pool filled the Gouffre de St. Sauveur. Until the
Ouysse finds this opening in the earth it is a subterranean river, and it
must flow at a great depth, probably at the base of the calcareous
formation, inasmuch as it continues to rise from the gulf the whole year,
although from the month of August until the autumn rains nearly every
water-course in the country is marked by a curving line of dry pebbles.
The funnel-shaped hole descends vertically to the depth of about ninety
feet, but there is no means of knowing how far it descends obliquely.
The tourist may occasionally catch sight of a shepherd boy or girl with
goats or sheep upon the bare or wooded rocks, but his feeling will be

one of