Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine

㞰Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine

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Title: Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine
Author: Edward Harrison Barker
Release Date: February 26, 2004 [eBook #11298]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDERINGS BY SOUTHERN WATERS, EASTERN AQUITAINE***

Produced by Distributed Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net Project by Carlo Traverso This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr.

[Illustration: A BIT OF OLD FIGEAC. Frontispiece.]

WANDERINGS
BY
SOUTHERN WATERS
EASTERN AQUITAINE
BY
EDWARD HARRISON BARKER
AUTHOR OF 'WAYFARING IN FRANCE'
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1893

CONTENTS
THE VALLEY OF THE OUYSSE AND ROC-AMADOUR
FROM THE ALZOU TO THE DORDOGNE
WAYFARING UNDERGROUND
IN THE VALLEY OF THE CéLé
IN THE ALBIGEOIS
ACROSS THE ROUERGUE
THE BLACK CAUSSE
THE CA?ON OF THE TARN
IN THE VALLEY OF THE LOT
[Illustration: OAK CHIMNEY-PIECE AT THE SINECHAUSSéE (NOW H?TEL DE VILLE) OF MARTEL.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A BIT OF OLD FIGEAC--Frontispiece OAK CHIMNEY-PIECE AT THE SINECHAUSSéE (NOW H?TEL DE VILLE) OF MARTEL
THE PONT VALENTRé AT CAHORS
ROC-AMADOUR
PORCH OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ALBI
AMBIALET
CIGALA, THE SHOEBLACK.
[Illustration: THE PONT VALENTRé AT CAHORS.]

WANDERINGS BY SOUTHERN WATERS

THE VALLEY OF THE OUYSSE AND ROC-AMADOUR.
From the Old-English town of Martel, in Guyenne, I turned southward towards the Dordogne. For a few miles the road lay over a barren plateau; then it skirted a desolate gorge with barely a trace of vegetation upon its naked sides, save the desert loving box clinging to the white stones. A little stream that flowed here led down into the rich valley of Creysse, blessed with abundance of fruit. Here I found the nightingales and the spring flowers that avoid the wind-blown hills. Patches of wayside took a yellow tinge from the cross-wort galium; others, conquered by ground-ivy or veronica, were purple or blue. Presently the tiled roofs of the village of Creysse were seen through the poplars and walnuts. A delightful spot for a poetical angler is this, for the Dordogne runs close by in the shadow of prodigious rocks and overhanging trees. What a noble and stately river I thought it, as the old ferryman, with white cotton nightcap on his head, punted me across! I took the greater pleasure in its breadth and grandeur here because I had seen it an infant river in the Auvergne mountains, and had watched its growth as it rushed between walls of rock and forest towards the plains.
What witchery of romance and spell-bound fancy is in the song of the Dordogne as it breaks over its shallows under high rocky cliffs and ruined castles! Everything that can charm the poet and the artist is here. The grandeur of rugged nature combines with the most enticing beauty of water and meadow, and the voices of the past echo with a sweet sadness from cliff to cliff. It is said that several of these castles were built to prevent the English from coming up the river, but this may be treated as one of the many fanciful legends respecting the British period which are repeated throughout Aquitaine.
By cutting off a curve of the Dordogne I soon came to the river-side village of Meyronne, and here I stopped for a meal at a very pleasant little inn, where to my surprise I found that I had been preceded a few days before by another Englishman, who, accompanied by a Frenchman, had come up from Bordeaux in a boat. They must have found it very hard work rowing against the rapids. The hostess here was evidently a woman who treasured her household gods, but who liked also to show them. She gave me my coffee in a china cup that looked as if it had belonged to her great-grandmother; and in the bright little room where she served my lunch was a large walnut buffet elaborately and admirably carved, bearing the date 1676.
After Meyronne my road ran for a few miles beside the broad and curving river. The forms of the great cliffs on each side were ever changing. Over a sky intensely blue sailed the fleecy April clouds before the soft west wind, and whenever the sun shone out with unveiled splendour, the rays fell with summer warmth. While the tinkling of sheep-bells from the ledges of the rocks came down to 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