The Pyrenees

VI. Cerdagne

The Cerdagne forms a district quite separate from the rest of the Pyrenees. Its scenery differs from that of the rest of the range, its facilities for travel, its politics, everything in the place is different; and though both valleys are Catalan, it is well not to include in the same summary a description of the Cerdagne and a description of the Roussillon.

The Cerdagne is the only broad valley in the Pyrenees, and it is a broad valley held in by walls of high mountains. All the other trenches which nature has cut into the range, are, without exception, profound and narrow. They expand occasionally into enclosed circles of flat land, the floors of ancient lakes, with a circle of steep banks all around, first wooded, then rocky, and reaching almost to Heaven. But these solemn circuses of secluded land, held in by narrow gates at either end, and small compared with the rocks around them, have a totally different effect upon the mind from those produced by such a landscape as the Cerdagne. You here have a whole country-side as broad as a small English county might be, full of fields, and large enough to take abreast a whole series of market towns. This is the sort of plain, which, were it bounded by hills, rather low like our English downs, would seem a little country by itself: a place large enough to make up one of our European divisions, like the counties of England, or the minor provinces of France. A broad river valley, such as decides a score of places scattered over Western Europe, here binds many households all united historically and defines a corporate condition for a fixed community of men.

This picture is framed in two great lines of hills roughly parallel to each other, and the effect when one comes upon it out of the last of the narrow valleys, may be compared to the effect upon a child’s mind when he first sees the sea.

In order to perceive the full contrast of this exception in the Pyrenean group, it is best to approach it from the west; whether you are coming on foot over the foothills of the Carlitte groups down on to Mont Louis or Targasonne, or whether you are coming by the high road over the pass of Porté, there comes a point in your journey where, after so many gorges and narrow cliffs, the hills here suddenly cease at your feet and you see the whole sweep of the Cerdagne as broad as a field of corn; you will have seen nothing like it all your way from the first foot hills of the Basque and the shores of the Atlantic.

On the eastern side, beyond the plain, you see the long ridge which is among the highest of the Pyrenees, and which stands steeply out of the flat. It stretches, as it were, indefinitely away into Spain and was called for centuries by the Mohammedans, and still is, the Sierra del Cadi. At its feet are a group of villages and towns, Saillagouse, Odeillo, Bourg Madame, Puigcerdá (with its curious little isolated hill), Angoustrine, Palau, Osseja, Nahija, Err, and Caldegas, and that fascinating territory Llivia, which stands enclosed, making a little island of Spanish territory in the midst of French.

The structure of the Cerdagne explains its history. It is a slightly sloping shelf upon the Spanish side of the watershed, but the watershed here is not as it is everywhere else a steep ridge with rocks, it is a large imperceptible flat which, for the first few miles upon the northern side, slopes quite gently down towards the valley of the Tet, and on the south side slopes still more gently and easily away towards Spain. The Segre, the last and largest tributary of the Ebro, rises in this gentle plain in innumerable rivulets, which joins innumerable other rivulets at Llivia, and then receives the river of Val Carol, the river of Angoustrine, and the little river of Flavanara below Puigcerdá. There is in the whole extent of this plain no natural feature to form a frontier, and (as its upper waters form the only approach to the province of Roussillon) Mazarin, when the treaty of the Pyrenees submitted the Roussillon to the French Crown, claimed as a sort of right of way, the upper stretch of this wide plain.

The negotiations were not difficult, the frontier was drawn just so as to give the French Government everywhere the road down the Val Carol and up by Mont Louis to Perpignan. It was not the frontier between two civilizations or languages, the few square miles of the French Cerdagne, which is geographically Spanish, are Spanish also, Catalan Spanish, in customs, hours, architecture, and even cooking. It is Spanish in everything save the functions of government; and here you see just what differences government can and cannot make in a country-side. Government, where it exists against the will of the governed, effects nothing; but here there is no such friction, and you may compare the contented Cerdagne, which takes its orders from Paris, with the contented Cerdagne that takes them from Barcelona and Madrid. The subtle effect of the contrast is sufficiently striking; it is seen in the type of roadway, the paving of courtyards, in clocks that keep time upon one side and not upon the other, and in a certain hardness, which French assurance breeds, and which the Spanish ease avoids. It is a good plan as one enters the Cerdagne to take the by-road which leads straight across the plain from Urgel to Saillagouse. This by-road, when you have pursued it for about a mile, enters the isolated Spanish district of Llivia, and when you reach that town you find yourself in Spain, although all the villages round you in a circle are French villages. You have the Spanish delay, the Spanish tenacity, and the Spanish disorder. On coming out of it again, and immediately over the stream on the first village, the influence of the distant prefecture and of a strong hand upon the local community is apparent.

The Cerdagne has one bad drawback that, for all its beauty and wealth, its entertainment is bad. There is not, I think, one good inn in the whole of it, and at Saillagouse, where the exterior looks most promising, the people are so hard-hearted that there is no comfort to be found under their roofs. If you are thinking of food, the best place perhaps for your head-quarters is the little village of La Tour Carol. But if you are thinking of sights, your best head-quarters is the town of Puigcerdá, just beyond the Spanish frontier, 3 miles or so from Latour.

Puigcerdá is the capital of the Cerdagne, and there the people gather as to a fair. It was the capital of the Cerdagne long before the people knew or cared whether they were governed from the north or from the south. One and a half miles away, over the river in French territory, the tiny hamlet of Hix marks the place where the old capital was before Puigcerdá was founded and ousted it in the early Middle Ages. From many points in Puigcerdá, from the terrace in front of the Town Hall, from the northern end of one of its streets, but especially from its church tower, you take in one view the whole of the Cerdagne. As one gazes upon that view, one should remember that this was the principal highway of organized Christendom against the Mohammedan, and through this went Charlemagne and his son.

The Carolingian tradition is nowhere stronger, strong as it is throughout the Pyrenees, than in this fruitful plain. The very mountains perpetuate it with the name Carlitte, and the valley of Carol and the popular songs perpetuate it also. It was this broad floor, full of provisions and free from ambuscade that allowed Christendom to dominate Catalonia, and render free the country of Barcelona, first of all Spanish territory, from the weight of unchristian government. It is the Cerdagne, therefore, to which we owe the later segregation of the Catalonians from the rest of Spain, their forgetfulness of warfare, their active commercial unrest, their modern submission to Jews, their great wealth. The Cerdagne should possess a great road throughout, for it is all of one type and all of one valley. By some historical accident it is not yet (I believe) so served throughout. After Puigcerdá there is a good new road all the way to Urgel. Another from Puigcerdá turns out of the valley of the Segre and runs off south and east to Barcelona. Certainly Urgel—that town we spoke of in connexion with Andorra—every one travelling in this part should see: Seo, the “Bishopric,” the “See”; a sort of Bastion first thrown out against the Mohammedans by Charlemagne. It is more intensely Spanish perhaps than any other large town in these hills, and that because it has long been so thoroughly cut off from communication with the north. Here also you can find good hospitality. The people are kind, and local travellers are common. Urgel is, however, more easily approached from Andorra than from Puigcerdá. And upon that account I dealt with it in connexion with the little republic.

VII. The Tet and Ariège

The valley of the Ariège is a basis for going either southward into Andorra by the tributary valley of the Aston or westward into Roussillon around the flanks of the Carlitte. Of the former journey I have spoken in connexion with Catalonia. The latter takes one into the valley of the Tet, and so to the Canigou which is the principal mountain of that valley. The high road up the Ariège and over the Puymorens Pass into the Cerdagne and so into the Roussillon does not concern us here. It is designed for travel upon wheels. For going on foot the district is concerned with the Carlitte and the Canigou.

If one means to spend some time in the big group of the Carlitte, one’s head-quarters must be Porté, the little village just over the Puymorens Pass. It is from here that the ascent of the highest peak is made and from here the fishermen start for the lakes that surround that peak. If, then, one proposes to spend some days camping in the mountain and going nowhere in particular, it is from Porté that one must start, as the nearest point to the summits. On the other hand, nothing can be bought at Porté nor for miles around, and if one ascends the mountain from Ax, though the distance is greater, one is more in touch with provisions.

The Carlitte group is remarkable for the number of lakes, some quite large, which are to be found in the hollows just under its highest ridges. On the north is the large Lake of Noguille with the two little tarns of Rou and Torte just above it on one side; on the other, two little tarns lie under the Pic d’Ariel. The main lake is 6000 feet above the sea, not far short of a mile long, 500 or 600 yards across, and very little visited. On the south of the highest ridge and to the east of the summit of the Carlitte, just above Porté, lies the still larger lake of Lamoux. A good mile and a half in length, but narrower than its twin upon the north. Besides these two is the little group of lakes at the source of the Tet, another group at the sources of the Ariège, and another of half a dozen and more just under the eastern cliffs of the Carlitte which feed the big marsh of the Puillouse.

Unfortunately all this district, which is so wild and open for travel, and so full of good fishing, has but few camping grounds. The forest on the east of the Carlitte is one of the largest in the Pyrenees, and one may camp anywhere within it; but for a lake as well as wood one can find but four spots: one, the Camporeils; the other, the little pond just above Langles; the third, a whole group of lakes a mile south and a little west of the marsh of Puillouse. It is by these last that one will do well to camp if one is making one’s way over the mountain eastward to Mont Louis, for they are within 5 miles of that town, and just beyond it is the valley of the Tet. The best camping ground in the neighbourhood of Ax is the fourth spot, at the northern end of the lake of Noguille. Here the lake, the stream flowing from it, and the wood are all close together and as good a camping ground as any in these mountains can be chosen. The way to reach this is to leave Ax by the western road which branches off from the great national road and runs up the valley of the Oriège to Orgeix. Beyond this little village of Orgeix is another little village, Orleu, and beyond that again at the head of the high road and not quite 5 miles from Ax is the point where you must turn off for the lake. It is not easy to find because the whole distance is very similar for miles. I will describe the way as best I can.

After the road leaves Orleu you have upon the left very precipitous steeps, rising to a height of some 6000 feet (or more than 3000 above the dale) covered with a forest which comes down very nearly to the road. On the right is a stream, and beyond it another belt of wood, less steep, with bare and high rocks above. Somewhat over an English mile, from the Church of Orleu, a path leaves the road to the right and crosses the stream, taking its way upwards through the opposing wood; this path will lead you to the lake, but it is not the best way. The best way is to go on further, somewhat over half a mile to a group of huts called “The Forges.” Here you will see on the other side of the stream a valley running towards you from the mountain and coming from due south as you look up it. The valley, or rather ravine, is that of the torrent called Gnoles, and this is the gully you must follow. It falls into the Oriège just by the forges. You must go some yards beyond this junction of the streams and a path will be seen going right off at a right angle to the road and making for the gulley opposite. It crosses the Oriège at once, crosses the torrent almost immediately after, climbs up the steep on its left bank, crosses again on its right bank, and thence keeps on due south between the rocks and the stream, through the wood, until, at a point the height of which I cannot discover but well over 2000 feet above the road, it comes out suddenly upon the lake.

Here is the best camping ground within a reasonable distance of provisions and succour, and yet quite remote enough for a hermit. Here with the aid of the 1/100,000 map, one may wander and take one’s luck in the whole of this district of high peaks, rocks, and tarns, which stretch every way for 8 or 10 miles around.

If one’s object is to make one’s way into the valley of the Tet, instead of spending one’s time in the mountains, the direction is straight and the way apparently easy, but it contains one difficult passage.

Your business is to make from Ax to the village of Formiguères, which is politically in the Roussillon, and lies south-east by a trifle east from Ax, and, as the crow flies, barely more than 15 miles away. You will, however, hardly get there under 20 miles of going, and it is unlikely that you will do it in one day.

The first part of the road is plain enough. You follow up the valley of the Oriège, as though you were going to the lake of which I have spoken, but instead of crossing over at the forges and going south towards the lake, you go straight on up the valley. Your path is not always distinct, but your main direction is to stick to the Oriège as it gets smaller and smaller in the high valley, and to look out for a path which runs along that stream on its left or southern bank.

For about 4 miles from the Forges you continue climbing up the high valley of the Oriège, which is wooded upon either slope, until you come to a place where the wood recedes upon either side (though there is wood in front of you), and the path crosses the torrent to the opposite or right bank. It is here that the difficulty of the way begins.

The path, you will notice by your compass, is at this point going due south, for the Oriège has curled round in that direction. Five hundred yards in front of you is a wood for which it makes. Now, if you were to pursue the path through that wood you would go clean out of your way, and either get tangled up in the rocks that overhang the sources of the Oriège, or get down into the marshy sources of the Tet. Neither of these districts are what you want. When you get to the edge of the wood, which, as I say, is about 500 yards from the point where the path crosses the stream, you must turn sharp to your left and go due east up a little watercourse, which here runs down beside the trees. As you do this facing due east, and looking up this watercourse you will see before you a ridge like any other of the Pyrenees, with peaks upon it. This ridge is the watershed between the County of Foix and the Roussillon, and is to-day the frontier of the department of the Eastern Pyrenees, which is the modern representative of that ancient province. The ridge is plain enough, but to cross it is not so simple a task as it looks. You must not attempt to go across it by the depression which lies immediately before you between two peaks. It can be done, but the chances are you will lose your way in the great forest upon the further side. The right way is to go on due eastward up the stream until you are right under the ridge, from which point you must bear to your left up the bank which encloses the gully upon that northern side. You will notice two peaks of rock at the point where this bank branches from the main ridge. You must so bear up that you leave them both to your right, and turning round the base of that one which lies furthest west of the two, you will see (when you are round the base and over the bank) a saddle just east of you and about 600 or 700 feet below the rocky peaks in question. This is the Porteille; you will go across it, come into the dense wood on the other side, and there the path follows running water all the way throughout what soon becomes a profound gorge, until you reach open country and a few small buildings 3 miles further down; though the open country, it is true, is only a small stretch of meadow between the wood and the river (a stream called the Galbe). The way is clear between the wood and stream for 2 miles more to the hamlet of Espousouille. There you must leave your path and take one which branches straight off to the right, goes down to the stream, crosses it, rises through the wood beyond, and in less than a mile from Espousouille, brings you into the considerable village of Formiguères.

I have already said that you would not easily manage this crossing in a day, even in fine weather. The Porteille is over 7000 feet high, and you may quite possibly lose your way for an hour or two in the difficult bit, but luckily there is no difficulty about camping. There is good camping ground with wood and water in every part of the journey, except the last mile of the steep going over the ridge. And you have only to choose where you will pass the night.

This is the shortest cut by far from the County of Foix into the Roussillon. If you are going down into the Cerdagne a great national road takes you from Formiguères to Mont Louis, and the distance is about 9 miles, but if you are going down into the valley of the Tet in order to climb in the Canigou you must make for Olette, for that cuts off a corner. Olette is just under 10 miles in a straight line from Formiguères, but the county road which joins them has to cross a pass and is full of windings, so that the whole distance, even if you take short cuts to cut off the long turns, is more like 14 miles. The pass, which is nearer 6000 than 7000 feet high, is 1200 feet above Formiguères, and stands just opposite that town in full view, the summit of it about 2 miles away to the south-east, but there is no need to describe the road, as it is an ordinary carriageway from the one place to the other. At Olette you are on the Tet, about 5 miles from the old rail-head at Villefranche (the new rail-head is at Bourg Madame on the Frontier).

VIII. The Canigou

The Canigou, whichever way one looks at it, is a separate district and must be separately approached and separately travelled in. It stands apart from the rest of the range, it has a different character, and travel in it is of a different sort from other Pyrenean travel. It is not only physically cut off from the rest of the Pyrenees, indeed, its physical isolation has been a good deal exaggerated by people who have looked up to it from the plain and have not carefully noted its plan; it is rather morally cut off by the way in which it dominates one particular province and one famous plain to the exclusion of every other peak; so that when you are going through the Roussillon, especially along the sea coast, the only thing you can think of is the Canigou, which seems to be as much the lonely spirit of the district, as Etna does of the sea east of Sicily, or as Vesuvius does of the Bay of Naples. It will perhaps sound surprising or unlikely to those of my readers who know the Pyrenees, when I say that the Canigou is not physically isolated from the chain, it is indeed less isolated in its way than is the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, or even the Pic du Midi d’Ossau, for it is connected with the south by a high ridge which one can hardly ever see at full length from the plain, and which is, I think, only clearly observable from the frontier heights south of Arles upon the Tech. How thorough is the connexion, however, what follows will show.

The Canigou is somewhat over 9000 feet in height, to be accurate 9135, yet it is but the terminal point and not the highest point in a long ridge which runs south-westward to the frontier at the Roque Couloum. It next forms that frontier for 15 or 20 miles, and is then continued past the Port de Col Toses into Spain, where it forms the magnificent wall of the Sierra del Cadi.

A man without heart or vision would see in the Canigou nothing but the last northern point of that long range, but the political accident which makes the Roussillon French, the cross chain which springs from the Pic de Couloun and runs to the Mediterranean, and above all the aspect of the mountains from the civilized wealthy plain to the north and east (where the connecting ridge cannot be seen), and its false appearance of isolation when one observes it from the sea, all make of the Canigou one of the most individual mountains in Europe.

There are, as I have said, many heights in its own ridge, further to the south and west, which surpass it. The Donyais is within a few feet of it, the Enfer or Gous and the Pic du Géant next door, above the valley of the Tet, are higher; the Puigmal just on the watershed is much higher. The summit of the Canigou is but 1500 or 1600 feet above the crest of the ridge in its own immediate neighbourhood, and even the lowest point in that ridge (the Col de Boucacers) is not 2000 feet below it. Nevertheless, it produces, as I have said, an effect of unity and of isolation, and there is not only the illusion of its outline as seen from the north and east, but also the fact that the mountain spreads out in a fan of ridges from its summit to the lowlands all around, and stands upon a broad expanded base, more or less circular in shape, spreading from the Tech upon the south to the Tet upon the east, north, and west.

The Canigou is not a mountain that gives one any climbing to speak of, or that affords any problems or difficulties. There is even, nowadays, a carriage road most of the way up on the northern side, but it is the best place for camping and changing camp that you can find anywhere. All the flanks of it are covered with a series of dense woods; they form a belt 2 or 3 miles deep (in places nearly 5) and running almost continuously round the whole mountain, a circuit of at least 30 miles. Your choice for halting and camping places in these woods is infinite, there is water everywhere and you are nowhere too far from provisions. If you will take the road from Villefranche up to Vernet you will, at that village, be near the steepest side of the mountain and a wood which everywhere affords excellent camping ground. By following up the path to Casteil and taking the track which leads south and east from that hamlet, you are at the inhabited point nearest to its summit, and you have wood and water up to the last mile in distance, or the last 2000 feet in height; but remember, if you wish to make for the summit by this trail, that you must always bear to the right as you walk, choosing always the right-hand trail when there is a diversion, and coming out on the south side of that ridge which has the summit at one end and the Peak de Quazémi at the other. On the open part of this steep bit there is a definitely marked path which follows the left bank of the stream until it is right under the last rocks of the Canigou and then makes straight up by zigzags. If you would go the easier way which everybody takes, you must start from Prades, which is the town of the mountain, and in which anyone will show you the house where the local agent of the French Alpine Club is ready with information.

Your road goes through Taurinya (or if you start from Villefranche, through Fillols), and the new carriage road runs up the ridge between the two valleys—the valley of the Fillols and the valley of Taurinya—first over open country, then through wood until you come to quite the upper part of the Taurinya, where the road turns round the steep corner overhanging the sources of the torrent. This particular wood is called the wood of Balatag, a word that is not so hard to pronounce in Catalan as in French, for the Catalans add an “e” at the end of it.

The road does not go to the actual summit, but comes out on to the shoulder of the mountains, an open space looking to the north, north-west and east, where stands the hotel which has been put up by the French Alpine Club. This hotel is not quite 2000 feet below the highest summit which lies exactly to the south of it. The other summit to the north-east, the ridge of which comes round behind the hotel, is the Pic Puigdarbet. You must allow five or six hours to get to the hotel without haste from the valley of the Tet, and the road is somewhat shorter if you start from Villefranche, than if you start from Prades, but of the two ways, much the more interesting for a man on foot is the old way by Casteil and the Brook Cady which I first described. Here you can camp half-way up the mountain without fear of disturbance from travellers, choosing, for preference, the end of the wood just under the summit, and so make that summit at dawn.

Unless you are in a hurry to get on to Perpignan, one of the best ways of treating the Canigou is to go across it from the valley of the Tet into the valley of the Tech, and from Arles on the Tech to take the railway through Ceret and Elne to Perpignan.

It is of course a long way round, but it shows you both sides of the mountain.

You could hardly get right across the main ridge from the hotel; but you can take the path that goes round the northern flank of the mountain, that is, through the wood that clothes the buttresses of the Pic Bargebit, and that comes out in the valley of the Dalmanya, a torrent running down north-eastwards from the summit. If you are afraid of losing your way you can go down into the village of Dalmanya and up thence by a clear path from the church of the village to the iron mines under the Col de Cirere; from that col there is a very winding high road (of which of course you can cut off most of the turnings) which gets you down to Corsady and so to Arles. On the southern side of the mountain you can go down the path which follows the Brook of Cady, and do your best to note the Peak of the Thirteen Winds which is the peak precisely due south of the main summit and 3000 feet from it at the end of the long ridge. When you have made quite certain which is the Peak of the Thirteen Winds, cross the brook, and work up if you can to the saddle immediately south-west of it, and between it and the Pic de Routat, which is a trifle lower and rises a thousand yards to the south-west of the Peak of the Thirteen Winds.

This col is called the Portaillet, and the valley on the further side is called “The Old or Abandoned Pass.” When you have got across you will know why. A wood covers its lower part, and a little brook called the Cambret runs through it, but there is no regular path, and it is a business to find the first huts, which are at an open space upon the stream between it and the wood, and quite 4000 feet below the col.

The descent is exceedingly steep, and there I leave it.

From these huts (which are called St. Duillem) is a good plain path down to the Tech, and to the little hamlet which has the same name as the river (Le Tech) whence the national high road takes one in 6 miles to Arles, the more usual crossing (which is not really a crossing of the mountains at all, but a crossing of the ridge to the south of it) is by the Pla de Guillem, so called because it does not go near Guillem, and this way is as plain as a pike-staff. You take the road from Villefranche to Fuilla, which is not quite 3 miles off, first up the Tet, then to the left southwards up a lateral valley, you follow that lateral valley and the high road up it from Fuilla to Py, rather more than 5 miles on, and southward all the way from Py a path goes south-west up the right bank of a torrent which comes in there. The track is quite clear and carries you up to the sources of the stream, and to the saddle in the final ridge which is called the Pla de Guillem. It is a steep climb of nearly 4000 in rather more than 4 miles. Py at the junction of the streams is just over 3200 feet above the sea. The pass is about 7000.

On the further side also the track is quite plain, pointing down due south-east through a little wood and then over the open country. It takes you down to Prats de Mollo, a jolly little town, the last on the great national road and the highest in the Tech valley. Above it the national road becomes the local road leading to the baths and waters.

So late as the Revolutionary Wars Mollo was of importance and may be again, for the Spanish armies could come over (but not with guns) from the other Mollo, which lies beyond the frontier 7 or 8 miles off south-east, over the Col of Arras. Mollo is a little lower than Py, but the descent upon it is far less steep than was the ascent upon Py. From Mollo it is somewhat more than 10 miles to Arles by the national road down the valley.

The Canigou is so particular a thing that if a man has but little time before him, or if he already knows the other Pyrenees—he might do worse than go to Perpignan and spend a week upon that mountain. It should be remembered that you have a better chance of fine weather there than in any other part of the Pyrenees, and you will usually have dryer days upon the Tech side than upon the Tet side.

With these eight divisions I have roughly covered the chain of the Pyrenees for those who may, like myself, think that all travel on these mountains should be on foot. It is, of course, but a very rough and general survey, but it would give one, all taken together, a comprehensive knowledge of the chain. My limits have necessarily excluded very many valleys, some of which are unknown to me, such as the valley of Isaba. Among those which I have not dealt with should be considered especially the Ribagorza, which is the boundary between the Aragonese and the Catalan tongues, and runs parallel to Pallars or the valley of Esterri, and can be reached from the valley with some difficulty by Espot and the high Portaron above it, or much more easily from Viella in the Val d’Aran, by the high Port de Viella, which leads straight into the Ribagorza and down to Bono. There are also entrances in and out of Andorra, of which I did not speak, notably the Porte Blanche, which you make from Porta in the Val Carol, a mile or two south of Porté. This way involves two cols, one very high one, the Porte Blanche, another lower one immediately after, the Port de Vallcivera. It is, however, the shortest way from a French high road to Andorra the Old. There is another way in and out of Andorra, very little used, by the Col de la Boella from Ordino to the Val Farrera. All the Basque valleys besides those I mention, and notably that of the Isaba, are places that should be known, and of the passages over the range, which I have not dealt with in detail, one, the road from St. Girons to Esterri by the Port de Salau, will soon be an international highway. It presents no difficulties and no very considerable interest. But if the traveller finds himself by some accident in St. Girons with but a day or two in which to see Spain, here is a very easy way of getting over into what is still one of the remotest parts of that country.