II. 



The Canons of Southern France. 



THE great canons of America are so well known that the very 

 name of canon has now an American flavour about it, and 

 people are apt to forget that it is a Spanish word applicable to many 

 valleys in Spain and in Southern France. Indeed, some remarkable 

 examples occur in a part of France which it is now by no means 

 difficult to reach, though it is only within the present century that 

 Frenchmen themselves have become aware of the marvels to be found 

 in a corner of their own country ; and it is only by the recent extension 

 of the Ligne du Midi, and by the conversion of ancient tracks into 

 good roadways, that the " causses " and canons of Lozere have been 

 made accessible to the ordinary traveller. 



Bounded on the north by the granite hills of central France, on 

 the east by the range of the Cevennes, and rising high above the low- 

 lands that border the Gulf of Lyons, are the " causses " of Lot and 

 Lozere ; high-lying plains or plateaux, consisting of thick Jurassic 

 limestones disposed in nearly horizontal beds, and resting on clays 

 and marls of Liassic age, from beneath which, to the north and east, 

 emerge the gneiss and granite of the Central Highlands. South- 

 westwards, the causses descend in a series of broad steps toward 

 the valley of the Garonne. 



All the water which falls on the surface of the limestones is ab- 

 sorbed by those rocks and sinks into the ground, finding its way by 

 subterranean passages and caverns down to the level of the springs, 

 which feed the deep-sunk rivers of the country. The causses them- 

 selves are dry, rocky, and barren plains, without soil and without 

 trees. But Mr. Baring-Gould 1 tells us that before the Revolution 

 they were covered with forests, and that the impoverishment 

 of the entire limestone district is due to the ruthless denudation 

 which followed on that event. The seigneurial forests were cut 

 down, the soil was bared to the winter storms, and, no longer held 

 together by the roots of trees and shrubs, it was rapidly swept away 

 and carried down into the depths of the valleys or into the swallow- 

 holes, which gape like gigantic wells in the bare surface of the causses. 

 " One hundred years has sufficed to sweep every particle of soil from 



1 " The Deserts of Southern France." Methuen & Co , 1894. 



2 E 2 



