WRITINGS OF ST FOND AND SCROPE. 3 
he resided at Montelimart, exactly upon the opposite bank of the Rhone), sub- 
sequently turned the current of attention to a different district, more accessible to 
tourists, nearer to Paris, and in the close vicinity of a great provincial town. 
Clermont and its environs, including the Puy de Dome, naturally withdrew geo- 
logists from the remoter and more scattered volcanic features of the Southern 
Cevennes, and so much has been written and published upon Auvergne proper, 
as to render any attempt at addition (at least in the way of general description) 
altogether superfluous. M. BerTranp’s accurate local descriptions and map of the 
singular basin of Le Puy (the ancient Velay), and the masterly pencil of Mr Scrorr, 
have, in a great measure, exhausted the descriptive geology of that most curious, 
but most difficult field of study. An easier, but rather more neglected subject 
remained in the province of the Vivarais, the favourite ground of Fausas, to which 
Tacknowledge that I was first attracted by the panorama of the basaltic colonnade 
of Jaujac in Mr Scropr’s incomparable atlas. Having previously inspected, for my 
own instruction, the other four great volcanic centres of this region of France, 
viz., the Monts Dome, the Monts D’Or, the Cantal, and Le Puy, I meant to finish, 
as my predecessors had done, with a hasty survey of Vivarais. But I found there 
a united attraction of scenery and geology, together with that isolation and re- 
moteness which lends a peculiar, though doubtless a selfish charm to a prize 
which we imagine that others have, in some degree, overlooked, which caused me 
to fix my quarters in the very first village which I reached, and again, two years 
later (in 1841), to revisit every point of geological interest, to extend my notes, 
and to prepare a map and drawings of the volcanic phenomena. These were in- 
tended to have been at once reduced into a digested form, and published in the 
Transactions of one of our Societies ; but, in the same year, a fresh subject of in- 
terest was opened to me, and for a time withdrew my attention entirely from any 
other voluntary pursuit requiring much leisure; and since that time the theory 
of glaciers has occupied nearly all my spare moments.* I now resume my ori- 
ginal intention of describing the ancient volcanoes of the Vivarais, with the hope 
of being able to infuse into the general reader some small share of the admira- 
tion with which my first visit filled me, and which a second did not abate. I 
shall first describe the track by which I originally entered these valleys, as serv- 
ing to point out the circumstances of contrast to which I have above alluded. 
The spring of 1839 was late and cold, and in France and the basin of Le Puy, 
a town situated 625 metres, or nearly 2000 English feet above the sea,+ was not 
the first place to feel the influence of summer. Notwithstanding its great ab- 
solute height, the country rises still higher in every direction, save the narrow 
gorge by which the river Loire struggles out of the circuit of lofty hills forming 
* These pages were written in 1847. 
+ Bertranp. 
