36 BOTANY OF SPAIN. [February 



with the general direction of the mountain-chain. The range is 

 crossed^ not by a pass, but by a considerable breadth of gently 

 sloping and waving corn country, which, though flanked by lofty 

 summits and dark flr woods, is as easily traversable by an army 

 as Salisbury Plain, and an invasion of either country from the 

 other at this point would meet with no physical obstacles near 

 the summit, whatever they might possibly find in the defiles lower 

 down. Accordingly, the deficiency of natural is made up, on the 

 French side at least, by artificial defences. A green knoll on the 

 border of the waving country is crested by one of the most 

 strongly fortified military posts in the country, the town of Mont 

 Louis, — for a town in all respects it is, though with only a few 

 hundred inhabitants, — overtopped by a citadel, the work of 

 Vauban, larger than the town itself. At this point the French 

 territory projects for some miles on the Spanish side of the Pyre- 

 nees, as the Spanish territory does on the French side about the 

 head-waters of the Garonne. French Cerdagne, as it is still popu- 

 larly called, forms a richly cultivated valley, or rather, inclined 

 plane, of such width as to make the high mountains which bound 

 it appear what I might almost call distant. This fertile slope is 

 terminated by a little stream, which separates Bourg-Madame, 

 the frontier village in the French territory, from Puycerda, the 

 capital of Spanish Cerdagne, a genuine Spanish town of some 

 importance, on a height which projects far into the valley, and 

 commands, from a small planted promenade on its southern side, 

 a view over the Spanish part of the valley and the adjoining 

 mountains, which it was worth the whole journey to see. From 

 Puycerda to Urgel, the chief place in this part of the Spanish 

 Pyrenees, is a long day's journey on foot or on muleback. The 

 valley differs from mountain valleys in general in being more pic- 

 turesque in the descent than in the ascent, the upper extremity, 

 as may be gathered from what has already been said, being the 

 tamest instead of the boldest part of its Alpine panorama. The 

 beauty seemed always to increase as we descended the valley, Urgel 

 itself being the most beautiful place in the whole descent. 



The Flora of this district, as usual on the southern declivities 

 of mountain ranges, is a mixture of mountain plants with those 

 of the plains below. In the upper part of the valley the meadows 

 have the floral magnificence characteristic of the Pyrenees, where 

 the open mountain pastures in June, before the grass has been 



