tf| TRAVELLING IN THE PYRENEES. 



up for lost, and believed that ' the end of all things was at hand.' It 

 became apparent that death by famine or by perishing in the waters, 

 which ra<*ed around us, was the fate which awaited upon all of us. 

 Silent, stupified sorrow overwhelmed us, and our feelings were fast drying 

 up ; when, in the end of the sixth week, peace again reigned in the valley, 

 and the clouds cleared away. The change which the first knowledge of 

 the fact wrought upon our despairing minds may be conceived, but cannot 

 be described." 



DANGERS OF TRAVELLING IN THE PYRENEES. 



" After quitting Quilan," says Murray, " the road begins rapidly to 

 ascend the ridge of the Corbieres, which divide the department of the 

 Aude from Roussillou. Upon reaching the summit of the ridge the 

 road winds through a labyrinth of stony mounds ; not a leaf or plant of 

 any kind is to be seen ; it seems as if some tremendous waterspout had 

 created this scene of dessolation, and washed the whole soil into the 

 plains. My companion (a lady) , born in the plains of the north, had 

 never seen hills or mountains in her life before, and as some of her friends 

 at Perpignau had been kind enough to apprize her of the dangerous 

 nature of the descent into Roussillou, she had ever since we left Quilan 

 been incessantly talking about it, and as she approached it, became ex- 

 ceedingly alarmed and terrified. The summit of the ridge is quitted by 

 a narrow passage, the entrance to which has in other times been guarded 

 by a fort built upon the plains of Roussillou, and distinguish the road 

 corkscrewing down the mountain into the valley many thousand feet 

 below. Few roads, even, the higher Pyrenees, are more rapid in their 

 descent than this, and none of them narrower or worse defended, without 

 any parapet, and hanging like a shelf on the mountain side. Having 

 passed the old fort and put the drag chains upon the wheels, the conductor 

 set off at full gallop down the descent. The lady screamed, but, with 

 the noise of the Dilligence, and the rain which fell in torrents, no one 

 could hear her but myself; she shut her eyes, siezed hold of me, and, 

 fortunately for herself, fainted. The rocks were almost over our heads 

 when we were going down at this rate; an immense block of, perhaps, 

 twenty or thirty tons weight, detached from its place by the rains of the 

 preceding night, came over the mountain side, and dashing upon the 

 narrow road a few hundred yards in advance of us, carried one half of it 



