496 Notes on the Pyrenees, 



interest to the admirer of landscape. Turned to the north 

 the eye, different from the opposite side of the river, imme- 

 diately comes in contact with high and seemingly intermin- 

 able ridges, whose surfaces, covered with dense wood, are 

 broken down here and there with dark and dismal clefts and 

 ravines, and rocks piled and wedged into one another, forming 

 stupendous and awful precipices. In passing up the river, in 

 front of this " wild and savage scenery," I could discover a 

 few huts scattered in places close upon its brink, which were 

 inhabited, as the smoke indicated, by human beings. How 

 these people had become attached to, and what could have 

 induced them to settle at the foot of, this craggy and moun- 

 tainous district, I could not surmise. I enquired of one of my 

 fellow-passengers, whose communications and inquisitiveness 

 had already brought us into easy conversation, who and what 

 these people were ? He informed me they were woodmen, or 

 choppers, and made chopping their chief employment ; that 

 they were, he reckoned, very happy, and, for the most, made 

 a smart living. You must understand by choppers, men who, 

 in the autumn and winter, hew down the timber of the forest, 

 cut it into certain convenient lengths, and afterwards make it 

 into piles, which, when dry, they sell by the chord to proprie- 

 tors of lumber-yards in New York. The lumber merchants, 

 as they are called, retail it to the inhabitants for common fueL 

 Fuel, in the large towns of America, is a very expensive 

 article ; a carman*s load of fire-wood, perhaps not more than 

 half a ton, is sold at usually from fifteen shillings to a guinea, 

 and frequently at much more. Coals (not burnt by one family 

 in fifty), imported from England, bring from 2Z. 10s. to SL 10s. 

 per chaldron, or thirty-six bushels. 



I am yours, most sincerely, 

 Hudson Rivery May, 1823. T. W. 



Art. II. Notes on tJw Pyrenees, By William Ainsworth, Esq., 

 Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, &c. 



The chain of the Pyrenees apparently extends itself from the 

 ocean to the Mediterranean, in a direction which seldom de- 

 viates from the shortest line. The isolation may be considered 

 as perfect on the north ; the extensive and fertile valley, com- 

 mencing beyond Toulouse, and terminating in the Mediterra- 

 nean, marked by the course of the canal of Languedoc, and 

 comprising in its line the towns of Villefranche, Castelnaudary, 

 Carcassonne, and Narbonne, forms a complete barrier to the 



