506 Notes on the Pyrenees. 



sward crowning the outlying hills effects a gradation with the 

 plains below, the dark tint of the bare rock on the acclivities 

 diminishes the intensity of the shades, while the eternal snows 

 lose their lofty summits in the passing clouds. 



The disposition generally assumed by the alpine limestone 

 is that of gentle slopes in the direction of its inclination, with 

 bleak precipices on the opposite side, continued oftentimes for 

 a great distance in the line of the direction of the strata; in 

 the pass between Simoux and Alet, in the Eastern Pyrenees, 

 the strata descend in a line parallel to the perpendicular aspect 

 to the banks of the river Aude. The transition rocks present 

 sometimes the same features, particularly in the mountains of 

 the Corbieres : in the latter chain, above the town of St. Paul, 

 the uniformity of disposition is broken by a shift allowing a 

 passage through the chain. The valley of the Corbieres is 

 reached from Mirepoix through a glen, in which the road 

 descends for more than a league at a considerable angle of in- 

 clmation ; it is rendered safer by piled walls of stones. Huge 

 precipices are seen below, and one or two caverns are met 

 with in the ascent, from which we drove numerous pipistrelles, 

 notwithstanding the proofs of fires having lately illumined their 

 dark gloom. The great valley, terminating in the horizon's 

 brink, feeding for many miles no stream of magnitude, clothed 

 with alternate fields of vines*, maize, and olives, presents all 

 the characters of a plain ; while, on both sides, the chains, pre- 

 senting a bare perpendicular acclivity, descend into the vale 

 beneath (a fact long ago generalised by Bougues), or rear 

 aloft their bare foreheads in aged majesty. Goats are here 

 the companions of the raven or the eagle ; while oftentimes 

 the bay of the shepherd's dog, disturbing the wolf from his 

 brake, is heard in the distant mountains, at whose foot man 

 appears a rightly diminutive thing. 



Mountains which have not an abrupt acclivity towards the 

 valley which they border seldom present a uniform slope 

 from their base to their summit, being generally interrupted 

 by plateaux or escarpments, which sometimes correspond with 

 those of an opposite side. 



The transition rocks, tame in their outline near the limits 

 of the chain, become more and more bold as they approach 

 the central districts, where they cannot be distinguished in 

 their external aspect from the rocks constituting the remain- 

 der of the crest. In the disposition of the granitic blocks, 

 vertically placed on almost all the peaks formed of that moun- 



* It is the vale that furnishes the greater part of the excellent Roussillon 

 wine. 



