January 15, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



27 



subject to constant movement. The third diorama shows the 

 slope of P^guerre near Cauterets. Here it was not a question 

 of restraining a torrent, but of preventing a mountain from 

 sliding down and destroying, in its fall, the town of Cauterets. 

 The work was accomplished by removing, in the first place, 

 all the loose blocks of stone and then by clothing the loose 

 and rocky soil with a vegetable covering consisting of squares 

 of sod held up by cross walls of dry stone. This work, com- 

 menced in 1885, has been successfully terminated and the re- 

 sult is considered a marked success. The dioramas were 

 seen through darkened chambers made to represent, in one 

 case, the hut of a forest guardian with its rude furniture, and 

 in another, a camp for the laborers employed on the work 

 represented in the accompanying diorama, the naturalness of 

 the effect being heightened by the presence of their tools and 

 camp equipage. 



Some idea of the care with which the Forest Pavilion and 

 its contents were prepared will appear from the fact that the 

 whole building was set up and arranged in the forest of Fon- 

 tainebleau and then taken to pieces and removed to Paris. It 

 is to find a permanent resting-place in the Bois de Vincennes 

 at the other end of Paris, where it will serve to instruct and 

 delight visitors to the French capital interested in forests and 

 forestry. Indeed, it would be worth preserving for its beauty 

 alone. Far from having the fragile, trivial look of most 

 " rustic " constructions, its excellence in proportion, outline 

 and execution give it genuine architectural character ; and this 

 is enhanced by the charm of its color. The panels of wood 

 that cover the wall spaces between the supports are arranged 

 in attractive patterns formed by the contrasting colors of the 

 barks. The design of the piazzas and the interior gallery is 

 particularly pretty, and much skill was shown in giving archi- 

 tectural dignity to the columns which support this last without 

 the use of other material than that elsewhere adopted. Capi- 

 tals of many curious yet appropriate shapes were made by 

 groups of twisted roots, and were finished below by a simula- 

 tion of a " cable moulding " formed of bast rope. 



There is one criticism to make on this exhibition, and that 

 is the absence of an official catalogue similar to the one pub- 

 lished by the French government in connection with its forest 

 exhibition of 1876. Such a catalogue would have added vastly 

 to the benefit which visitors to the forest exhibition of 1889 

 derived from it. 



Down the Rhone. — II, 



JUST below Sarras, but on the eastern shore, lies St. Vallier, 

 where a stone bridge spans the river with two arches that 

 rest on a huge mid-stream pier. Like many Rhone towns, it 

 is a single long row of closely built houses facing the high 

 esplanade formed by the embankment. There could be no 

 more delightful arrangement for the idle stroller or for that 

 still idler fisherman who so perpetually appears in France. 

 What can be caught in the Rhone I do not know, but its 

 banks were lined with placid anglers from Vienne to Avignon 

 — now perched on a lofty water-wall, now cosily nestled 

 among overhanging Willows by some shady pool. Villages 

 abound on the steep slopes — compact little clusters often set 

 on spots where one wonders how they keep their foothold. 

 Now they are surrounded by fields and vineyards, but again 

 they seem carved out of the naked rock that supports them. 

 They must be cold in winter and hot in summer, with no pro- 

 tection from either storm or sun. But to the artist's eye they 

 are faultless, so entire is the harmony between man's work 

 and Nature's. Built of the local stone, they are so like it in 

 color and texture that they seem to have grown as spontane- 

 ously as the Poplars in the plain. 



Below St. Vallier red disappears from the roof-tiles — only the 

 yellows and dull browns characteristic of the south are seen. 

 Two light suspension bridges sweep into sight, uniting Tain 

 on the east bank with Tournon on the west. The multitude 

 of bridges on the Rhone and the excellence of their construc- 

 tion amaze an American. They are old or new, stone or iron, 

 resting on piers or swung boldly across, but they are always 

 admirable of their kind, and in our practical land would be 

 thought far too costly for the humble towns they serve. Tain 

 lies against the foot of a hill once famous for the vines which 

 supplied the " Hermitage " wine, but k now ravaged by the 

 phylloxera. All along the Rhone, indeed, many of the slopes, 

 now so yellow and desolate looking, bore rich vineyards be- 

 fore the coming of the pest. Their beauty, however, has not 

 been hurt so much as their usefulness — there is nothing finer 

 to the eye under this brilliant sun and above these green low- 

 land fields than their naked, glowing yellow. 



After Tournon one may speak of mountains on the west 

 bank rather than of hills — the mountains of Ardeche, which 



keep close to the river for a long distance, sending out to it 

 long irregular spurs with deep gorges between. The next 

 important town on this side is St. Peray, famous for its spark- 

 ling white wine, and across the river is Valence, where Napo- 

 leon passed certain youthful years — one may read about them 

 in the delightful if untrustworthy chronicle which Dumas 

 called " Voyage dans le Midi de la France." This is the first 

 large town since Vienne, and it is admirably set high up on a hill- 

 side crowned by its ancient cathedral. Even from the boat 

 one may look across the plains beneath it and see the jagged 

 peaks of the Drome country rising against the pallid sky. At 

 every step now the landscape grows more southern in aspect 

 and grander in form ; and, did we know history as the trav- 

 eler should, it would perpetually grow in human interest too. 

 No land is richer in picturesque memories than this land of 

 Provence, which still keeps in its name a record of the first 

 conquest of the Romans in Gaul. It was near Valence that we 

 first saw the Cypress-trees, afterwards ubiquitous in church- 

 yard and burial ground. 



At Lavoulte, on the west shore, is an enormous castle, rising 

 high from the centre of the town, with great arcaded walls. No 

 one would guess to look at it that it is now occupied by the 

 employees of a neighboring factory. A great plantation of 

 Cypresses gives a touch of dark color to this splendid mediae- 

 val picture, and the hills which follow are covered with a 

 close, yellowish grass dotted with low, dusky shrubs. Poplars and 

 Willows still often fringe the bank where the hills do not come 

 close, and far off a wonderful blue mountain with a scalloped 

 outline seems to bar the course of the stream. Then on 

 the west we see, high up, a stretch of railroad borne by a tall 

 viaduct of pinkish stone, and next a high hill terraced to the 

 water's edge, partly by Nature, partly by man. The usually 

 yellow rock is streaked here with pale gray and black, as one 

 finds it so conspicuously much farther south at Avignon and 

 Vaucluse. In spite of the Cypresses and the Figs and the 

 golden rocks, however, there is a reminiscence of the north 

 in an occasional steep, wooded gorge that has a truly Rhenish 

 character. Looking southward at half-past one we saw the 

 finest of color effects. On all sides were distant mountains of 

 the most genuine blue. To the east was a nearer amphi- 

 theatre of hills, some vivid green, some pied green and yel- 

 low. The sky was blue and the clouds white, but whiter still 

 was the sun-struck river flowing between pure white beaches 

 fringed with low pale green Willows and filmy little Poplars. 

 Human interest was given by a ruined castle on the western 

 shore, and I thought I had never seen a landscape at once so 

 dignified and so lovely, or one where the beauties of the north 

 and the south were so harmoniously mingled. We had a 

 bright sun tempered by racing clouds all the afternoon, and 

 nothing could be fancied more enchanting than the varying 

 effects they produced, sometimes blending all tones into a low, 

 gentle harmony, sometimes bringing out the local color of 

 tree and rock and tower in the most emphatic way against 

 the azure heaven. 



After Le Pouzin, with its feudal ruins, and Baix, a little be- 

 yond, with a vast ruined abbey and an eleventh-centurv 

 church, the whitish towns all straggle along close to the water, 

 and the vast old seigneurial structures rise triumphantly above 

 them, with the hillside as a background. Here are beautiful 

 hills, covered with close vegetation, like a bright green carpet, 

 through which breaks the bluish rock, now in great shoulders 

 and now in long stretches of steeply inclined strata. Some- 

 times all the western shore shows the blue tone of this rock 

 and all the eastern the vivid green of cultivation. Again the 

 hills are gently rounded, with very wide valleys between, run- 

 ning back at right angles from the stream, scattered with tufts 

 of vegetation that do not conceal the bony structure beneath 

 it, and striped by mountain roads like snowy ribbons. 



After Rochemaure, where the basaltic rocks are quite pur- 

 ple, and the village was redder than usual, like many of the 

 slopes, we race under another bridge, and reach Viviers, built 

 on a narrow ledge, with a rock wall rising close and high 

 behind the tall Gothic nave of the cathedral and its octagonal 

 Romanesque tower. 



Beyond this the hills are very bare, only sparsely dotted 

 with close grayish shrubs and patches of pale grass. The gen- 

 eral effect was all light yellow, broken only by an occasional 

 fringe of green by the river ; and frequently the rock had 

 weathered to a sponge-like surface. At DonzSre came one of 

 the grandest scenes of the voyage, the river running through 

 a defile between close high mountains. At Bourg St. And^ol, 

 which we reached at half-past three, the hills had broken away 

 to the right and the silhouette of the long street stood out 

 sharply against the sky. First came the great white cathedral, 

 with its semi-circular apse, arcaded octagonal tower and low 



