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In Switzerland, at such a place as Luz, surrounded by numerous excursion points of great interest, guides would be abundant; here, however, there are only a few, and these are obliged to pursue the callings of agriculture and hunting to eke out a subsistence. So, when I demanded a guide, Madame Cazean said she would send to the fields for Jaques St Laur, who was the best guide to the Brêche.
Glaciers slope away on each side of the wall; but all along the front of the Brêche, on the French side, the glacier is scooped out into a deep fosse or cavity, by the action of the sun's rays pouring from the south through the opening. A wild world of mountains appeared to the south, those in the foreground covered with snow, and the more distant looming hazily over the plains of Saragossa.
It is customary for the few tourists who visit the Brêche to take two guides, for the purpose of crossing this glacier in safety; and I had cause to regret my ignorance of the practice, for although I trod most cautiously in the notches cut by my guide, yet my limbs were so weak, that when about half-way across, I stumbled, and for a moment gave myself up for lost.
In his history of Bavaria Aventin speaks of this monster. To Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, the legends attributed prodigious strength; and, dying in the valley of Roncesveaux, he broke his good sword "Durandal" by striking it against a rock, making a breach, which is stilled called the "Breche de Roland."
In the darkness of a small couloir underneath the knobs Peter was already ascending. The traverse of the Meije even for an experienced mountaineer is a long day's climb. They reached the summit of the Grand Pic in seven hours, descended into the Brèche Zsigmondy, climbed up the precipice on the further side of that gap, and reached the Pic Central by two o'clock in the afternoon.
According to that oracle, the Brêche owes its origin to Roland, the brave Paladin, who, mounted on his war-horse, in his hot pursuit of the Moors, clove with one blow of his trusty sword Durandal a passage through this mighty wall; and it must be admitted that the sides of the gap are so smooth, that it requires no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that they were fashioned in some such artistical manner.
Many cascades of rare beauty streamed down from the summit of the precipices, and we were continually crossing high and narrow bridges suspended over deep gulfs. The box luxuriates in this defile, springing in tree-like proportions from every ledge. Before reaching Gèdres, which is about half-way to Gavarnie, a fine, though tantalising view of the Brêche is obtained.
The Chevalier de Breche came to the Lugano Fair to buy some horses, and stopped a fortnight. I often met him at M. de R 's, for whose wife he had a great admiration, and I was sorry to see him go. I left Lugano myself a few days later, having made up my mind to winter in Turin, where I hoped to see some pleasant society.
The difficulty of ascending to the Brêche-de-Roland does not consist so much in its height though this is 9537 feet as in the nature of the ground to be surmounted; and after I had accomplished the feat, I no longer wondered that several persons had given in, and retraced their steps without attaining the Brêche.
At the Port de Venasquez and the Breche de Roland in the Western Pyrenees, or rather, to speak more truly, at spots in the close vicinity of these famous mountain entrances from France into Spain, one can make comparisons with Switzerland, Northern Italy, the Tyrol, and Ireland, which will not be injurious to the scenes then under view. But among the eastern mountains this can rarely be done.
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