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Updated: September 5, 2025
On the Causse de Larzac is Navacelles, in Gard; you walk over the arid plain with nothing in sight; and all at once are brought to a standstill. You find yourself at the edge of a crater 965 feet deep, the sides in most places precipitous, and the bottom is reached only by a zig-zag path. In the face of one of the cliffs is the grotto of Blandas, that has been occupied since remote ages.
It is a very general belief in the district that there was formerly a passage by which this cavern communicated with the causse; no trace of it, however, has been discovered. They also seized upon caverns formed by nature in the flanks of precipitous rocks, and fortified them with walls in which all the character of English structures can still be recognised.
At the extreme end, high up, to be reached only by a ladder of forty rungs, is another opening into a cave that runs far into the bowels of the Causse, to where the water falls in a cascade that now flows forth beneath the outer cave and supplies the village with drinking water and a place for washing linen.
Each of the Causses casts up above its plain fantastic heaps of rock consonant to the wild spirit of its isolation; but the Causse of Mende holds a kind of fortress a medley so like the ghost of a dead town that, even in full daylight, you expect the footsteps of men; and by night, as you go gently, in fear of waking the sleepers, you tread quite certainly among built houses and spires.
We can see their vine-trellised balconies and little gardens, and sometimes the pet cats run down to the water's edge to look at us. And all this time, from the beginning of our journey to the end, the river winds amid the great walls of the Causses to our left the spurs of the Causse Mejean; to our right those of Sauveterre.
Before us, a Titanic rampart, rises the grand Causse Mejean, now seen for the first time; around, fold upon fold, are the curved heights of Sauveterre, the nearer slopes bright green with sunny patches, the remoter purply black.
Suddenly, while I gazed, the sun breaking through the clouds made every yellow tree brighten like melting gold, and drew a voice of joy from all the dumb and solemn rocks. I leave the remnants of my feast for the foxes and magpies to quarrel over, and feel prepared to put forth a vigorous effort to reach the causse.
I next tried to gain some information as to schools, but here my informant was not very clear. Yes, he said, there was schooling in summer; whether lay or clerical, whether the children were taught the Catechism in their mother-tongue in other words, the patois of the Causse or in French, I could not learn. Do these wild-looking mountaineers exercise the electoral privilege?
Trop de soleil si le Causse est bas, trop de neige s'il est eleve, toujours et partout le vent, qui tord les bois chetifs, pour lac, une mare, pour riviere un ravin, de rocheuses prairies tondues par des moutons et des brebis a laine fine, des champs caillouteux d'orge, d'avoine, de pommes de terre, rarement de ble, voila les Causses!
This youthful head of the family possesses a large tract of Causse land, besides owning in great part what may prove in the future is, indeed, already proving a mine of wealth, an El Dorado, namely, the city of rocks, Montpellier-le-Vieux. We now set out, our host, whilst quite ready to chat, possessing all the dignity and reserve of the Lozerien mountaineer.
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