United States or Greenland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
The people of these causses have a supernatural explanation for everything that they cannot account for by the light of reason and observation. They have their legend with regard to the Puit de Padirac, and it is as follows: St.
There is a world full of marvels under the causses of the Lot, the Aveyron, and the Lozère; but although much more will be known about it, a vast deal will remain for ever hidden from man. I will now return to my wayfaring across the Causse de Gramat in the early summer.
From the moment I quitted Boulogne to that of my departure from Calais, having made the round by way of Hesdin, Arras, Vitry-en-Artois, Douai, Lille, St. Omer, I no more encountered an English tourist than on the Causses of the Lozere a few years before. Many years later, on going over much of the same ground, with a halt at Etaples and Le Touquet, it was much the same.
No more at Nimes than at Avignon could we get an inkling of information as to the best means of reaching the Causses. We are but fairly off on our way to Le Vigan when we find a welcome change in the atmosphere. The air is cooler, the heavens show alternating cloud and sky; we feel able to breathe.
This awful charm which attaches to the enormous envelops the Causse of Mende; for its attributes are all of them pushed beyond the ordinary limit. Each of the four Causses is a waste; but the Causse of Mende is utterly bereft of men. Each is a high plateau; but this, I believe, the highest in feet, and certainly in impression.
The disastrous floods which occur with such appalling suddenness in the valleys of the Tarn and the Lot are due in a large measure to the nudity of the causses and the Cevennes, where these mountains turn northward and cross the Lozère to meet the Auvergne range.
But the reason is obvious. This limestone rock is by its nature disintegrating wherever it is exposed to the air and frost, and the foundations of the bastions which support the causses are being continually sapped by water which carries away the lime in solution and deposits a part of it elsewhere in the form of stalactite and stalagmite in the deep galleries where subterranean rivers often run, and which probably descend to the lowest part of the formation.
And now that I am no longer held spellbound by wizardry and genii, good or evil, and the first glow of enthusiasm is over, let me jot down a few hard facts for the reader's edification give in a few words the geological and general history of the Causses, if nothing more a bare outline to serve the tourist on his way.
The treeless condition of the Lozere chain and other once well-wooded regions was thus brought about. The Government is replanting many bare mountain-sides here, as in the Hautes Alpes, in order to improve the soil and climate. The barrenness of the Causses arises, as will be seen, from natural causes.
Word Of The Day