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Updated: July 20, 2025
This effect of gloom, horror and sublimity is the result of geological conditions and the action of water, which together have produced many similar phenomena in the region of the causses, but in no other case, I believe, with such power in composing the picturesque.
Our road was a mere white thread winding loosely through a sinuous valley, and pulled taut as it rose nearer and nearer to the cold, high level of les Causses, the roof of that gnome-land where we had journeyed together yesterday. From snow-covered billows which should have been sprayed with mountain wild-flowers by now, a fierce blast pounced down on us like a swooping bird of prey.
In the vast caverns and grottoes of its walls, great quantities of flint implements and fossils, human and animal, have been discovered. A collection of these may be seen in the museum of Mende. The Causses, owing to their isolated position, may be said to have escaped a history. The great wave of religious warfare that devastated the Cevennes in the Middle Ages passed them by.
Eminie or Florac, the four relays of boatmen necessary for the descent of the Tarn, the doubtfulness of the accommodation at the different halting- places all these details had to be considered. Touring it through the Causses seemed, indeed, beset with difficulties.
The plough used upon these moors, on the causses of the Quercy, and in some other districts where the barrenness of the soil has kept the inhabitants for centuries imprisoned within the circle of their old routine, is one of the simplest that the world has known.
This quaint, old-fashioned, thoroughly French hotel may be replaced a few years hence by some huge fashionable barracks, in which there will be a perpetual come and go of tourists furnished with return tickets, including the Causses, the gorges of the Tarn and Montpellier le Vieux. An English pedestrian or cyclist or two have, I believe, found their way hither, but no lady tourists.
It seemed doubtful whether this year at least I should be able to realize my new-formed project, and penetrate into the solitudes of the Causses. However, I determined to try. My journey begins at the ancient town of Le Puy, former capital of the Vivarais, chef-lieu of the department of the Haute Loire, and, it is unnecessary to say, one of the most curious towns in the world.
Competent geologists, however, have noted a distinctive difference, namely: that, of all the rivers running in the fissures of the causses, the Tarn is the only one whose water does not penetrate to the beds of marl beneath the lias; and this is said to partly explain the great height and verticality of the cliffs, for when the water reaches the marl it saps the foundations of the rocks, and these, subsiding, send their dislocated masses rolling to the bottom of the gorge.
Little paths, laboriously cut about the sides of the Causses on either side, lead to the hanging vineyards, fields and orchards, so marvellously created on these airy heights, inaccessible fastnesses of Nature. And again and again the spectator is reminded of the axiom: 'The magic of property turns sands to gold. No other agency could have effected such miracles.
The situation of this town is one of the most remarkable. It is perched upon a lofty table of reddish rock of the same calcareous composition as that which prevails throughout the region of the causses. Its walls are so escarped that the topmost crags in places overhang the path that winds about their base far below.
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