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Updated: July 20, 2025
Still more enticing now looked the billowy swell of gold and purple mountains, and the dark cliffs frowning over green valleys. To-day, too, the exhilarating conviction of fulfilment was added to that of looking forward. A second time I had reached the threshold of the long-dreamed-of region of marvels, at last really to cross it and enter in. I was on my way to the Causses at last!
At the cost of a great disappointment and a forfeiture of sixty francs, I determined to send the carriage back to Mende, and reach the Cantal by way of Rodez, in the Aveyron. The Pont de Garabit, like the Causses, all well, should be seen another year. Never shall I forget the amazement of my host.
My companion still persisted in the melancholy conviction that we should never get to the Causses, but I comforted her with the observation that if we did not get to the Causses, we should at all events get somewhere.
Wonderful the scenery of the Causses, still more wonderful the canon or gorge of the Tarn and the dolomite city of Montpellier-le-Vieux, so I now learned. There were difficulties in the way of seeing all these. I had been unexpectedly detained at Dijon.
By noon we were far away from Carcassonne, mounting the rocky slopes of the Cevennes amid a wild and noble landscape; the towering cliffs of the “Causses,” zebraed by zig-zag paths, lay below us, disclosing glimpses of fertile valley and vine-engarlanded plain. One asks one’s self in wonder why these enchanting regions are so unknown.
We seemed as far off the Causses as Christian from the heavenly Jerusalem when imprisoned in Castle Doubting, or as the Israelites from Canaan when in the wilderness of Zin. To reach St.
To the geologist it is fascinating ground, as, indeed, is the whole expanse of these causses of Guyenne and Upper Languedoc, so fissured and honeycombed a region of gorges and caverns, of subterranean lakes and rivers, of bottomless pits and mysterious streams.
As the face of the cliff is absolutely smooth above the opening, below and on both sides, completely devoid of anything like a ledge by which access could be obtained to it, the question presents itself to one for the third time, as at Boundoulaou and at Riou Ferrand, were these cliff-dwellers in the Causses like those in the Canon of Colorado, or has the demolition of ledges by weather on these limestone cliffs proceeded with great rapidity?"
Then the little life that animates it is hushed, and none from the outer world penetrates the fastnesses of the Causses. We drive on for a mile or two till we reach the summit of the plateau. Here, at a height of 2,952 feet above the sea-level, is a ruined chateau turned into a farmhouse, where we rest our horses a little and prepare to make tea.
So I engaged a carriage with sturdy horses and a trustworthy driver, and we set off for the plateau rising over against Mende in a south-easterly direction, the veritable threshold of the Causses. The drive from Mende to the plateau of Sauveterre is a curious experience.
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