XVII.

SWITZERLAND—FRANCE.——◆——XVII.THE SPLUGEN PASS, SWITZERLAND.THE SPLUGEN PASS.Vetturiniare always hanging about the hotels at Bellaggio, to be engaged either by the landlords or directly by travellers, although their usual course is to refer the inquirer to the landlord, to arrange with whom no doubt they have an understanding. But one labours under the disadvantage, by hiring at Bellaggio, of not seeing either the carriage or the cattle which are to convey you over the mountain—perhaps, too, in a thunderstorm. Therefore, and because of the high charge at the hotels, I took, before travelling, the steamer to Colico at the head of the lake, and arranged for a carriage thence to be waiting the arrival of the boat on the following Monday; and an English gentleman and his wife agreed to accompany us.Monday proved a fine day, without too much sun, and we left Bellaggio by steamer at half-past ten with not a little regret. The sail up the lake, amongst the bold mountains with which it is enclosed, and by the nine little Italian villages on its margin, to visit which the steamer crosses from side to side, giving thus alternately the view from each side at different points, is very enjoyable, although itwas trying to think we were so soon to bid adieu to it all. At Colico the mountains are rugged and bare, and the lake gets very marshy, so that the locality is unhealthy. Here the carriage was ready for us, and it took about three hours’ drive to reach Chiavenna, the road winding for a long way by the Lagunes of the lake. Upon leaving Colico we were immediately among the mountains, the road gradually ascending. The drive was beautiful, but extremely dusty.Chiavenna is an Italian and old Roman village town about 1100 feet above the level of the sea, very picturesquely buried among the bluff high mountains which closely hem it in on every side, and upon the heights of some of which patches of snow were visible in many places. It lies at the foot of the Splugen Pass, and on the river Maira, which, crossed by a good stone bridge, pours a torrent of water down from the snowy heights. We had time, both before dinner and after, to stroll about and see the little that was to be seen. Chiavenna is celebrated for its beer, and we thought it our duty to try it as the wine of the country, expecting to get it in perfection, but found it very flat. We had had it better at Bellaggio.Soon after seven o’clock the following morning, we left the hotel, and had three hours of a most laborious ascent to Campo Dolcino, only eight miles distant. The three horses with which we started, afterwards supplemented by a fourth, toiled up innumerable zigzags, getting higher and higher at every turn, but making very little onward progress; so that generally some of us would get out of the carriage, and by climbing up at the end of one zigzag to the end of the next, meet its slow arrival there. The distant views as we proceeded were fine, and improved the higher we mounted; while in the narrow valley beneath,—farther and farther beneath as we got higher and higher,—the river was seenwending its foamy course, augmented at little intervals by every fresh rivulet which rushed to embrace it from the lovely waterfalls descending in long, silver-grey, horsetail streams from the mountains opposite, in bright white contrast with the brown rocks over which they dashed and fell. There is not much to be seen at Campo Dolcino. It is a small village in a bleak-looking district; but, stopping for three hours to rest the horses, look about, and obtain lunch at the little inn, we proceeded on our way up the pass. Soon afterwards we reached the Madesimo waterfall, which is near to the road; and all turned out to see this famous cascade from a small stone gallery above it, whence the water is observed rolling over and tumbling and sinking in one grand heap 700 feet down, scattering, by the mere force of the descent, into a cloud of spray below. Little by little we continued ascending, passing in the way through three long tunnels (one of them 1530 feet in length), built to protect from the avalanches, which at certain seasons would otherwise bury the road; and at last we reached the region of perpetual snow, where the inaccessible Alpine roses bloom, and amidst blue gentians springing from the banks on the roadside. Mile after mile we passed along the road cut through the snow, not pure or clean, standing consolidated on each side, like the Red Sea when the Israelites passed over its channel and the waters were divided and became ‘a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left;’ very possibly by the action of frost upon the sea as it fled from the pressure of the fierce east wind which made the sea dry land. But though there was no fear of our experiencing the fate of Pharaoh’s host, our walls were slowly melting away in little trickling streamlets at every part, under the influence of the hot sun, no doubt to be made good again by a snowstorm from the next moisture in the air. As we approached the top of the pass, the scene became wild and dreary. Immense fields of snowlay spread out in a melting condition, sending down innumerable streams, all converging on the river which descends to Chiavenna, and by whose side, though generally at a great elevation above, our road had all along lain, the large roaring torrent at Chiavenna being here but a small turbid stream. But the cold-looking, slushy snow-field afforded an admirable notion of how these rivers are fed.We reached the summit, which is 6945 feet high, and is surrounded by lofty mountains, one of them 9925 feet, and another 10,748 feet high, covered with their white mantle, and, by an optical illusion, looking nearer and lower than they really were. The feeling (perhaps arising out of our having been so lately in the midst of all that was suggestive of heat) was strange upon finding ourselves in the vicinity of such cold peaks, and very much as if we had been suddenly tumbled into the arctic regions—desolate, barren, impassable retreats for man, and yet not altogether so; for the boundary line between Switzerland and Italy lies at the top of the pass, and not far below this great altitude the Italiandouanestation has been built. One would imagine the position hardly tenable by the poor custom-house men in winter months. The traveller into Switzerland, however, is not troubled by anydouanier.Here two of the horses were liberated, and dashing down with the remaining two along many zigzags, we gradually came in sight of the village of Splugen, 2200 feet below, and about five miles distant from the summit, passing by on the way a river which gradually got larger and larger, and proved to be the source, or one of the sources, of the Rhine. We arrived about half-past five, making it a journey of fully ten hours to traverse a distance, between Chiavenna and Splugen, at least as the crow flies, of not more than sixteen miles.SWITZERLAND.We remained in Switzerland from the 19th June to the 11th September, nearly three months; and as I wish to notice our movements in it, for the most part in well-beaten paths, merely by way of connection, I shall do so very briefly. We had decided to spend another winter in the Riviera, and with a view to this to pass the remainder of the summer in Switzerland, and thereafter cross over France to Pau and Biarritz, to spend there the period intervening, till it should be time to move onwards to Mentone.The Swiss village of Splugen has a southern exposure, and lies very picturesquely with its church on the slope and top of a little eminence, at an altitude of 4757 feet above the sea, overlooking a valley out of which lofty mountains raise their heads, one of them to the north behind the village itself. Pine forests are planted on the slopes, affording, no doubt, a little shelter from the cold north winds. Like all such places, it looks best at a little distance; and, approaching it from the opposite hill, it seemed a pretty village of wooden houses, built in the Swiss chalet style, and therefore quite a change from the Italian houses to which our eyes had been for the last few months accustomed. The accommodation was primitive. We were lodged in a large wooden hotel. The temperature, too, and the aspect of everything was changed. We had bidden adieu to the heat of Italy, and found it much colder upon the northern side of the mountains. This produced an accident which was annoying to me, and created a good deal of after trouble, as in winding up my watch at night the chain gave way, I presume, owing to the jump from great heat to frosty cold to which it had been subjected. The attempt I afterwards made in Switzerland to get it repaired only made matters worse, and the ultimaterepair at home costly. One would almost require to carry a spare watch in travelling among these localities. We had time to see a little of Splugen in the evening. The fields were literally covered with bright flowers, tempting us to pluck many handfuls. Although standing so high, the valley does not give one the impression of its great elevation.Before eight o’clock next morning, we started for Coire. Down and down we drove by the banks of the roaring and foaming Rhine, the road and river being beautifully wooded. The drive was most charming. At every mile the river got larger, while the mountains reared their heads above, to heights varying from 8,000 to 11,000 feet. In about two hours’ time we reached the Via Mala, where the mountains or rocks converge, and the river dashes far below, in some places nearly hidden by the pines thickly set upon the precipitous banks, wherever they can obtain a footing. At one time the pass may have been a dangerous one; but now, although it be still impressive, the road is good, and there is nothing to fear, notwithstanding the cliffs rise perpendicularly to a great height, higher even than they appear to do. Yet, were a mass of rock to loosen and fall, and block up the road or tear it away, it would be decidedly awkward for persons passing. The gorge, at which you look straight up and straight down, is well seen from a bridge, where a man was ready to plump a big stone into the torrent far down in the depths below. Everybody walks through the pass; the most indifferent to grand effects could hardly sit still in his carriage. I suppose it is possible to get to some safe place near the water, as photographs have been taken looking up to the bridge; and so seen, it appears perched high above, over steep and even impending rocks, which, save for a tree here and there, are smooth and bare, and form a narrow, ugly, perilous cleft, through which the river flows at the bottom.Emerging from the pass, and just out of it, we reached the clean and tidy but shadeless village of Thusis, which lay basking in the hot sun, though not so hot as we had had it at Lake Como. There is a good hotel here, but one might well dispense in such places with men-waiters, black coats, and white ties. From the garden of the hotel, an excellent view is had of the entrance to the pass. Here we rested two and a half hours, and then drove on to Coire by the banks of the Rhine, looking up to the lofty mountains with their snowy tops, and across a well-wooded landscape. At Coire there is a railway to Zurich, by which we had intended to proceed; but, arranging with the driver, he took us on to Ragatz, about two hours farther, where we arrived at half-past five, the last half hour being in a thunderstorm. It had been down hill the whole way since we left Splugen in the morning, and the horses, notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding day, went briskly along, and apparently returned next morning; for it is not the habit of the owners of these Swiss conveyances, if they can help it, to give their horses a day’s rest after excessive fatigue. We enjoyed our three days’ drive amazingly, through scenery alternately grand, wild and desolate, or beautiful and romantic. A more pleasant excursion could not be planned; but to be enjoyed, it requires to be taken in the way we did. One has not the same freedom in travelling by diligence, and besides it goes on night and day, and passes through the best of the scenery in the dark.Ragatz lies a little beyond the range of the usual tourists’ track, and we had not ourselves visited it before. It is very charmingly situated, at the entrance of the Gorge of Pfäffers, in a valley up from that of the Rhine flow, and hemmed in by high, bold mountains, which, from the Ragatz side, look like immense walls, on whose higher slopes some patches of snow were then visible. The village is small and spotlessly clean, externally at least, and theHotel Quellenhoff, a large new comfortable house, has grounds attached to it which afford pleasant retreats and walks. It is, however, a somewhat noisy establishment, being one of those Continental watering-places where a band of music, paid for by a daily tax on each visitor, plays morning and night to the accompaniment of out-door drinking. We found the house full of Germans, and having one or two distinguished visitors, among whom were the King of Saxony and Count Arnim. In the public breakfast room we found one morning four Germans smoking at a table—a disgusting piece of rudeness which is sometimes experienced in Switzerland. In the grounds there are a kursaal, where the band plays, a newsroom, and a book-seller’s stall—all under one roof; and in another neat range of buildings, shops for the sale of Swiss and other articles, a fountain flowing with Pfäffers water, and baths of the same.The walk up the Pfäffers Gorge is very interesting. Crossing a rustic wooden bridge over a deep rapid torrent, not very wide, however, the road at once begins to lead into a confined valley, the rocks or hills on either side rising steeply, and leaving room only for the river and the road by its side, with an occasional widening. It is well wooded all along, the pine trees affording shelter to some extent from the sun when it penetrates, as it does in certain positions. The seclusion is alluring, but it is not altogether free from danger. At one place my daughter ran up a bank, and came flying back to say that she had found a snake moving in the grass at her feet. An older person, less observant, would in all likelihood have trod upon it.[44]As we proceeded, the mountains seemed to rise higher and higher overhead; and, about two and a half miles fromRagatz, the rocks approach still closer, and a large hotel, seemingly very much out of place, greets the eye. Here tickets are procured for entrance to the gorge itself. It is effected through the hotel to a wooden gallery resting on a ledge cut out of the rock, which impends at a by no means assuring acute angle immediately overhead, and even some way beyond the shaky platform. Looking down the abyss, the water is seen below flowing still and deep and fast through the narrow cleft; and this cleft rises high, as we can see the rocks appearing to all but touch above, while one side inclines to the other with an apparent appalling desire to embrace. It looks as if an earthquake had split up the rock, and as if another shock might at once and for ever close it up again. It is a damp, gloomy sort of cavern, till one reaches the part where the hot spring escapes from the rocks, one half of it flowing into the river in a huge spout, and the remainder being carried in a long pipe to Ragatz to supply the baths there. We entered by a door into a cave in the rock, a distance of probably 50 or 60 feet, pitch dark, hot, and vaporous, where we had given us a little of the hot water to drink, not disagreeable to the taste. Afraid of chill, we left in time to get back to Ragatz ere the road should be in shade.We should have stayed at Ragatz with pleasure for at least a week, but, expecting letters at Lucerne, remained only three nights. Leaving the hotel at half-past eight, we had a tedious journey, as we did not arrive at Lucerne (only about 76 miles distant by rail) till four o’clock, the railway passing through a very pretty country, well wooded and watered, stopping at every station by the way, and for an hour at the town of Zurich. Leaving in sunshine, we were again unfortunate enough to arrive at Lucerne in heavy rain, which, with previous falls, had caused the lake to overflow its banks.We spent three nights at Lucerne, and had rain great part of the time. We were fortunate, however, to obtain, on the Tuesday, a charming sunny day to cross the lake and proceed by diligence to Interlachen by the Brunig Pass. The steamboat left the quay at Lucerne at 10.10 for Alpnacht, and we did not get to Interlachen till about 8p.m., having had, however, two long halts by the way to enable the passengers to dine or obtain refreshment and to rest the horses. We had the interior of the diligence to ourselves, and, though objecting at first to the closeness, it afforded cover from the sun, then in full power. The other passengers were accommodated in other and open carriages. The sail and drive are both beautiful; the sunset upon the Jungfrau awaiting our arrival was one of the finest we enjoyed while at Interlachen, tinting the snow with a shining glow of bright red light, which gradually left the lower parts till the shade ascended to the summit; and then the whole mountain was as if dead, but it shortly after returned to life in the like ruddy hue of the after-glow,—a beautiful effect we did not often afterwards witness.We had several times visited Interlachen before. It was at this time very empty. We had arrived in the German season, and there were few but Germans there. The English do not generally begin to come to Switzerland until the middle or end of July, when Interlachen becomes crowded, and it is difficult to secure good accommodation. We found little change in the place since we were last there (five years previously), but the prices of the Swiss carvings on wood exhibited in the shops had risen very considerably.Interlachen, with which we had many associations, is a charming spot at which to remain for some time, and I arranged for my family to stay at the Jungfrau Hotelen pension, which they did for above two months, and duringpart of this time I went home on a flying visit. It is an admirable centre for excursions, while the place itself is, especially in the height of the season, exceedingly attractive. The hotels are for the most part situated on the north side of the high road conducting in one direction to Thun and Berne, and in the other to Brienz, Meyringen, and Lucerne, always full of life. Though the hotels are large, they retreat from the road, and have not the towny look which large hotels generally have. The trees, and the flowers, and the pretty chalets, and the wood-carving shops, and the background of mountains—all confer a rustic look, as seen from the highway, which is greatly enhanced by the large open field so properly kept open upon the south side of the road, lined by fine old trees, between which one catches sight of the picturesque church and the equally picturesque houses at some distance, and behind them the ranges of green mountains and the conical tree-covered hill called the Jungfraublick; but beyond all, the grand view of the majestic snow-clad Jungfrau itself, fifteen miles off, seen at the termination of the magnificent vista afforded by the gap in the mountains which lie between it and Interlachen; by a road through which Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, the Wengern Alp, and the Murren are reached—all glorious excursions.Then there are the Lakes of Thun and Brienz, both affording delightful steamboat trips, and in the locality round about innumerable walks. However, like most places among the mountains, great changes in the weather often take place, and frequent thunderstorms with drenching rain, intermingled with glowing hot days, are experienced. We had a fair share of both.When I thought to make a run to Scotland, I found that leaving by a train to Berne at 9.50A.M., and proceeding by Neufchatel and Dijon, I could get to Paris by 5.35 next morning, stopping two hours by the way at Berne.On the return journey, leaving Paris at 7.40 evening, I did not get to Interlachen till near dinner-time next day, being compelled to spend four hours again at Berne. These stoppages are annoying to those who have been at Berne before, and, as a train leaves just immediately antecedent to the arrival of the train from the north, they might at least in that case easily be avoided. But probably the intention is to compel a short stay at Berne.We had heard Chateau d’Œx highly spoken of as a pleasant, cool retreat, where we might be invigorated by Highland breezes for the coming winter.Having engaged a carriage for this rather long drive, we left Interlachen on 28th August about 7.30A.M., and had a splendid but cruelly hot day. The distance, I should imagine, might possibly be fifty miles, if so much; for certainly we did not go on an average at a greater speed than five miles per hour,—considerable part of the way being indeed just crawling up the hill. After leaving Interlachen by the south bank of Lake Thun, we soon got into the shade of the hill, and it was chilly, causing all wraps to be in requisition. Reaching high ground over Spiez, we took our last view of Interlachen in the distance, with the smoke of morning fires hanging over it. From this point the road lay in a long valley between two ranges of hills, which, after those we had been so long looking upon, did not appear high. Everything was now in bright sunshine, and the valley and the slopes were so verdant and luxuriant as to make the drive lovely, though scarcely, except at one or two parts, could it be called grand. We passed many little villages, all looking so sleepy in the sun, but evidently prosperous. Soon after twelve we stopped at the little town of Boltigen, to rest the horses for two hours and dine at the hotel with the sign, life-size, of the gilded bear, kept by a pleasant young woman, who strove to make us comfortable. The road after Boltigen was still up hill till wereached a point whence descent is made to Sarnen, the centre of the famous Gruyère cheese district, and soon after we came in sight of Chateau d’Œx, with its picturesque church, formerly a castle, on the top of an isolated conical hill, from which the small town takes its name. This chateau or church at once arrests the eye, and gives character to the place; but the town itself lies at the foot of the eminence, and is 3260 feet above the sea. Bold mountains, well wooded, rise on every side, and are probably, some of them, 5000 or 6000 feet high—all contributing to fill a considerable river in the valley a good way below. There are several hotels in the town, and chalet pensions on the slopes above, the pension in all being amazingly moderate, somewhat upon the scale which formerly prevailed throughout Switzerland. The Hotel Berthod, at which we stopped, accommodates about eighty people, and is built of wood, the appointments being somewhat rough, though clean. The season is short, but the hotel is for part of the time full. As it is so much out of the beaten track, the society is probably more select than it sometimes is in other parts of Switzerland. For the active, there are abundance of nice walks in the immediate neighbourhood. The air, though in day-time hot, was invigorating; but as we were getting near the end of the season, it had a tendency at night at this elevation to get cold. We therefore only spent eight days there, though very pleasantly.On leaving Chateau d’Œx, we took the diligence to the pretty large town of Aigle, and to reach it had slowly to ascend the mountains to an altitude of between 5000 and 6000 feet. It was a most charming ride or walk, and I got out and walked several miles ahead of the lumbering conveyance. The descent from the summit of the pass continues to Sepey, a village where we halted for lunch, and said to be another charming centre, with pension upon the same moderate scale as we had just experienced.The views here were very fine, but the place itself did not strike me as so desirable as Chateau d’Œx, although it has the advantage of being more accessible. From Sepey we descended to Aigle, where there is a large hotel or hydropathic establishment just out of the town. The diligence deposited us at the railway station nearly an hour previous to the train to Montreux on the Lake of Geneva being due.From its comparatively sheltered situation, Montreux is much frequented during winter months, and it is a little warmer than Geneva or Lausanne; but during part of the winter the temperature of Montreux is, I believe, lower than that of London and Edinburgh, so that possibly it may therefore not be suitable as a winter resort for those having delicate constitutions. The picturesque and interesting Castle of Chillon lies about two miles off, nearer the upper end of the lake. Our bedroom windows commanded the view of the lake, together with the Dent du Midi in the distance, so that the prospect was always pleasing. Montreux is rather too much of a town, and the walls and houses shut out almost completely the sight of the lake from the road or street. The adjoining town of Clarens, nearly united to it, appears to be, on the whole, nicer for summer residence.After being at Montreux for a few days, we left by the steamboat, and had a lovely sail to Geneva, where, in the afternoon, just before dinner, we obtained a good glimpse of Mont Blanc in the distance unveiled. Besting one night, we proceeded to Lyons by train next day, and were once more in France.XVIII.BIARRITZ.I hadthought it might have been possible to arrange for proceeding across country from Lyons to Biarritz by a westerly line, say by Clermont, instead of by the Mediterranean line, which we had already travelled. But although there are lines in that direction, it seemed extremely difficult to make them fit in so that we could, upon stopping at any place, obtain next day a train at a suitable hour for prosecuting the journey. Not only so, but being quite out of the ordinary beat of tourists, and especially of English tourists, one could not possibly rely on getting such hotel accommodation by the way as is desirable and is procurable on the beaten tracks. I therefore gave up this thought, though not till after some laborious studies of theLivret Chaix, and after consulting Cook’s agent at Geneva, who, I found, did not issue tickets towards Biarritz. There seemed no alternative, therefore, but to go by the Chemin de Fer du Midi, the Paris and Marseilles Railway. We had hoped, it being the 12th September, to have seen the Rhone in all its summer beauty, but were disappointed. The day was dull and misty when we started, and soon after it began to rain; so that we could see little, and everything looked dismal, whereas in summer sunshine the prospect is no doubt very lovely. Before we reached Avignon (in six hoursten minutes) the rain ceased. We stopped a night there (see p. 135), and had fortunately good weather. Next afternoon brought us to Nismes, two hours distant from Avignon by rail; and after another night in our old quarters there, and seeing places this time in sunshine instead of shrouded by the mistral, which prevailed during our visit in the previous year, we left at mid-day for Toulouse, arriving at this large city about eleven o’clock at night. There is not another train by which we could have proceeded from Nismes to Toulouse during day, nor is there any place nearer Toulouse where it is desirable to stop except Montpellier; but Montpellier is only an hour distant from Nismes, and better adapted, therefore, for stoppage coming from Toulouse on the return journey, and on our return journey we accordingly spent a night there. Cette, where we changed carriages and were long detained for no apparent good reason, and where there are extensive salines or manufactories of salt, lies very low and is marshy. It is therefore considered a most unhealthy spot, not to be thought of for sleeping at. The journey to Cette is not particularly interesting. Beyond it to Toulouse the country is more inviting. The distance is about 136 miles, and the train most tiresomely stopped several minutes at every little station, twenty-nine or thirty in all, with an extra halt at Narbonne, amounting to twenty minutes, where a hasty though acceptable dinner waited the arrival of the train. The more interesting part of the road was passed in the dark.We had been recommended by fellow-passengers to the Hotel Sacaron at Toulouse, and found it remarkably comfortable; but to all appearance it was then out of season, as we seemed to be the only guests, except it might be our old friends the mosquitoes, who, paying nothing but penalties, were unceasing in their attentions, and from whom we might have suffered more than we did had we not beenwell protected by the snowy-white mosquito curtains. Our daughter, however, had a long watch, and discovered in the morning her forehead was jewelled in thirty-two holes.Leaving next morning for Pau by the 11 o’clock train, we had no opportunity of getting more than a glimpse at this important provincial town. The houses are large, and the streets—such of them as we saw—are wide. The railway station is handsome and tidy. We arrived at Pau about 5p.m., by a quick or express train, having only stopped at eleven out of thirty-four stations. Notwithstanding it took us six hours to go little more than 130 miles, being at the rate of 22 miles per hour. However, it was an improvement upon the previous day’s travelling. The only other trains by which we could have gone from Toulouse to Pau were two,—one which left at midnight, getting in at 10 o’clock next morning; and another which left at 5.20A.M., getting to Pau at half-past 1. I mention these facts just to show that every consideration is not paid here, and elsewhere (and it is better here than elsewhere) on French lines, to the convenience of travellers. Apart from the disagreeableness of starting at such inhuman hours, to travel by the midnight train would be to miss for great part of the way the view of the most interesting scenery along the railway route, which skirts the Pyrenees.These grand mountains we saw now for the first time. Near to Lourdes the railway approaches them closely, and the church of Lourdes, to which it has been customary of recent years to make pilgrimages, is not far from the railway. It rises loftily from the ground far below. A crowd of pilgrims was marching towards its supposed miraculous shrines. The scenery about Lourdes is very picturesque, and the railway to Pau for a great part of the way runs parallel to and overlooks a mountain river, apparently the Adour, very much resembling at this part such rivers as the Garry in Perthshire: a clear-flowing stream, descendingthrough a rocky bed, with many a rushing fall or rapid between converging rocks.We arrived at Pau on the Saturday afternoon, and left it on the following Tuesday morning—just having time to rest. I reserve, therefore, any observations regarding Pau till our return journey, when we spent a longer time there. The railway ride (between sixty and seventy miles) from Pau to Bayonne is very beautiful, part of the way being by the banks of the Adour, which, as it approaches Bayonne, becomes wide, and is, indeed, navigable for forty miles up. We were advised to book to Bayonne, and hire thence to Biarritz; but I found the fares asked for the drive so excessive, occasioned, as we afterwards learnt, by races being then held at Bayonne, that we took the train just about to start on to Biarritz. The station La Negresse proved, however, to be two miles out of Biarritz, and only one carriage was waiting disengaged. For this short distance I was charged 8 francs; certainly exorbitant, but during the season at Biarritz everything is very high, and the races had then taken off the usual supply of vehicles, so that we were at the mercy of the gorgeously-attired coachman, who drove us in by a pretty rural road between trees and hedges. In all likelihood he had driven a party to join the train we had just left, so that we may have been indebted even to this chance for finding any conveyance waiting. I do not know why the railway company laid their line so far away from the town, unless it was that they did not appreciate the importance of the station. As an attempt to remedy the evil, a short line intended to connect Bayonne specially with Biarritz has been made; but though the Biarritz terminus is tolerably near the centre of the town, the other terminus does not enter Bayonne, and is a long way from the general railway terminus. It may be useful for excursionists, but it is useless for other traffic, and I should hardly think it would pay.We had been recommended to the Hotel de Paris, near the rocks, and, with some difficulty, the town being then very full, got accommodation in it; rough enough at the first, but after two nights we obtained a change to first-floor rooms, fairly good. The hotel is situated in a public square planted with trees, the north end being open, overlooking the sea. Here the band played every evening, Sunday included, from half-past 8 till 10 o’clock during the season, making our rooms for the time very noisy; but as our windows looked right down upon the seated enclosure, brightly lighted up with numerous lamps, it was a little variety and divertisement to watch the gay crowd with whom it was at first filled, who paid for admission half a franc each. The charges in the hotels and for lodgings at Biarritz are said to be, during the summer season, immoderately high, and to cost in some cases as much as £5 per day. I cannot help thinking, however, that there must be a little exaggeration in these statements, or some extravagance on the part of the visitor so charged. We were ourselves charged at no excessive rate. The Angleterre and Grand Hotels, with superior arrangements, I believe, charged a good deal more. But there are other and more moderate hotels, such as the Hotel de France and the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, which, however, are both in the town itself, and not so well situated as those I have already named.We remained at Biarritz till 13th October, nearly four weeks, and enjoyed it very much, although for a considerable part of the time, particularly during the earlier part, east and north-east winds, said to be unusual, prevailed, rendering the place for the time being cold, and giving us a taste of what winter weather is there, a visitor informing us that he had not found it colder in winter. If, however, it be no colder on winter days than what we did experience, it could hardly be described as trying for persons in good,strong health; but the prevailing winds are west and south-west, both mild and salubrious, though sometimes the south wind blows, and brings with it, in the hot months, the parching heat of the sirocco.Biarritz is a place of very recent growth. Formerly nobody but English people, for the sake of the bathing it afforded, frequented it. Afterwards the civil war of succession in Spain brought many of the best Spanish families to live in it as a frontier town and among others the Countess de Montijo and her two daughters, one of whom became the wife of NapoleonIII.Her fondness for the place induced the Emperor to build the Villa Eugenie as a marine residence, and so, practically, made this delightful watering-place.There may be said to be two bays, one north and one south; the first lying between the lighthouse and the pier, and the second upon the Basque beach. In the centre of the north bay the Villa Eugenie reposes on a rocky eminence, 40 or 50 feet above the shore to the east of the town, and is seen from many points. East and west of it, the sloping beach, a fine sandy one, stretches away on the right hand to the steep rocks, about 70 feet high, under the lighthouse, resting on a jutting promontory forming the eastern enclosing arm, to the rocks on the west, among which, looking down the small harbour, may be seen the town lying above and back from them. Westward from the Villa Eugenie, perhaps about half a mile distant, an imposing range of lofty hotels—the Grand Hotel and the Angleterre, with the Casino between them, all towering many storeys high—meets the view, and beyond them we see the spire of a large town church; and then still beyond, outward to the sea, running to a point, a range of high rocks or small hills which enclose the bay on the west. Some of the hilly rocks are surmounted by houses, and one prominent one by a semaphore or signal station. The rocks afford some shelter to the beach from the fury of the waves, but are themselves gradually giving way. No doubt at one time they formed a strong natural breakwater and better barrier, and extended well out into the ocean; but year by year they are succumbing to the force of the Atlantic and the storms which visit the Bay of Biscay.ill421PORT-VIEUX BATHING ESTABLISHMENT,BIARRITZ.In the centre of the north bay, and to the westward of the Villa Eugenie, a short promenade has been formed, on or adjoining which the great bathing establishment has been erected, the beach here being called the Grande Plage, in contradistinction to the other beaches. From the west end of it the road winds up below the Casino and past the Angleterre, and along by the top of the rocks overlooking the harbour, and through a tunnel under one of the hills to what was intended to be a breakwater, but is now a sort of pier, at which no vessels ever lie, becoming, therefore, only a place people stroll to in moderately calm weather, to watch the waves dashing upon and over the rocks in wild beauty. In rough weather no one dare venture. From this pier the road winds back towards the town and southward round the Port-Vieux, and through a gap in the rocks to the sandy Basque beach, which extends away southward for miles, the rocks rising perpendicularly from it, perhaps 80 feet high, the curve of the rocks forming the south bay. From any of the heights about the Port-Vieux or the Basque, one can see along the coast 20 miles to the entrance of the Bidassoa (the boundary there between France and Spain), and then on from that to the coast-line of Spanish mountains (offering a strong barrier against the aggression of the sea) for at least 40 miles farther, some even saying, though I should doubt it, seen 100 miles altogether. Southward the range of the Pyrenees bounds the horizon, the eye being caught by the Trois Couronnes or three-cornered or peaked mountain, rising boldly as commander of this battalion of the great guardian mountain chain.The town of Biarritz bears every mark of its rapid construction. The streets are very irregular, the houses having been placed just any way and according to any plan, at the mere caprice of the builders. One leading street, lined by trees, passes through it to the Port-Vieux. In the centre of the town this widens to what may be called a large square or place, whence the omnibuses or diligences start, and where carriages can be had for hire. The Hotel de Ville has been built at one end of this place, which, in the height of the season, must be full of life. The principal shops are in its neighbourhood, some of them exhibiting in their windows articles of lace worn by the Spanish ladies, and Spanish shawls, sword-sticks, stilettoes, as well as other things of a more agreeable use. Itinerant vendors, too, of Spanish goods are always going about during the season, sometimes gaily dressed in a sort of showy fancy Spanish costume; but when the summer season is over, they migrate to Pau, and even to Cannes, Mentone, and other winter-season places, where we frequently saw the same men and women so occupied we had previously noticed at Biarritz. Some shopkeepers from Nice open establishments during the season at Biarritz, and close them when it is over. Besides many good shops, there is a regular market, though of small size. The town covers a considerable extent of ground, and new houses are being constantly built. The ordinary population now exceeds 4000. The English church had been found too small for its occupants, and a large new one was, while we were there, in course of completion.Many nice-looking villas have been planted on the outskirts of the town, particularly upon and in the direction of the road to Bayonne. The heights above the Basque beach are likewise studded by various distinctive houses; and about a mile from town, isolated from everything about, there is a house belonging to Lord Ernest Bruce, built in the Moorish style with a glass dome, and surrounded by a garden.The French and Spanish form the bulk of the visitors during August and September, these months constituting,par excellence, what is called the season, while during the winter months the English take possession. In the winter months the hotel charges undergo great modification, andpensioncan then be had in some of the best hotels at 7 francs per day.[45]It is noteworthy thatpensionat Biarritz and Pau, and elsewhere in the south of France, includes wine. House accommodation, too, in the winter months is correspondingly cheap. The best months for enjoying Biarritz, we were informed, are the months of April and May, when the heat is sufficient but not oppressive. The month of July is sometimes unbearably hot. A family who had been there during July told us that they could hardly venture out in that month till late in the evening; and if the sirocco prevailed, they were even obliged to close the windows, the hot sand percolating through every crevice. The band of music, I understood, plays only during the two months of the season, and removes at its close, when the enclosure is dismantled.But the great attractions of Biarritz consist in its beach, its rocks, its grand seas, and in its capacities for good bathing. We were never fortunate enough to witness a storm in the bay, although there was occasionally enough of swell upon the water to show what a storm could be. Our landlord, speaking of the appearance of a storm on the ocean, described it as ‘terreeble;’ and no doubt it is, and not very safe, too, as sometimes people are washed away by an unexpected dash and sweep of the ocean. But a standing evidence of the force of the waves is exhibited by the remains or ruins of the breakwater, begun in view of here affording a port of refuge and pier. Regarding this scheme Count Russell says (p. 13):—‘NapoleonIII.suggested it, meaning to connect by a breakwater several of the detached rocks scattered on the north-western side of the Porte Vieux, and thus to form a small harbour, only open to the north. A clever engineer, M. Palaà, was entrusted with this almost superhuman undertaking, but the only result has been, after years of labour and more than one sacrifice of life, to accumulate a shapeless and useless mass of ruins along the intended harbour. The breakwater (or what is left of it) was built with concrete; artificial square blocks weighing 36 tons (some of them 48) were sunk by hundreds at random and just where they liked to fall! But the tremendous surf has been playing with them as if they were pebbles, and in 1868 one of them was carried right over the pier (22 feet above low-water mark) like a toy or a feather! For these and for financial reasons the works are now suspended. They have already cost £120,000, and all to no purpose. In fact, nothing human can resist such a sea as the Sea of Biscay, except, perhaps, at St. Jean de Luz, where nature has half made a harbour.’The sea is by far too treacherous and violent to make boating safe, and we seldom, if ever, saw pleasure-boats out, although they were lying in the harbour.Some isolated rocks stand out in the water, separated from the mainland, with which, I fancy, they have at one time been connected. They are rough, and rugged, and bare, and honeycombed, and even, occasionally, altogether perforated by the water; bearing witness in their haggard condition to the violence of the waves by which they are continually assailed, undermined, broken up, and thrown down. It is, indeed, very beautiful to see, during a swell, the water lashing the rocks and dashing over in clouds of white spray, or sometimes through the perforations or over and down the rocks in streams of white foam. During the day we used to stand and observe the swell surging into the large cavities formed by continual action, and tossed out again, as if the rocks had said with Phineas, ‘Friend, thee isn’t wanted here;’ while the whole water around, nothing daunted, was boiling and excited, dancing and glancing and sparkling in the sun as if in glee, or in the spirit of fun and mischief. This, too, in calm weather. But at night we used to hear the boom of the waves as they tumbled into these caverns and were as promptly turned out again, as if it had been guns firing—forwhich, indeed, at first we were inclined to mistake the sound.Unlike the Mediterranean Sea, the tide has the usual ebb and flow of the Atlantic, consequently not only is the beach more interesting, but the town is kept more healthy. The sands afford the usual occupation and delight to children, but shells and seaweed are rare. A good many jelly-fish are thrown up; some gelatinous animals of a large size perhaps were octopi. We used often to sit by the beach and watch the sea, especially under the Basque Rocks, where the waves, with the slightest breath of wind, would come charging gallantly in, high and crested, and turn gracefully over in long lines when they neared the shore. Over the rocks the inhabitants would seem to have the odious habit of running their drains or dirty water, both unsightly to the eye and leaving disagreeable black pools below. This surely might be remedied. It does create a drawback to this most enjoyable beach. Equally objectionable, if not more so, is the practice, so offensive at Cannes, of putting the outlets of the town drains close to each of the bathing-places. The tide, no doubt, is such at Biarritz as to remove the stuff carried down, but there could or should be no difficulty in carrying the pipes away to some distance from parts where people enter the water to bathe, and at all events in not making them so obnoxiously near and prominent.There are three bathing establishments at Biarritz. One, and the largest, is on the Grande Plage, between the Villa Eugenie and the hotels, though much closer to the latter. It is a large wooden building of one storey, in the Moorish style, and opening from the promenade, three or four steps leading down at each end to the sands. When the tide is low there is a long space of sand to traverse. At the west side, where the rocks are, a rope for the use of the bathers is stretched between two rocks runningseaward. The second is on the Port-Vieux, a creek perhaps 400 or 500 feet long by 100 to 150 feet wide. The wooden building forming the bathing establishment, of very neat design, with a balcony running all round, and a red-tiled roof, is built on three sides of the square down to the usual high-water mark. The fourth and open side is to the sea, which for a good way out is hemmed in by rocks, between which a rope, slack but strong, is stretched across the creek, hanging, in very low tide, considerably above water, but in high tide having the middle part submerged. One side of the house is devoted to the dressing-rooms of the ladies and the other to those of the gentlemen, and long wooden stairs on each side enable the bathers to reach the sands. A few yards brings into sufficient depth for bathing, but at low water the sea goes back so as to land one among the rocks, especially in spring tides, and bathing is then not so pleasant, especially to non-swimmers; but this condition does not last above an hour. When the wind is in the west, even when hardly perceptible, there is more or less surf at the edge, and in strong west or north-west winds the swell must be such as to prevent bathing altogether at the Port-Vieux. But in this case more shelter will no doubt be had at the Grande Plage, which is to a small extent protected on the west by rocks. In stormy weather it must be altogether impossible to bathe anywhere. The third bathing establishment is at (though raised some feet above) the Basque beach, and is intended for the convenience of those residing in that neighbourhood on the plateau above. It is smaller considerably than either of the other two, and can be reached from the sands by ascending a ladder or stair of steps, or from the town by descending a zigzag path from the top of the nearly perpendicular rock against which it is placed. The arrangements of all are, I suppose, on exactly the same principles: little boxes under cover of the establishment for undressing and dressing, towels, andthe usual appliances, including a tub of hot water to take the sand out of the feet.The establishment at the Grande Plage is much the largest, but we always gave the preference to the Port-Vieux, where the Empress formerly used to sit and watch the bathers if she did not bathe herself. The town and road are high above it, and descending by a handsome stone staircase, one is confronted at the bottom by the ticket office, where (those not bathing can without charge go down to the beach) those intending to bathe pay according to their requirements, usually from half a franc to a franc each, the assistance of a bathing man being charged half a franc additional. No gratuities are expected, but a box at the dressing-room entrance-door modestly appears, into which those who choose may in passing drop a coin now and then. Bathers can be supplied with a bathing dress, and have it washed, but most people naturally prefer to have their own habiliments.Bathing is the great occupation of the visitors. Many bathe twice a day, and some, I believe, all the year round, wind and weather permitting. The sea is full of saline particles, and is usually warm, while the atmosphere is also warm and salubrious, so that bathing is even advantageous to those who dare not venture on it in the British Isles. Unless the wind be blowing, say, from the north-west, it is almost always possible to obtain a dip. To call a bathe there a dip, however, would be exceedingly inappropriate. It is a steady, serious occupation of some duration, and more or less protracted according to the heat of the weather and the enthusiasm of the bather. The times for bathing are in the morning before breakfast, after breakfast between ten and twelve, and in the afternoon between three and six. During the bathing hours spectators in crowds, perhaps not so numerous and certainly not so noisy as at Ramsgate on a forenoon, but stationed uponevery available point, or quietly standing or sitting on rocks, sands, or chairs, or on the steps or balconies of the establishments, amusedly watch the performances, which are extremely interesting, and to British eyes peculiar. At the Port-Vieux special vantage-ground is gained by the road, which, like a gallery, envelopes the three sides, and being higher than the roof of the building, enables the passers-by to peer down from perhaps 50 feet above on the aquatic sport below.For ladies and gentlemen array themselves in bathing costume, in which they march down to the water from the establishment—the ladies in general wearing over all a cloak or shawl, which they drop ere they reach the edge, and it is taken charge of by a friend or a bathing man. The ladies’ habit, of which the fanciful patterns (possibly imagined and engraved in far-away Paris) exhibited in dressmakers’ shop windows afford but a faint and incorrect idea (as, for example, in representing ladies appearing in lace frills, and trig, tight, little laced boots), usually consists of a short tunic with equally short sleeves, not reaching to the elbows, and knee-breeches reaching barely to the knees, the tunic girt at the waste by a girdle, to which is attached in the majority of cases,à laJohn Gilpin, two empty yellow gourds as floats. Then very often a straw hat is stuck upon the head, and tied by a ribbon over the crown and broad brim and under the chin, giving the appearance of a frightful ‘ugly;’ while on the feet are generally worn a pair of local shoes made of canvas, with thick hemp soles, which, decorated with devices in worsted, are very commonly worn by the residents, and even for walking about the beach by many of the visitors, and are sold for 2 or 3 francs per pair. The bathing dresses vary in pattern and shape, and are of all colours. White is seldom worn. Bright colours—red, scarlet, green, light blue, yellow, amber—are often seen; in short, the aim with many is apparently at something stunning, suitable for the adornment of a pretty mermaid. To add to the effect, smart young ladies will also have their dresses embroidered, and otherwise made attractive and bewitching, in the way only a graceful girl knows how; and really it must be confessed that this bloomer costume is exceedingly becoming, at all events to the younger ladies. Stout old ladies cut a figure in it sometimes remarkable.ill429BIARRITZ BATHERS.The gentlemen, on the other hand, look like harlequins, for their costume in general consists of a somewhat tight-fitting dress either of cotton or woollen, and most commonly in stripes of two colours, and of all colours and shades, though white and blue stripes are the most common. Their dress costs from 6f. to 20f. (a very good woollen one in red and black stripes cost me 13f.). Some of the old gentlemen wear a straw hat loose on their heads, so that occasionally it is seen floating away from the wearer by reason of an accidental wave or submersion. I suppose the object of the straw hat is to obtain protection against the beams of the sun, but it suggests the uncomfortable idea that the wearer never plunges his or her head under water, the doing of which would, I doubt not, afford equal protection against the sun’s heat, and is in any view always necessary to prevent a flow of blood to the brain in bathing.[46]In these varied and brightly-coloured costumes, the bathers cut gay figures. But the picture is composed and completed when they enter into action. At the edge of the water, the gentlemen bathers, sometimes portly and rotund, having threaded in bare feet their way down through the ladies sitting on the stairs, and through the crowd of spectators on the sand, wait with patience in their brilliant, tight, and unusual attire, the observed of all observers, the arrival of their lady friends, if they any have, and ontheir arrival, taking their hand, accompany them into the water; or the ladies take the hand of a bathing man engaged to attend them, and march in under their charge, and presently they are in the clear salt water, alive with bathers in every colour and in every form of movement practised by those who go down to the sea to bathe. Some rush from the shore wildly and inhumanly into the water, and, wickedly regardless of frightening the small fishes, dive head foremost with a splash, and strike out. Others stalk in majestically, and either quietly push far out, or paddle about pretending or attempting to swim in shallow water. Then other gentlemen are giving encouragement to their little boys or girls, or to their wives, or possibly their lovers, or improbably their sisters, either dipping them, or helping them to swim, or teaching them to float, or joining in other usual maritime gyrations. Others catch hold of the rope stretched out if the water be low, and dance about in a mad and profitless way, or if the tide be high, the swimmers catch at it as they pass and take a rest; and sometimes, if at a proper height, an adventurous one will sit upon the rope, like a sparrow on a telegraph wire, when (perhaps beholding admiringly from the treacherous seat some fat lady floating on her back on the surface, her bathing integuments undulating in the water like the tentacular folds of a jelly-fish) of a sudden somebody else, perhaps waggishly, perhaps innocently, clutches at the slack rope, and with unexpected shock upsets the unwary, abstracted philosopher, who with a whirl capsizes heels in the air, and head making discoveries through eyegate, nosegate, and mouthgate in the brine below. Or two recently arrived English young ladies will walk in, hand in hand, scorning the aid of a bathing man, and perform together, with all the regularity of clockwork, an endless series of curtsey ducks in the water without stirring from the safely selected spot. Other ladies, to vary the programme, are carried out by a bathing man and dipped horizontally in the wave, sothat head and feet obtain ablution simultaneously; or a stout matron will take hold of a bathing man, who swims out with her on his back apparently, so that she enjoys the luxury of being buoyed up and drawn through the water, and can say, ‘I’m afloat.’ But these sham swimmers are notably the exceptions. The great matter of observation is that the vast majority of the ladies, young and old, swim about as easily as the gentlemen, though they are in doing so generally accompanied by a man swimming behind or beside them in case of accident; and, indeed, one important occupation of those employed as bathing men is to teach the young idea how to swim, an accomplishment which, after a few lessons, they are usually able to master, and young girls are constantly seen swimming about among the others, like minnows among the tritons. Some ladies, after long practice, are very adventurous; two of them will go out together in a boat a considerable distance, when, throwing off their cloaks, they will dive head foremost from the side of the boat and swim ashore, the boat following. One little girl was most clever. She would go out to what looks like the vestige of an old pier, and, jumping high, perform a somersault, and, diving under the water, ‘come up smiling,’ swim about, and do it again and again. I have, however, seen many older diving belles jumping from the same pier. In fact, bathing in all its forms is here carried by the ladies to an enviable perfection altogether unknown at home; and while it not merely affords a most invigorating exercise, it becomes a most valuable branch of education, tending to lessen the risk of casualties at sea. It were well that at home the good example could be followed.The late King of Hanover was at Biarritz while we were there. Being blind, he was carried into the water upon achaise-à-porteurby four men, his suite bathing with him. His daughter was said to bathe at an early hour in themorning, and many ladies, we were told, bathed as early as six o’clock. During the time we were there, and the weather being cold, forenoon and afternoon were preferable.The bathing men will never dip one’s head unless expressly desired to do so, and never propose it—a great mistake. The bathing dress is not at all inconvenient or uncomfortable while in the water, but it is heavy out of it, especially if of woollen material (decidedly the best kind), because it absorbs and retains a great deal of water.Away from the beach all the walks are on the high roads, which are principally three,—to the railway station, to Bayonne, and to the lighthouse. The distance to the lighthouse by the road is considerably farther than by the beach, from which to the platform on the top of the rocks whereon it stands, access is had by a steep path. From the top of the lighthouse, 220 feet from the level of the sea to the lantern, a most extensive view is had northward up the west coast of France, bordered by the Landes—a low sandy coast, now planted with pine trees to guard against the incursions of the sea—stretching 100 miles towards Bordeaux; and in the other direction along the Spanish coast, bounded by a chain of mountains far as the eye can see; while inland the view extends towards the Pyrenees. A steep path leads from the lighthouse to a small recessed platform half-way down the rock, where in calm weather one can behold the swelling and surging sea below ever and anon dashing against the rocks, and where men repair with long rods and lines to fish. But in stormy weather it is dangerous even to stand on the ground above; people are exposed to be swept away by unexpected rushes of the sea, and many have been drowned there in consequence. The fish caught at this platform, so far as we know, were small. Indeed, at Biarritz there are not many caught, though the table is always supplied from neighbouring fishing stations. Lobsters, however, seem to be plentiful.The Villa Eugenie, between the lighthouse and the town, is an object of interest to every one visiting Biarritz. It is shown to the public on Mondays. Entrance is had by the west approach, where there is a lodge and large but not elegant stabling accommodation. The grounds are not extensive (about thirty acres in all), but sufficient for a marine residence of the kind; nor do they exhibit much attention to horticulture, though perhaps it is hardly fair to judge of them in present circumstances. The house, of three storeys, commenced in the year 1854, forms three sides of a square, with anannexe(I presume, offices) on the east side. It still belongs to the Empress, who, of course, never occupies it now, and she will not sell or let it. Ringing the bell, an old servant (who expects a small fee from each party for his trouble) opens the door and shows visitors through the house. Our troop consisted of several distinct parties, mustering probably above a dozen persons in all. The rooms are of comfortable size, and compose just what an Empress would consider to be a snuggery. The dining-room is the largest room in the house, the windows facing on one side the west to the town and sea, on another northward to the sea and lighthouse. On a rough guess, and speaking from recollection, it is probably from 40 to 50 feet long and from 20 to 25 feet wide, the ceiling lofty. The reception-room is comparatively small. The bedrooms of the Emperor, Empress, and Prince are just of a comfortable size. There are many small bedrooms, very nicely decorated, for use of the suite or for visitors. The floors are polished, and the staircase is so slippery that people are cautioned to take great care in descending, the steps not being carpeted. It was melancholy to think it was no longer possible for poor Eugenie to occupy this delightful residence.[47]Perhaps it is the only place in France wherethe Imperial arms remain, and one sees upon it also the touching monogramƎNE, which reads up or down. The place would to our Queen be objectionable as being so close to a town; but to a French lady this, no doubt, would give it additional attraction, and it must be recollected that Biarritz in reality largely owes its existence to the Empress having built her villa there. For this the French people should be grateful, although it looks a little unlike it, because in the grounds two pillars in front of a small unfinished chapel for the Imperial family use have been much broken. This, however, may merely have been the result of accident.It is a pleasant drive to Bayonne, which lies about five miles off. Like many other roads in France, such as at Pau, the road proceeds a long way in a straight line, flanked by regimental rows of trees, which, affording shade from the sun, have a peculiarly stiff effect. Here, as elsewhere, too, contrary to the Roman beau-ideal of a road that it should be level, this one, though straight, yields to the inequalities of the ground, and is alternately in hollows and on elevations. But people ought to be thankful the road is so good, for, speaking of a time about forty years ago or more, Dr. Taylor (Climate of Pau) says:—‘There was no carriage road from Bayonne to Biarritz, the only conveyance beingen cacolet, which contrivance consisted of a pair of panniers laid on the back of a horse or mule, into each of which a traveller of equal weight, if possible, had to perch himself at the same instant with his fellow, and to preserve their position as best they could. In the event of one being lighter than the other, there was a make-weight of stones put along with him in the pannier to adjust the equilibrium.’Judging from the specimens of comfortable Spanish ladieswe saw at Biarritz, I should pity the horse or the mule which had to carry two of them.About half way to Biarritz, a very elegant white stone villa in the Moorish style is passed—the Villa Sophia. There is something very unique in the appearance of this building, which is covered with arabesques, inducing me to go out one day and take a rough sketch of it. On approaching Bayonne, the road lies through a wood—I suppose, a suburban park. Then on entering the town we see a long many-arched stone bridge spanning the Adour,—here very wide,—and beyond it the fortifications, built by Vauban. These may at one time have been considered strong, but at the present day cannot be thought so, and they are overlooked by neighbouring heights. The fort lacks the picturesquely-imposing appearance of stone wall castles. A good deal of historical interest attaches to Bayonne and its fortifications. The town itself is not remarkable for much save its four bridges, crossing very close to each other the river Nive, which here joins the Adour. The cathedral, above seven hundred years old, is large and handsome, and is in course of restoration. The spires (one of them only is completed, the other being in course of completion) are very beautiful, tapering gradually, with spirelets around; but the church is like too many others abroad, rather hemmed in by the houses around.There are other good drives about Biarritz, and particularly to the Bois de Boulogne and to the old historical maritime town of St. Jean de Luz, about ten miles distant, and not far from the Spanish border. It was here LouisXIV.had a residence and was married. His house, in the French style, with square towers at the four corners, stands now in the centre of the town upon the main street, and in its ground floor is occupied with shops and cafés. St. Jean is also a bathing place, but is not so popular, and is certainly not so attractive, as Biarritz.There is a fine drive to Cambo, at the base of the Pyrenees, but during the first part of the period of our stay at Biarritz the weather was too cold to take it, and in the latter part the days were getting rather too short, the distance being about eighteen miles.[48]Few people visit Biarritz without making an excursion by railway to St. Sebastian to see a little of Spain. It is thirty-seven miles distant by rail, and can be easily managed in a day—in fact, going by morning train, one is left rather too much time in St. Sebastian. Crossing the river Bidassoa, the picturesque town of Fuenterrabia is the first object catching the eye on the Spanish border. A halt of an hour is made at Irun for examination of the luggage, and it is possible, though a risk, to drive off and return in time for the train after a hurried examination of this interesting old town, which from the railway has an appearance of being deserted. Leaving Irun, the railway winds its way through the mountains, and reaches St. Sebastian, which is a tidy-looking town standing at the mouth of a river crossed by a handsome bridge, with view out to the Bay of Biscay and to the fortress of St. Sebastian on a hill next the sea. The town lies on the landward side of this hill, the more modern part of it, at least, consisting of wide streets and lofty square houses with nothing redeeming about their aspect. Passing along the main wide street from the bridge, we arrive at an enclosed natural harbour, a tract of sea, like a bag contracted at the neck, through which communication is had with the bay without. The shipping is not extensive; the harbour proper, lying on the side nearest the sea, being small. On the south side, next the newer portion of the town and the railway, the grandplagebathing-place, with a wooden bathing-house, is found.Behind it the mountains rise picturesquely. It requires an order to see the fortress, which is mainly of earthen ramparts. The town itself has little of interest in it. Close by the railway station, however, there is a very large wooden amphitheatre for bull-fights. Bills containing announcements of one of these savage entertainments were placarded on the building and the railway stations and elsewhere. The dwellings on the line of railway are similar to those about Biarritz, principally of the Basque style; many of them have on the top little glazed houses, sort of huts, no doubt designated, according to the taste of the occupants, as observatories, retreats, or smoking-rooms. Except for seeing a little of Spain, I believe it is better rather to stop and see the curious old town of Fuenterrabia.After 1st October a very marked change came over the appearance of Biarritz. Nearly all of the Spanish and French visitors (coming no doubt for the gaiety) then left, while the English influx for the winter season had scarcely begun. During the first fortnight of this month the town wore a deserted look, and this was greatly aggravated by many of the shops commencing to pack up for migration to other places, and one after another closing. I daresay, a month later, there would be more life in the place.We had all experienced the greatest benefit from our short residence of about a month in Biarritz, and although the weather was, during the greater part of the time, especially at first, very cold, in consequence of the northeasterly winds, we felt that our invalid especially had derived great good from the ‘soothing and invigorating air;’ so much so that we fondly thought, owing to this and the former changes, she was now in recovered health, and that it only wanted another winter in the Riviera to set her completely up. Biarritz is considered too cold a place for delicate persons to winter in, and the approach of its winterseason would in any view have warned us away. But we did feel extremely reluctant to leave; for this agreeable watering-place had quite taken our fancy, and perhaps we felt the leaving all the more that we had not seen it in its stern grandeur of a storm, or even in its wild grandeur of a cloudy sunset, while, under the influence of a gentle wind blowing from the south, the day upon which we left was one of the finest and sunniest we had had while there. Having a good hour before departure, we visited all the beaches and rocks, and lingered sorrowfully upon the scenes now so radiant in sunshine and so genial in their warmth, where we had spent pleasant times, and thence looked out upon the bright sparkling ocean gleaming below us, and the waves gently kissing the shore and bidding us adieu, and with unwilling steps returned to our hotel to leave for Pau. This leave-taking is one of the penalties to be paid for the pleasure of travelling in bright spots where everything has combined to make one happy—where the scenes are new and pleasing, where the object of travel seems to have been secured, and where hearts in perfect harmony and with congenial likings are able to appreciate the blessings they have thus been privileged together to enjoy.

SWITZERLAND—FRANCE.——◆——XVII.THE SPLUGEN PASS, SWITZERLAND.THE SPLUGEN PASS.Vetturiniare always hanging about the hotels at Bellaggio, to be engaged either by the landlords or directly by travellers, although their usual course is to refer the inquirer to the landlord, to arrange with whom no doubt they have an understanding. But one labours under the disadvantage, by hiring at Bellaggio, of not seeing either the carriage or the cattle which are to convey you over the mountain—perhaps, too, in a thunderstorm. Therefore, and because of the high charge at the hotels, I took, before travelling, the steamer to Colico at the head of the lake, and arranged for a carriage thence to be waiting the arrival of the boat on the following Monday; and an English gentleman and his wife agreed to accompany us.Monday proved a fine day, without too much sun, and we left Bellaggio by steamer at half-past ten with not a little regret. The sail up the lake, amongst the bold mountains with which it is enclosed, and by the nine little Italian villages on its margin, to visit which the steamer crosses from side to side, giving thus alternately the view from each side at different points, is very enjoyable, although itwas trying to think we were so soon to bid adieu to it all. At Colico the mountains are rugged and bare, and the lake gets very marshy, so that the locality is unhealthy. Here the carriage was ready for us, and it took about three hours’ drive to reach Chiavenna, the road winding for a long way by the Lagunes of the lake. Upon leaving Colico we were immediately among the mountains, the road gradually ascending. The drive was beautiful, but extremely dusty.Chiavenna is an Italian and old Roman village town about 1100 feet above the level of the sea, very picturesquely buried among the bluff high mountains which closely hem it in on every side, and upon the heights of some of which patches of snow were visible in many places. It lies at the foot of the Splugen Pass, and on the river Maira, which, crossed by a good stone bridge, pours a torrent of water down from the snowy heights. We had time, both before dinner and after, to stroll about and see the little that was to be seen. Chiavenna is celebrated for its beer, and we thought it our duty to try it as the wine of the country, expecting to get it in perfection, but found it very flat. We had had it better at Bellaggio.Soon after seven o’clock the following morning, we left the hotel, and had three hours of a most laborious ascent to Campo Dolcino, only eight miles distant. The three horses with which we started, afterwards supplemented by a fourth, toiled up innumerable zigzags, getting higher and higher at every turn, but making very little onward progress; so that generally some of us would get out of the carriage, and by climbing up at the end of one zigzag to the end of the next, meet its slow arrival there. The distant views as we proceeded were fine, and improved the higher we mounted; while in the narrow valley beneath,—farther and farther beneath as we got higher and higher,—the river was seenwending its foamy course, augmented at little intervals by every fresh rivulet which rushed to embrace it from the lovely waterfalls descending in long, silver-grey, horsetail streams from the mountains opposite, in bright white contrast with the brown rocks over which they dashed and fell. There is not much to be seen at Campo Dolcino. It is a small village in a bleak-looking district; but, stopping for three hours to rest the horses, look about, and obtain lunch at the little inn, we proceeded on our way up the pass. Soon afterwards we reached the Madesimo waterfall, which is near to the road; and all turned out to see this famous cascade from a small stone gallery above it, whence the water is observed rolling over and tumbling and sinking in one grand heap 700 feet down, scattering, by the mere force of the descent, into a cloud of spray below. Little by little we continued ascending, passing in the way through three long tunnels (one of them 1530 feet in length), built to protect from the avalanches, which at certain seasons would otherwise bury the road; and at last we reached the region of perpetual snow, where the inaccessible Alpine roses bloom, and amidst blue gentians springing from the banks on the roadside. Mile after mile we passed along the road cut through the snow, not pure or clean, standing consolidated on each side, like the Red Sea when the Israelites passed over its channel and the waters were divided and became ‘a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left;’ very possibly by the action of frost upon the sea as it fled from the pressure of the fierce east wind which made the sea dry land. But though there was no fear of our experiencing the fate of Pharaoh’s host, our walls were slowly melting away in little trickling streamlets at every part, under the influence of the hot sun, no doubt to be made good again by a snowstorm from the next moisture in the air. As we approached the top of the pass, the scene became wild and dreary. Immense fields of snowlay spread out in a melting condition, sending down innumerable streams, all converging on the river which descends to Chiavenna, and by whose side, though generally at a great elevation above, our road had all along lain, the large roaring torrent at Chiavenna being here but a small turbid stream. But the cold-looking, slushy snow-field afforded an admirable notion of how these rivers are fed.We reached the summit, which is 6945 feet high, and is surrounded by lofty mountains, one of them 9925 feet, and another 10,748 feet high, covered with their white mantle, and, by an optical illusion, looking nearer and lower than they really were. The feeling (perhaps arising out of our having been so lately in the midst of all that was suggestive of heat) was strange upon finding ourselves in the vicinity of such cold peaks, and very much as if we had been suddenly tumbled into the arctic regions—desolate, barren, impassable retreats for man, and yet not altogether so; for the boundary line between Switzerland and Italy lies at the top of the pass, and not far below this great altitude the Italiandouanestation has been built. One would imagine the position hardly tenable by the poor custom-house men in winter months. The traveller into Switzerland, however, is not troubled by anydouanier.Here two of the horses were liberated, and dashing down with the remaining two along many zigzags, we gradually came in sight of the village of Splugen, 2200 feet below, and about five miles distant from the summit, passing by on the way a river which gradually got larger and larger, and proved to be the source, or one of the sources, of the Rhine. We arrived about half-past five, making it a journey of fully ten hours to traverse a distance, between Chiavenna and Splugen, at least as the crow flies, of not more than sixteen miles.SWITZERLAND.We remained in Switzerland from the 19th June to the 11th September, nearly three months; and as I wish to notice our movements in it, for the most part in well-beaten paths, merely by way of connection, I shall do so very briefly. We had decided to spend another winter in the Riviera, and with a view to this to pass the remainder of the summer in Switzerland, and thereafter cross over France to Pau and Biarritz, to spend there the period intervening, till it should be time to move onwards to Mentone.The Swiss village of Splugen has a southern exposure, and lies very picturesquely with its church on the slope and top of a little eminence, at an altitude of 4757 feet above the sea, overlooking a valley out of which lofty mountains raise their heads, one of them to the north behind the village itself. Pine forests are planted on the slopes, affording, no doubt, a little shelter from the cold north winds. Like all such places, it looks best at a little distance; and, approaching it from the opposite hill, it seemed a pretty village of wooden houses, built in the Swiss chalet style, and therefore quite a change from the Italian houses to which our eyes had been for the last few months accustomed. The accommodation was primitive. We were lodged in a large wooden hotel. The temperature, too, and the aspect of everything was changed. We had bidden adieu to the heat of Italy, and found it much colder upon the northern side of the mountains. This produced an accident which was annoying to me, and created a good deal of after trouble, as in winding up my watch at night the chain gave way, I presume, owing to the jump from great heat to frosty cold to which it had been subjected. The attempt I afterwards made in Switzerland to get it repaired only made matters worse, and the ultimaterepair at home costly. One would almost require to carry a spare watch in travelling among these localities. We had time to see a little of Splugen in the evening. The fields were literally covered with bright flowers, tempting us to pluck many handfuls. Although standing so high, the valley does not give one the impression of its great elevation.Before eight o’clock next morning, we started for Coire. Down and down we drove by the banks of the roaring and foaming Rhine, the road and river being beautifully wooded. The drive was most charming. At every mile the river got larger, while the mountains reared their heads above, to heights varying from 8,000 to 11,000 feet. In about two hours’ time we reached the Via Mala, where the mountains or rocks converge, and the river dashes far below, in some places nearly hidden by the pines thickly set upon the precipitous banks, wherever they can obtain a footing. At one time the pass may have been a dangerous one; but now, although it be still impressive, the road is good, and there is nothing to fear, notwithstanding the cliffs rise perpendicularly to a great height, higher even than they appear to do. Yet, were a mass of rock to loosen and fall, and block up the road or tear it away, it would be decidedly awkward for persons passing. The gorge, at which you look straight up and straight down, is well seen from a bridge, where a man was ready to plump a big stone into the torrent far down in the depths below. Everybody walks through the pass; the most indifferent to grand effects could hardly sit still in his carriage. I suppose it is possible to get to some safe place near the water, as photographs have been taken looking up to the bridge; and so seen, it appears perched high above, over steep and even impending rocks, which, save for a tree here and there, are smooth and bare, and form a narrow, ugly, perilous cleft, through which the river flows at the bottom.Emerging from the pass, and just out of it, we reached the clean and tidy but shadeless village of Thusis, which lay basking in the hot sun, though not so hot as we had had it at Lake Como. There is a good hotel here, but one might well dispense in such places with men-waiters, black coats, and white ties. From the garden of the hotel, an excellent view is had of the entrance to the pass. Here we rested two and a half hours, and then drove on to Coire by the banks of the Rhine, looking up to the lofty mountains with their snowy tops, and across a well-wooded landscape. At Coire there is a railway to Zurich, by which we had intended to proceed; but, arranging with the driver, he took us on to Ragatz, about two hours farther, where we arrived at half-past five, the last half hour being in a thunderstorm. It had been down hill the whole way since we left Splugen in the morning, and the horses, notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding day, went briskly along, and apparently returned next morning; for it is not the habit of the owners of these Swiss conveyances, if they can help it, to give their horses a day’s rest after excessive fatigue. We enjoyed our three days’ drive amazingly, through scenery alternately grand, wild and desolate, or beautiful and romantic. A more pleasant excursion could not be planned; but to be enjoyed, it requires to be taken in the way we did. One has not the same freedom in travelling by diligence, and besides it goes on night and day, and passes through the best of the scenery in the dark.Ragatz lies a little beyond the range of the usual tourists’ track, and we had not ourselves visited it before. It is very charmingly situated, at the entrance of the Gorge of Pfäffers, in a valley up from that of the Rhine flow, and hemmed in by high, bold mountains, which, from the Ragatz side, look like immense walls, on whose higher slopes some patches of snow were then visible. The village is small and spotlessly clean, externally at least, and theHotel Quellenhoff, a large new comfortable house, has grounds attached to it which afford pleasant retreats and walks. It is, however, a somewhat noisy establishment, being one of those Continental watering-places where a band of music, paid for by a daily tax on each visitor, plays morning and night to the accompaniment of out-door drinking. We found the house full of Germans, and having one or two distinguished visitors, among whom were the King of Saxony and Count Arnim. In the public breakfast room we found one morning four Germans smoking at a table—a disgusting piece of rudeness which is sometimes experienced in Switzerland. In the grounds there are a kursaal, where the band plays, a newsroom, and a book-seller’s stall—all under one roof; and in another neat range of buildings, shops for the sale of Swiss and other articles, a fountain flowing with Pfäffers water, and baths of the same.The walk up the Pfäffers Gorge is very interesting. Crossing a rustic wooden bridge over a deep rapid torrent, not very wide, however, the road at once begins to lead into a confined valley, the rocks or hills on either side rising steeply, and leaving room only for the river and the road by its side, with an occasional widening. It is well wooded all along, the pine trees affording shelter to some extent from the sun when it penetrates, as it does in certain positions. The seclusion is alluring, but it is not altogether free from danger. At one place my daughter ran up a bank, and came flying back to say that she had found a snake moving in the grass at her feet. An older person, less observant, would in all likelihood have trod upon it.[44]As we proceeded, the mountains seemed to rise higher and higher overhead; and, about two and a half miles fromRagatz, the rocks approach still closer, and a large hotel, seemingly very much out of place, greets the eye. Here tickets are procured for entrance to the gorge itself. It is effected through the hotel to a wooden gallery resting on a ledge cut out of the rock, which impends at a by no means assuring acute angle immediately overhead, and even some way beyond the shaky platform. Looking down the abyss, the water is seen below flowing still and deep and fast through the narrow cleft; and this cleft rises high, as we can see the rocks appearing to all but touch above, while one side inclines to the other with an apparent appalling desire to embrace. It looks as if an earthquake had split up the rock, and as if another shock might at once and for ever close it up again. It is a damp, gloomy sort of cavern, till one reaches the part where the hot spring escapes from the rocks, one half of it flowing into the river in a huge spout, and the remainder being carried in a long pipe to Ragatz to supply the baths there. We entered by a door into a cave in the rock, a distance of probably 50 or 60 feet, pitch dark, hot, and vaporous, where we had given us a little of the hot water to drink, not disagreeable to the taste. Afraid of chill, we left in time to get back to Ragatz ere the road should be in shade.We should have stayed at Ragatz with pleasure for at least a week, but, expecting letters at Lucerne, remained only three nights. Leaving the hotel at half-past eight, we had a tedious journey, as we did not arrive at Lucerne (only about 76 miles distant by rail) till four o’clock, the railway passing through a very pretty country, well wooded and watered, stopping at every station by the way, and for an hour at the town of Zurich. Leaving in sunshine, we were again unfortunate enough to arrive at Lucerne in heavy rain, which, with previous falls, had caused the lake to overflow its banks.We spent three nights at Lucerne, and had rain great part of the time. We were fortunate, however, to obtain, on the Tuesday, a charming sunny day to cross the lake and proceed by diligence to Interlachen by the Brunig Pass. The steamboat left the quay at Lucerne at 10.10 for Alpnacht, and we did not get to Interlachen till about 8p.m., having had, however, two long halts by the way to enable the passengers to dine or obtain refreshment and to rest the horses. We had the interior of the diligence to ourselves, and, though objecting at first to the closeness, it afforded cover from the sun, then in full power. The other passengers were accommodated in other and open carriages. The sail and drive are both beautiful; the sunset upon the Jungfrau awaiting our arrival was one of the finest we enjoyed while at Interlachen, tinting the snow with a shining glow of bright red light, which gradually left the lower parts till the shade ascended to the summit; and then the whole mountain was as if dead, but it shortly after returned to life in the like ruddy hue of the after-glow,—a beautiful effect we did not often afterwards witness.We had several times visited Interlachen before. It was at this time very empty. We had arrived in the German season, and there were few but Germans there. The English do not generally begin to come to Switzerland until the middle or end of July, when Interlachen becomes crowded, and it is difficult to secure good accommodation. We found little change in the place since we were last there (five years previously), but the prices of the Swiss carvings on wood exhibited in the shops had risen very considerably.Interlachen, with which we had many associations, is a charming spot at which to remain for some time, and I arranged for my family to stay at the Jungfrau Hotelen pension, which they did for above two months, and duringpart of this time I went home on a flying visit. It is an admirable centre for excursions, while the place itself is, especially in the height of the season, exceedingly attractive. The hotels are for the most part situated on the north side of the high road conducting in one direction to Thun and Berne, and in the other to Brienz, Meyringen, and Lucerne, always full of life. Though the hotels are large, they retreat from the road, and have not the towny look which large hotels generally have. The trees, and the flowers, and the pretty chalets, and the wood-carving shops, and the background of mountains—all confer a rustic look, as seen from the highway, which is greatly enhanced by the large open field so properly kept open upon the south side of the road, lined by fine old trees, between which one catches sight of the picturesque church and the equally picturesque houses at some distance, and behind them the ranges of green mountains and the conical tree-covered hill called the Jungfraublick; but beyond all, the grand view of the majestic snow-clad Jungfrau itself, fifteen miles off, seen at the termination of the magnificent vista afforded by the gap in the mountains which lie between it and Interlachen; by a road through which Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, the Wengern Alp, and the Murren are reached—all glorious excursions.Then there are the Lakes of Thun and Brienz, both affording delightful steamboat trips, and in the locality round about innumerable walks. However, like most places among the mountains, great changes in the weather often take place, and frequent thunderstorms with drenching rain, intermingled with glowing hot days, are experienced. We had a fair share of both.When I thought to make a run to Scotland, I found that leaving by a train to Berne at 9.50A.M., and proceeding by Neufchatel and Dijon, I could get to Paris by 5.35 next morning, stopping two hours by the way at Berne.On the return journey, leaving Paris at 7.40 evening, I did not get to Interlachen till near dinner-time next day, being compelled to spend four hours again at Berne. These stoppages are annoying to those who have been at Berne before, and, as a train leaves just immediately antecedent to the arrival of the train from the north, they might at least in that case easily be avoided. But probably the intention is to compel a short stay at Berne.We had heard Chateau d’Œx highly spoken of as a pleasant, cool retreat, where we might be invigorated by Highland breezes for the coming winter.Having engaged a carriage for this rather long drive, we left Interlachen on 28th August about 7.30A.M., and had a splendid but cruelly hot day. The distance, I should imagine, might possibly be fifty miles, if so much; for certainly we did not go on an average at a greater speed than five miles per hour,—considerable part of the way being indeed just crawling up the hill. After leaving Interlachen by the south bank of Lake Thun, we soon got into the shade of the hill, and it was chilly, causing all wraps to be in requisition. Reaching high ground over Spiez, we took our last view of Interlachen in the distance, with the smoke of morning fires hanging over it. From this point the road lay in a long valley between two ranges of hills, which, after those we had been so long looking upon, did not appear high. Everything was now in bright sunshine, and the valley and the slopes were so verdant and luxuriant as to make the drive lovely, though scarcely, except at one or two parts, could it be called grand. We passed many little villages, all looking so sleepy in the sun, but evidently prosperous. Soon after twelve we stopped at the little town of Boltigen, to rest the horses for two hours and dine at the hotel with the sign, life-size, of the gilded bear, kept by a pleasant young woman, who strove to make us comfortable. The road after Boltigen was still up hill till wereached a point whence descent is made to Sarnen, the centre of the famous Gruyère cheese district, and soon after we came in sight of Chateau d’Œx, with its picturesque church, formerly a castle, on the top of an isolated conical hill, from which the small town takes its name. This chateau or church at once arrests the eye, and gives character to the place; but the town itself lies at the foot of the eminence, and is 3260 feet above the sea. Bold mountains, well wooded, rise on every side, and are probably, some of them, 5000 or 6000 feet high—all contributing to fill a considerable river in the valley a good way below. There are several hotels in the town, and chalet pensions on the slopes above, the pension in all being amazingly moderate, somewhat upon the scale which formerly prevailed throughout Switzerland. The Hotel Berthod, at which we stopped, accommodates about eighty people, and is built of wood, the appointments being somewhat rough, though clean. The season is short, but the hotel is for part of the time full. As it is so much out of the beaten track, the society is probably more select than it sometimes is in other parts of Switzerland. For the active, there are abundance of nice walks in the immediate neighbourhood. The air, though in day-time hot, was invigorating; but as we were getting near the end of the season, it had a tendency at night at this elevation to get cold. We therefore only spent eight days there, though very pleasantly.On leaving Chateau d’Œx, we took the diligence to the pretty large town of Aigle, and to reach it had slowly to ascend the mountains to an altitude of between 5000 and 6000 feet. It was a most charming ride or walk, and I got out and walked several miles ahead of the lumbering conveyance. The descent from the summit of the pass continues to Sepey, a village where we halted for lunch, and said to be another charming centre, with pension upon the same moderate scale as we had just experienced.The views here were very fine, but the place itself did not strike me as so desirable as Chateau d’Œx, although it has the advantage of being more accessible. From Sepey we descended to Aigle, where there is a large hotel or hydropathic establishment just out of the town. The diligence deposited us at the railway station nearly an hour previous to the train to Montreux on the Lake of Geneva being due.From its comparatively sheltered situation, Montreux is much frequented during winter months, and it is a little warmer than Geneva or Lausanne; but during part of the winter the temperature of Montreux is, I believe, lower than that of London and Edinburgh, so that possibly it may therefore not be suitable as a winter resort for those having delicate constitutions. The picturesque and interesting Castle of Chillon lies about two miles off, nearer the upper end of the lake. Our bedroom windows commanded the view of the lake, together with the Dent du Midi in the distance, so that the prospect was always pleasing. Montreux is rather too much of a town, and the walls and houses shut out almost completely the sight of the lake from the road or street. The adjoining town of Clarens, nearly united to it, appears to be, on the whole, nicer for summer residence.After being at Montreux for a few days, we left by the steamboat, and had a lovely sail to Geneva, where, in the afternoon, just before dinner, we obtained a good glimpse of Mont Blanc in the distance unveiled. Besting one night, we proceeded to Lyons by train next day, and were once more in France.

SWITZERLAND—FRANCE.

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THE SPLUGEN PASS, SWITZERLAND.

Vetturiniare always hanging about the hotels at Bellaggio, to be engaged either by the landlords or directly by travellers, although their usual course is to refer the inquirer to the landlord, to arrange with whom no doubt they have an understanding. But one labours under the disadvantage, by hiring at Bellaggio, of not seeing either the carriage or the cattle which are to convey you over the mountain—perhaps, too, in a thunderstorm. Therefore, and because of the high charge at the hotels, I took, before travelling, the steamer to Colico at the head of the lake, and arranged for a carriage thence to be waiting the arrival of the boat on the following Monday; and an English gentleman and his wife agreed to accompany us.

Monday proved a fine day, without too much sun, and we left Bellaggio by steamer at half-past ten with not a little regret. The sail up the lake, amongst the bold mountains with which it is enclosed, and by the nine little Italian villages on its margin, to visit which the steamer crosses from side to side, giving thus alternately the view from each side at different points, is very enjoyable, although itwas trying to think we were so soon to bid adieu to it all. At Colico the mountains are rugged and bare, and the lake gets very marshy, so that the locality is unhealthy. Here the carriage was ready for us, and it took about three hours’ drive to reach Chiavenna, the road winding for a long way by the Lagunes of the lake. Upon leaving Colico we were immediately among the mountains, the road gradually ascending. The drive was beautiful, but extremely dusty.

Chiavenna is an Italian and old Roman village town about 1100 feet above the level of the sea, very picturesquely buried among the bluff high mountains which closely hem it in on every side, and upon the heights of some of which patches of snow were visible in many places. It lies at the foot of the Splugen Pass, and on the river Maira, which, crossed by a good stone bridge, pours a torrent of water down from the snowy heights. We had time, both before dinner and after, to stroll about and see the little that was to be seen. Chiavenna is celebrated for its beer, and we thought it our duty to try it as the wine of the country, expecting to get it in perfection, but found it very flat. We had had it better at Bellaggio.

Soon after seven o’clock the following morning, we left the hotel, and had three hours of a most laborious ascent to Campo Dolcino, only eight miles distant. The three horses with which we started, afterwards supplemented by a fourth, toiled up innumerable zigzags, getting higher and higher at every turn, but making very little onward progress; so that generally some of us would get out of the carriage, and by climbing up at the end of one zigzag to the end of the next, meet its slow arrival there. The distant views as we proceeded were fine, and improved the higher we mounted; while in the narrow valley beneath,—farther and farther beneath as we got higher and higher,—the river was seenwending its foamy course, augmented at little intervals by every fresh rivulet which rushed to embrace it from the lovely waterfalls descending in long, silver-grey, horsetail streams from the mountains opposite, in bright white contrast with the brown rocks over which they dashed and fell. There is not much to be seen at Campo Dolcino. It is a small village in a bleak-looking district; but, stopping for three hours to rest the horses, look about, and obtain lunch at the little inn, we proceeded on our way up the pass. Soon afterwards we reached the Madesimo waterfall, which is near to the road; and all turned out to see this famous cascade from a small stone gallery above it, whence the water is observed rolling over and tumbling and sinking in one grand heap 700 feet down, scattering, by the mere force of the descent, into a cloud of spray below. Little by little we continued ascending, passing in the way through three long tunnels (one of them 1530 feet in length), built to protect from the avalanches, which at certain seasons would otherwise bury the road; and at last we reached the region of perpetual snow, where the inaccessible Alpine roses bloom, and amidst blue gentians springing from the banks on the roadside. Mile after mile we passed along the road cut through the snow, not pure or clean, standing consolidated on each side, like the Red Sea when the Israelites passed over its channel and the waters were divided and became ‘a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left;’ very possibly by the action of frost upon the sea as it fled from the pressure of the fierce east wind which made the sea dry land. But though there was no fear of our experiencing the fate of Pharaoh’s host, our walls were slowly melting away in little trickling streamlets at every part, under the influence of the hot sun, no doubt to be made good again by a snowstorm from the next moisture in the air. As we approached the top of the pass, the scene became wild and dreary. Immense fields of snowlay spread out in a melting condition, sending down innumerable streams, all converging on the river which descends to Chiavenna, and by whose side, though generally at a great elevation above, our road had all along lain, the large roaring torrent at Chiavenna being here but a small turbid stream. But the cold-looking, slushy snow-field afforded an admirable notion of how these rivers are fed.

We reached the summit, which is 6945 feet high, and is surrounded by lofty mountains, one of them 9925 feet, and another 10,748 feet high, covered with their white mantle, and, by an optical illusion, looking nearer and lower than they really were. The feeling (perhaps arising out of our having been so lately in the midst of all that was suggestive of heat) was strange upon finding ourselves in the vicinity of such cold peaks, and very much as if we had been suddenly tumbled into the arctic regions—desolate, barren, impassable retreats for man, and yet not altogether so; for the boundary line between Switzerland and Italy lies at the top of the pass, and not far below this great altitude the Italiandouanestation has been built. One would imagine the position hardly tenable by the poor custom-house men in winter months. The traveller into Switzerland, however, is not troubled by anydouanier.

Here two of the horses were liberated, and dashing down with the remaining two along many zigzags, we gradually came in sight of the village of Splugen, 2200 feet below, and about five miles distant from the summit, passing by on the way a river which gradually got larger and larger, and proved to be the source, or one of the sources, of the Rhine. We arrived about half-past five, making it a journey of fully ten hours to traverse a distance, between Chiavenna and Splugen, at least as the crow flies, of not more than sixteen miles.

We remained in Switzerland from the 19th June to the 11th September, nearly three months; and as I wish to notice our movements in it, for the most part in well-beaten paths, merely by way of connection, I shall do so very briefly. We had decided to spend another winter in the Riviera, and with a view to this to pass the remainder of the summer in Switzerland, and thereafter cross over France to Pau and Biarritz, to spend there the period intervening, till it should be time to move onwards to Mentone.

The Swiss village of Splugen has a southern exposure, and lies very picturesquely with its church on the slope and top of a little eminence, at an altitude of 4757 feet above the sea, overlooking a valley out of which lofty mountains raise their heads, one of them to the north behind the village itself. Pine forests are planted on the slopes, affording, no doubt, a little shelter from the cold north winds. Like all such places, it looks best at a little distance; and, approaching it from the opposite hill, it seemed a pretty village of wooden houses, built in the Swiss chalet style, and therefore quite a change from the Italian houses to which our eyes had been for the last few months accustomed. The accommodation was primitive. We were lodged in a large wooden hotel. The temperature, too, and the aspect of everything was changed. We had bidden adieu to the heat of Italy, and found it much colder upon the northern side of the mountains. This produced an accident which was annoying to me, and created a good deal of after trouble, as in winding up my watch at night the chain gave way, I presume, owing to the jump from great heat to frosty cold to which it had been subjected. The attempt I afterwards made in Switzerland to get it repaired only made matters worse, and the ultimaterepair at home costly. One would almost require to carry a spare watch in travelling among these localities. We had time to see a little of Splugen in the evening. The fields were literally covered with bright flowers, tempting us to pluck many handfuls. Although standing so high, the valley does not give one the impression of its great elevation.

Before eight o’clock next morning, we started for Coire. Down and down we drove by the banks of the roaring and foaming Rhine, the road and river being beautifully wooded. The drive was most charming. At every mile the river got larger, while the mountains reared their heads above, to heights varying from 8,000 to 11,000 feet. In about two hours’ time we reached the Via Mala, where the mountains or rocks converge, and the river dashes far below, in some places nearly hidden by the pines thickly set upon the precipitous banks, wherever they can obtain a footing. At one time the pass may have been a dangerous one; but now, although it be still impressive, the road is good, and there is nothing to fear, notwithstanding the cliffs rise perpendicularly to a great height, higher even than they appear to do. Yet, were a mass of rock to loosen and fall, and block up the road or tear it away, it would be decidedly awkward for persons passing. The gorge, at which you look straight up and straight down, is well seen from a bridge, where a man was ready to plump a big stone into the torrent far down in the depths below. Everybody walks through the pass; the most indifferent to grand effects could hardly sit still in his carriage. I suppose it is possible to get to some safe place near the water, as photographs have been taken looking up to the bridge; and so seen, it appears perched high above, over steep and even impending rocks, which, save for a tree here and there, are smooth and bare, and form a narrow, ugly, perilous cleft, through which the river flows at the bottom.

Emerging from the pass, and just out of it, we reached the clean and tidy but shadeless village of Thusis, which lay basking in the hot sun, though not so hot as we had had it at Lake Como. There is a good hotel here, but one might well dispense in such places with men-waiters, black coats, and white ties. From the garden of the hotel, an excellent view is had of the entrance to the pass. Here we rested two and a half hours, and then drove on to Coire by the banks of the Rhine, looking up to the lofty mountains with their snowy tops, and across a well-wooded landscape. At Coire there is a railway to Zurich, by which we had intended to proceed; but, arranging with the driver, he took us on to Ragatz, about two hours farther, where we arrived at half-past five, the last half hour being in a thunderstorm. It had been down hill the whole way since we left Splugen in the morning, and the horses, notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding day, went briskly along, and apparently returned next morning; for it is not the habit of the owners of these Swiss conveyances, if they can help it, to give their horses a day’s rest after excessive fatigue. We enjoyed our three days’ drive amazingly, through scenery alternately grand, wild and desolate, or beautiful and romantic. A more pleasant excursion could not be planned; but to be enjoyed, it requires to be taken in the way we did. One has not the same freedom in travelling by diligence, and besides it goes on night and day, and passes through the best of the scenery in the dark.

Ragatz lies a little beyond the range of the usual tourists’ track, and we had not ourselves visited it before. It is very charmingly situated, at the entrance of the Gorge of Pfäffers, in a valley up from that of the Rhine flow, and hemmed in by high, bold mountains, which, from the Ragatz side, look like immense walls, on whose higher slopes some patches of snow were then visible. The village is small and spotlessly clean, externally at least, and theHotel Quellenhoff, a large new comfortable house, has grounds attached to it which afford pleasant retreats and walks. It is, however, a somewhat noisy establishment, being one of those Continental watering-places where a band of music, paid for by a daily tax on each visitor, plays morning and night to the accompaniment of out-door drinking. We found the house full of Germans, and having one or two distinguished visitors, among whom were the King of Saxony and Count Arnim. In the public breakfast room we found one morning four Germans smoking at a table—a disgusting piece of rudeness which is sometimes experienced in Switzerland. In the grounds there are a kursaal, where the band plays, a newsroom, and a book-seller’s stall—all under one roof; and in another neat range of buildings, shops for the sale of Swiss and other articles, a fountain flowing with Pfäffers water, and baths of the same.

The walk up the Pfäffers Gorge is very interesting. Crossing a rustic wooden bridge over a deep rapid torrent, not very wide, however, the road at once begins to lead into a confined valley, the rocks or hills on either side rising steeply, and leaving room only for the river and the road by its side, with an occasional widening. It is well wooded all along, the pine trees affording shelter to some extent from the sun when it penetrates, as it does in certain positions. The seclusion is alluring, but it is not altogether free from danger. At one place my daughter ran up a bank, and came flying back to say that she had found a snake moving in the grass at her feet. An older person, less observant, would in all likelihood have trod upon it.[44]As we proceeded, the mountains seemed to rise higher and higher overhead; and, about two and a half miles fromRagatz, the rocks approach still closer, and a large hotel, seemingly very much out of place, greets the eye. Here tickets are procured for entrance to the gorge itself. It is effected through the hotel to a wooden gallery resting on a ledge cut out of the rock, which impends at a by no means assuring acute angle immediately overhead, and even some way beyond the shaky platform. Looking down the abyss, the water is seen below flowing still and deep and fast through the narrow cleft; and this cleft rises high, as we can see the rocks appearing to all but touch above, while one side inclines to the other with an apparent appalling desire to embrace. It looks as if an earthquake had split up the rock, and as if another shock might at once and for ever close it up again. It is a damp, gloomy sort of cavern, till one reaches the part where the hot spring escapes from the rocks, one half of it flowing into the river in a huge spout, and the remainder being carried in a long pipe to Ragatz to supply the baths there. We entered by a door into a cave in the rock, a distance of probably 50 or 60 feet, pitch dark, hot, and vaporous, where we had given us a little of the hot water to drink, not disagreeable to the taste. Afraid of chill, we left in time to get back to Ragatz ere the road should be in shade.

We should have stayed at Ragatz with pleasure for at least a week, but, expecting letters at Lucerne, remained only three nights. Leaving the hotel at half-past eight, we had a tedious journey, as we did not arrive at Lucerne (only about 76 miles distant by rail) till four o’clock, the railway passing through a very pretty country, well wooded and watered, stopping at every station by the way, and for an hour at the town of Zurich. Leaving in sunshine, we were again unfortunate enough to arrive at Lucerne in heavy rain, which, with previous falls, had caused the lake to overflow its banks.

We spent three nights at Lucerne, and had rain great part of the time. We were fortunate, however, to obtain, on the Tuesday, a charming sunny day to cross the lake and proceed by diligence to Interlachen by the Brunig Pass. The steamboat left the quay at Lucerne at 10.10 for Alpnacht, and we did not get to Interlachen till about 8p.m., having had, however, two long halts by the way to enable the passengers to dine or obtain refreshment and to rest the horses. We had the interior of the diligence to ourselves, and, though objecting at first to the closeness, it afforded cover from the sun, then in full power. The other passengers were accommodated in other and open carriages. The sail and drive are both beautiful; the sunset upon the Jungfrau awaiting our arrival was one of the finest we enjoyed while at Interlachen, tinting the snow with a shining glow of bright red light, which gradually left the lower parts till the shade ascended to the summit; and then the whole mountain was as if dead, but it shortly after returned to life in the like ruddy hue of the after-glow,—a beautiful effect we did not often afterwards witness.

We had several times visited Interlachen before. It was at this time very empty. We had arrived in the German season, and there were few but Germans there. The English do not generally begin to come to Switzerland until the middle or end of July, when Interlachen becomes crowded, and it is difficult to secure good accommodation. We found little change in the place since we were last there (five years previously), but the prices of the Swiss carvings on wood exhibited in the shops had risen very considerably.

Interlachen, with which we had many associations, is a charming spot at which to remain for some time, and I arranged for my family to stay at the Jungfrau Hotelen pension, which they did for above two months, and duringpart of this time I went home on a flying visit. It is an admirable centre for excursions, while the place itself is, especially in the height of the season, exceedingly attractive. The hotels are for the most part situated on the north side of the high road conducting in one direction to Thun and Berne, and in the other to Brienz, Meyringen, and Lucerne, always full of life. Though the hotels are large, they retreat from the road, and have not the towny look which large hotels generally have. The trees, and the flowers, and the pretty chalets, and the wood-carving shops, and the background of mountains—all confer a rustic look, as seen from the highway, which is greatly enhanced by the large open field so properly kept open upon the south side of the road, lined by fine old trees, between which one catches sight of the picturesque church and the equally picturesque houses at some distance, and behind them the ranges of green mountains and the conical tree-covered hill called the Jungfraublick; but beyond all, the grand view of the majestic snow-clad Jungfrau itself, fifteen miles off, seen at the termination of the magnificent vista afforded by the gap in the mountains which lie between it and Interlachen; by a road through which Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, the Wengern Alp, and the Murren are reached—all glorious excursions.

Then there are the Lakes of Thun and Brienz, both affording delightful steamboat trips, and in the locality round about innumerable walks. However, like most places among the mountains, great changes in the weather often take place, and frequent thunderstorms with drenching rain, intermingled with glowing hot days, are experienced. We had a fair share of both.

When I thought to make a run to Scotland, I found that leaving by a train to Berne at 9.50A.M., and proceeding by Neufchatel and Dijon, I could get to Paris by 5.35 next morning, stopping two hours by the way at Berne.On the return journey, leaving Paris at 7.40 evening, I did not get to Interlachen till near dinner-time next day, being compelled to spend four hours again at Berne. These stoppages are annoying to those who have been at Berne before, and, as a train leaves just immediately antecedent to the arrival of the train from the north, they might at least in that case easily be avoided. But probably the intention is to compel a short stay at Berne.

We had heard Chateau d’Œx highly spoken of as a pleasant, cool retreat, where we might be invigorated by Highland breezes for the coming winter.

Having engaged a carriage for this rather long drive, we left Interlachen on 28th August about 7.30A.M., and had a splendid but cruelly hot day. The distance, I should imagine, might possibly be fifty miles, if so much; for certainly we did not go on an average at a greater speed than five miles per hour,—considerable part of the way being indeed just crawling up the hill. After leaving Interlachen by the south bank of Lake Thun, we soon got into the shade of the hill, and it was chilly, causing all wraps to be in requisition. Reaching high ground over Spiez, we took our last view of Interlachen in the distance, with the smoke of morning fires hanging over it. From this point the road lay in a long valley between two ranges of hills, which, after those we had been so long looking upon, did not appear high. Everything was now in bright sunshine, and the valley and the slopes were so verdant and luxuriant as to make the drive lovely, though scarcely, except at one or two parts, could it be called grand. We passed many little villages, all looking so sleepy in the sun, but evidently prosperous. Soon after twelve we stopped at the little town of Boltigen, to rest the horses for two hours and dine at the hotel with the sign, life-size, of the gilded bear, kept by a pleasant young woman, who strove to make us comfortable. The road after Boltigen was still up hill till wereached a point whence descent is made to Sarnen, the centre of the famous Gruyère cheese district, and soon after we came in sight of Chateau d’Œx, with its picturesque church, formerly a castle, on the top of an isolated conical hill, from which the small town takes its name. This chateau or church at once arrests the eye, and gives character to the place; but the town itself lies at the foot of the eminence, and is 3260 feet above the sea. Bold mountains, well wooded, rise on every side, and are probably, some of them, 5000 or 6000 feet high—all contributing to fill a considerable river in the valley a good way below. There are several hotels in the town, and chalet pensions on the slopes above, the pension in all being amazingly moderate, somewhat upon the scale which formerly prevailed throughout Switzerland. The Hotel Berthod, at which we stopped, accommodates about eighty people, and is built of wood, the appointments being somewhat rough, though clean. The season is short, but the hotel is for part of the time full. As it is so much out of the beaten track, the society is probably more select than it sometimes is in other parts of Switzerland. For the active, there are abundance of nice walks in the immediate neighbourhood. The air, though in day-time hot, was invigorating; but as we were getting near the end of the season, it had a tendency at night at this elevation to get cold. We therefore only spent eight days there, though very pleasantly.

On leaving Chateau d’Œx, we took the diligence to the pretty large town of Aigle, and to reach it had slowly to ascend the mountains to an altitude of between 5000 and 6000 feet. It was a most charming ride or walk, and I got out and walked several miles ahead of the lumbering conveyance. The descent from the summit of the pass continues to Sepey, a village where we halted for lunch, and said to be another charming centre, with pension upon the same moderate scale as we had just experienced.The views here were very fine, but the place itself did not strike me as so desirable as Chateau d’Œx, although it has the advantage of being more accessible. From Sepey we descended to Aigle, where there is a large hotel or hydropathic establishment just out of the town. The diligence deposited us at the railway station nearly an hour previous to the train to Montreux on the Lake of Geneva being due.

From its comparatively sheltered situation, Montreux is much frequented during winter months, and it is a little warmer than Geneva or Lausanne; but during part of the winter the temperature of Montreux is, I believe, lower than that of London and Edinburgh, so that possibly it may therefore not be suitable as a winter resort for those having delicate constitutions. The picturesque and interesting Castle of Chillon lies about two miles off, nearer the upper end of the lake. Our bedroom windows commanded the view of the lake, together with the Dent du Midi in the distance, so that the prospect was always pleasing. Montreux is rather too much of a town, and the walls and houses shut out almost completely the sight of the lake from the road or street. The adjoining town of Clarens, nearly united to it, appears to be, on the whole, nicer for summer residence.

After being at Montreux for a few days, we left by the steamboat, and had a lovely sail to Geneva, where, in the afternoon, just before dinner, we obtained a good glimpse of Mont Blanc in the distance unveiled. Besting one night, we proceeded to Lyons by train next day, and were once more in France.

XVIII.BIARRITZ.I hadthought it might have been possible to arrange for proceeding across country from Lyons to Biarritz by a westerly line, say by Clermont, instead of by the Mediterranean line, which we had already travelled. But although there are lines in that direction, it seemed extremely difficult to make them fit in so that we could, upon stopping at any place, obtain next day a train at a suitable hour for prosecuting the journey. Not only so, but being quite out of the ordinary beat of tourists, and especially of English tourists, one could not possibly rely on getting such hotel accommodation by the way as is desirable and is procurable on the beaten tracks. I therefore gave up this thought, though not till after some laborious studies of theLivret Chaix, and after consulting Cook’s agent at Geneva, who, I found, did not issue tickets towards Biarritz. There seemed no alternative, therefore, but to go by the Chemin de Fer du Midi, the Paris and Marseilles Railway. We had hoped, it being the 12th September, to have seen the Rhone in all its summer beauty, but were disappointed. The day was dull and misty when we started, and soon after it began to rain; so that we could see little, and everything looked dismal, whereas in summer sunshine the prospect is no doubt very lovely. Before we reached Avignon (in six hoursten minutes) the rain ceased. We stopped a night there (see p. 135), and had fortunately good weather. Next afternoon brought us to Nismes, two hours distant from Avignon by rail; and after another night in our old quarters there, and seeing places this time in sunshine instead of shrouded by the mistral, which prevailed during our visit in the previous year, we left at mid-day for Toulouse, arriving at this large city about eleven o’clock at night. There is not another train by which we could have proceeded from Nismes to Toulouse during day, nor is there any place nearer Toulouse where it is desirable to stop except Montpellier; but Montpellier is only an hour distant from Nismes, and better adapted, therefore, for stoppage coming from Toulouse on the return journey, and on our return journey we accordingly spent a night there. Cette, where we changed carriages and were long detained for no apparent good reason, and where there are extensive salines or manufactories of salt, lies very low and is marshy. It is therefore considered a most unhealthy spot, not to be thought of for sleeping at. The journey to Cette is not particularly interesting. Beyond it to Toulouse the country is more inviting. The distance is about 136 miles, and the train most tiresomely stopped several minutes at every little station, twenty-nine or thirty in all, with an extra halt at Narbonne, amounting to twenty minutes, where a hasty though acceptable dinner waited the arrival of the train. The more interesting part of the road was passed in the dark.We had been recommended by fellow-passengers to the Hotel Sacaron at Toulouse, and found it remarkably comfortable; but to all appearance it was then out of season, as we seemed to be the only guests, except it might be our old friends the mosquitoes, who, paying nothing but penalties, were unceasing in their attentions, and from whom we might have suffered more than we did had we not beenwell protected by the snowy-white mosquito curtains. Our daughter, however, had a long watch, and discovered in the morning her forehead was jewelled in thirty-two holes.Leaving next morning for Pau by the 11 o’clock train, we had no opportunity of getting more than a glimpse at this important provincial town. The houses are large, and the streets—such of them as we saw—are wide. The railway station is handsome and tidy. We arrived at Pau about 5p.m., by a quick or express train, having only stopped at eleven out of thirty-four stations. Notwithstanding it took us six hours to go little more than 130 miles, being at the rate of 22 miles per hour. However, it was an improvement upon the previous day’s travelling. The only other trains by which we could have gone from Toulouse to Pau were two,—one which left at midnight, getting in at 10 o’clock next morning; and another which left at 5.20A.M., getting to Pau at half-past 1. I mention these facts just to show that every consideration is not paid here, and elsewhere (and it is better here than elsewhere) on French lines, to the convenience of travellers. Apart from the disagreeableness of starting at such inhuman hours, to travel by the midnight train would be to miss for great part of the way the view of the most interesting scenery along the railway route, which skirts the Pyrenees.These grand mountains we saw now for the first time. Near to Lourdes the railway approaches them closely, and the church of Lourdes, to which it has been customary of recent years to make pilgrimages, is not far from the railway. It rises loftily from the ground far below. A crowd of pilgrims was marching towards its supposed miraculous shrines. The scenery about Lourdes is very picturesque, and the railway to Pau for a great part of the way runs parallel to and overlooks a mountain river, apparently the Adour, very much resembling at this part such rivers as the Garry in Perthshire: a clear-flowing stream, descendingthrough a rocky bed, with many a rushing fall or rapid between converging rocks.We arrived at Pau on the Saturday afternoon, and left it on the following Tuesday morning—just having time to rest. I reserve, therefore, any observations regarding Pau till our return journey, when we spent a longer time there. The railway ride (between sixty and seventy miles) from Pau to Bayonne is very beautiful, part of the way being by the banks of the Adour, which, as it approaches Bayonne, becomes wide, and is, indeed, navigable for forty miles up. We were advised to book to Bayonne, and hire thence to Biarritz; but I found the fares asked for the drive so excessive, occasioned, as we afterwards learnt, by races being then held at Bayonne, that we took the train just about to start on to Biarritz. The station La Negresse proved, however, to be two miles out of Biarritz, and only one carriage was waiting disengaged. For this short distance I was charged 8 francs; certainly exorbitant, but during the season at Biarritz everything is very high, and the races had then taken off the usual supply of vehicles, so that we were at the mercy of the gorgeously-attired coachman, who drove us in by a pretty rural road between trees and hedges. In all likelihood he had driven a party to join the train we had just left, so that we may have been indebted even to this chance for finding any conveyance waiting. I do not know why the railway company laid their line so far away from the town, unless it was that they did not appreciate the importance of the station. As an attempt to remedy the evil, a short line intended to connect Bayonne specially with Biarritz has been made; but though the Biarritz terminus is tolerably near the centre of the town, the other terminus does not enter Bayonne, and is a long way from the general railway terminus. It may be useful for excursionists, but it is useless for other traffic, and I should hardly think it would pay.We had been recommended to the Hotel de Paris, near the rocks, and, with some difficulty, the town being then very full, got accommodation in it; rough enough at the first, but after two nights we obtained a change to first-floor rooms, fairly good. The hotel is situated in a public square planted with trees, the north end being open, overlooking the sea. Here the band played every evening, Sunday included, from half-past 8 till 10 o’clock during the season, making our rooms for the time very noisy; but as our windows looked right down upon the seated enclosure, brightly lighted up with numerous lamps, it was a little variety and divertisement to watch the gay crowd with whom it was at first filled, who paid for admission half a franc each. The charges in the hotels and for lodgings at Biarritz are said to be, during the summer season, immoderately high, and to cost in some cases as much as £5 per day. I cannot help thinking, however, that there must be a little exaggeration in these statements, or some extravagance on the part of the visitor so charged. We were ourselves charged at no excessive rate. The Angleterre and Grand Hotels, with superior arrangements, I believe, charged a good deal more. But there are other and more moderate hotels, such as the Hotel de France and the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, which, however, are both in the town itself, and not so well situated as those I have already named.We remained at Biarritz till 13th October, nearly four weeks, and enjoyed it very much, although for a considerable part of the time, particularly during the earlier part, east and north-east winds, said to be unusual, prevailed, rendering the place for the time being cold, and giving us a taste of what winter weather is there, a visitor informing us that he had not found it colder in winter. If, however, it be no colder on winter days than what we did experience, it could hardly be described as trying for persons in good,strong health; but the prevailing winds are west and south-west, both mild and salubrious, though sometimes the south wind blows, and brings with it, in the hot months, the parching heat of the sirocco.Biarritz is a place of very recent growth. Formerly nobody but English people, for the sake of the bathing it afforded, frequented it. Afterwards the civil war of succession in Spain brought many of the best Spanish families to live in it as a frontier town and among others the Countess de Montijo and her two daughters, one of whom became the wife of NapoleonIII.Her fondness for the place induced the Emperor to build the Villa Eugenie as a marine residence, and so, practically, made this delightful watering-place.There may be said to be two bays, one north and one south; the first lying between the lighthouse and the pier, and the second upon the Basque beach. In the centre of the north bay the Villa Eugenie reposes on a rocky eminence, 40 or 50 feet above the shore to the east of the town, and is seen from many points. East and west of it, the sloping beach, a fine sandy one, stretches away on the right hand to the steep rocks, about 70 feet high, under the lighthouse, resting on a jutting promontory forming the eastern enclosing arm, to the rocks on the west, among which, looking down the small harbour, may be seen the town lying above and back from them. Westward from the Villa Eugenie, perhaps about half a mile distant, an imposing range of lofty hotels—the Grand Hotel and the Angleterre, with the Casino between them, all towering many storeys high—meets the view, and beyond them we see the spire of a large town church; and then still beyond, outward to the sea, running to a point, a range of high rocks or small hills which enclose the bay on the west. Some of the hilly rocks are surmounted by houses, and one prominent one by a semaphore or signal station. The rocks afford some shelter to the beach from the fury of the waves, but are themselves gradually giving way. No doubt at one time they formed a strong natural breakwater and better barrier, and extended well out into the ocean; but year by year they are succumbing to the force of the Atlantic and the storms which visit the Bay of Biscay.ill421PORT-VIEUX BATHING ESTABLISHMENT,BIARRITZ.In the centre of the north bay, and to the westward of the Villa Eugenie, a short promenade has been formed, on or adjoining which the great bathing establishment has been erected, the beach here being called the Grande Plage, in contradistinction to the other beaches. From the west end of it the road winds up below the Casino and past the Angleterre, and along by the top of the rocks overlooking the harbour, and through a tunnel under one of the hills to what was intended to be a breakwater, but is now a sort of pier, at which no vessels ever lie, becoming, therefore, only a place people stroll to in moderately calm weather, to watch the waves dashing upon and over the rocks in wild beauty. In rough weather no one dare venture. From this pier the road winds back towards the town and southward round the Port-Vieux, and through a gap in the rocks to the sandy Basque beach, which extends away southward for miles, the rocks rising perpendicularly from it, perhaps 80 feet high, the curve of the rocks forming the south bay. From any of the heights about the Port-Vieux or the Basque, one can see along the coast 20 miles to the entrance of the Bidassoa (the boundary there between France and Spain), and then on from that to the coast-line of Spanish mountains (offering a strong barrier against the aggression of the sea) for at least 40 miles farther, some even saying, though I should doubt it, seen 100 miles altogether. Southward the range of the Pyrenees bounds the horizon, the eye being caught by the Trois Couronnes or three-cornered or peaked mountain, rising boldly as commander of this battalion of the great guardian mountain chain.The town of Biarritz bears every mark of its rapid construction. The streets are very irregular, the houses having been placed just any way and according to any plan, at the mere caprice of the builders. One leading street, lined by trees, passes through it to the Port-Vieux. In the centre of the town this widens to what may be called a large square or place, whence the omnibuses or diligences start, and where carriages can be had for hire. The Hotel de Ville has been built at one end of this place, which, in the height of the season, must be full of life. The principal shops are in its neighbourhood, some of them exhibiting in their windows articles of lace worn by the Spanish ladies, and Spanish shawls, sword-sticks, stilettoes, as well as other things of a more agreeable use. Itinerant vendors, too, of Spanish goods are always going about during the season, sometimes gaily dressed in a sort of showy fancy Spanish costume; but when the summer season is over, they migrate to Pau, and even to Cannes, Mentone, and other winter-season places, where we frequently saw the same men and women so occupied we had previously noticed at Biarritz. Some shopkeepers from Nice open establishments during the season at Biarritz, and close them when it is over. Besides many good shops, there is a regular market, though of small size. The town covers a considerable extent of ground, and new houses are being constantly built. The ordinary population now exceeds 4000. The English church had been found too small for its occupants, and a large new one was, while we were there, in course of completion.Many nice-looking villas have been planted on the outskirts of the town, particularly upon and in the direction of the road to Bayonne. The heights above the Basque beach are likewise studded by various distinctive houses; and about a mile from town, isolated from everything about, there is a house belonging to Lord Ernest Bruce, built in the Moorish style with a glass dome, and surrounded by a garden.The French and Spanish form the bulk of the visitors during August and September, these months constituting,par excellence, what is called the season, while during the winter months the English take possession. In the winter months the hotel charges undergo great modification, andpensioncan then be had in some of the best hotels at 7 francs per day.[45]It is noteworthy thatpensionat Biarritz and Pau, and elsewhere in the south of France, includes wine. House accommodation, too, in the winter months is correspondingly cheap. The best months for enjoying Biarritz, we were informed, are the months of April and May, when the heat is sufficient but not oppressive. The month of July is sometimes unbearably hot. A family who had been there during July told us that they could hardly venture out in that month till late in the evening; and if the sirocco prevailed, they were even obliged to close the windows, the hot sand percolating through every crevice. The band of music, I understood, plays only during the two months of the season, and removes at its close, when the enclosure is dismantled.But the great attractions of Biarritz consist in its beach, its rocks, its grand seas, and in its capacities for good bathing. We were never fortunate enough to witness a storm in the bay, although there was occasionally enough of swell upon the water to show what a storm could be. Our landlord, speaking of the appearance of a storm on the ocean, described it as ‘terreeble;’ and no doubt it is, and not very safe, too, as sometimes people are washed away by an unexpected dash and sweep of the ocean. But a standing evidence of the force of the waves is exhibited by the remains or ruins of the breakwater, begun in view of here affording a port of refuge and pier. Regarding this scheme Count Russell says (p. 13):—‘NapoleonIII.suggested it, meaning to connect by a breakwater several of the detached rocks scattered on the north-western side of the Porte Vieux, and thus to form a small harbour, only open to the north. A clever engineer, M. Palaà, was entrusted with this almost superhuman undertaking, but the only result has been, after years of labour and more than one sacrifice of life, to accumulate a shapeless and useless mass of ruins along the intended harbour. The breakwater (or what is left of it) was built with concrete; artificial square blocks weighing 36 tons (some of them 48) were sunk by hundreds at random and just where they liked to fall! But the tremendous surf has been playing with them as if they were pebbles, and in 1868 one of them was carried right over the pier (22 feet above low-water mark) like a toy or a feather! For these and for financial reasons the works are now suspended. They have already cost £120,000, and all to no purpose. In fact, nothing human can resist such a sea as the Sea of Biscay, except, perhaps, at St. Jean de Luz, where nature has half made a harbour.’The sea is by far too treacherous and violent to make boating safe, and we seldom, if ever, saw pleasure-boats out, although they were lying in the harbour.Some isolated rocks stand out in the water, separated from the mainland, with which, I fancy, they have at one time been connected. They are rough, and rugged, and bare, and honeycombed, and even, occasionally, altogether perforated by the water; bearing witness in their haggard condition to the violence of the waves by which they are continually assailed, undermined, broken up, and thrown down. It is, indeed, very beautiful to see, during a swell, the water lashing the rocks and dashing over in clouds of white spray, or sometimes through the perforations or over and down the rocks in streams of white foam. During the day we used to stand and observe the swell surging into the large cavities formed by continual action, and tossed out again, as if the rocks had said with Phineas, ‘Friend, thee isn’t wanted here;’ while the whole water around, nothing daunted, was boiling and excited, dancing and glancing and sparkling in the sun as if in glee, or in the spirit of fun and mischief. This, too, in calm weather. But at night we used to hear the boom of the waves as they tumbled into these caverns and were as promptly turned out again, as if it had been guns firing—forwhich, indeed, at first we were inclined to mistake the sound.Unlike the Mediterranean Sea, the tide has the usual ebb and flow of the Atlantic, consequently not only is the beach more interesting, but the town is kept more healthy. The sands afford the usual occupation and delight to children, but shells and seaweed are rare. A good many jelly-fish are thrown up; some gelatinous animals of a large size perhaps were octopi. We used often to sit by the beach and watch the sea, especially under the Basque Rocks, where the waves, with the slightest breath of wind, would come charging gallantly in, high and crested, and turn gracefully over in long lines when they neared the shore. Over the rocks the inhabitants would seem to have the odious habit of running their drains or dirty water, both unsightly to the eye and leaving disagreeable black pools below. This surely might be remedied. It does create a drawback to this most enjoyable beach. Equally objectionable, if not more so, is the practice, so offensive at Cannes, of putting the outlets of the town drains close to each of the bathing-places. The tide, no doubt, is such at Biarritz as to remove the stuff carried down, but there could or should be no difficulty in carrying the pipes away to some distance from parts where people enter the water to bathe, and at all events in not making them so obnoxiously near and prominent.There are three bathing establishments at Biarritz. One, and the largest, is on the Grande Plage, between the Villa Eugenie and the hotels, though much closer to the latter. It is a large wooden building of one storey, in the Moorish style, and opening from the promenade, three or four steps leading down at each end to the sands. When the tide is low there is a long space of sand to traverse. At the west side, where the rocks are, a rope for the use of the bathers is stretched between two rocks runningseaward. The second is on the Port-Vieux, a creek perhaps 400 or 500 feet long by 100 to 150 feet wide. The wooden building forming the bathing establishment, of very neat design, with a balcony running all round, and a red-tiled roof, is built on three sides of the square down to the usual high-water mark. The fourth and open side is to the sea, which for a good way out is hemmed in by rocks, between which a rope, slack but strong, is stretched across the creek, hanging, in very low tide, considerably above water, but in high tide having the middle part submerged. One side of the house is devoted to the dressing-rooms of the ladies and the other to those of the gentlemen, and long wooden stairs on each side enable the bathers to reach the sands. A few yards brings into sufficient depth for bathing, but at low water the sea goes back so as to land one among the rocks, especially in spring tides, and bathing is then not so pleasant, especially to non-swimmers; but this condition does not last above an hour. When the wind is in the west, even when hardly perceptible, there is more or less surf at the edge, and in strong west or north-west winds the swell must be such as to prevent bathing altogether at the Port-Vieux. But in this case more shelter will no doubt be had at the Grande Plage, which is to a small extent protected on the west by rocks. In stormy weather it must be altogether impossible to bathe anywhere. The third bathing establishment is at (though raised some feet above) the Basque beach, and is intended for the convenience of those residing in that neighbourhood on the plateau above. It is smaller considerably than either of the other two, and can be reached from the sands by ascending a ladder or stair of steps, or from the town by descending a zigzag path from the top of the nearly perpendicular rock against which it is placed. The arrangements of all are, I suppose, on exactly the same principles: little boxes under cover of the establishment for undressing and dressing, towels, andthe usual appliances, including a tub of hot water to take the sand out of the feet.The establishment at the Grande Plage is much the largest, but we always gave the preference to the Port-Vieux, where the Empress formerly used to sit and watch the bathers if she did not bathe herself. The town and road are high above it, and descending by a handsome stone staircase, one is confronted at the bottom by the ticket office, where (those not bathing can without charge go down to the beach) those intending to bathe pay according to their requirements, usually from half a franc to a franc each, the assistance of a bathing man being charged half a franc additional. No gratuities are expected, but a box at the dressing-room entrance-door modestly appears, into which those who choose may in passing drop a coin now and then. Bathers can be supplied with a bathing dress, and have it washed, but most people naturally prefer to have their own habiliments.Bathing is the great occupation of the visitors. Many bathe twice a day, and some, I believe, all the year round, wind and weather permitting. The sea is full of saline particles, and is usually warm, while the atmosphere is also warm and salubrious, so that bathing is even advantageous to those who dare not venture on it in the British Isles. Unless the wind be blowing, say, from the north-west, it is almost always possible to obtain a dip. To call a bathe there a dip, however, would be exceedingly inappropriate. It is a steady, serious occupation of some duration, and more or less protracted according to the heat of the weather and the enthusiasm of the bather. The times for bathing are in the morning before breakfast, after breakfast between ten and twelve, and in the afternoon between three and six. During the bathing hours spectators in crowds, perhaps not so numerous and certainly not so noisy as at Ramsgate on a forenoon, but stationed uponevery available point, or quietly standing or sitting on rocks, sands, or chairs, or on the steps or balconies of the establishments, amusedly watch the performances, which are extremely interesting, and to British eyes peculiar. At the Port-Vieux special vantage-ground is gained by the road, which, like a gallery, envelopes the three sides, and being higher than the roof of the building, enables the passers-by to peer down from perhaps 50 feet above on the aquatic sport below.For ladies and gentlemen array themselves in bathing costume, in which they march down to the water from the establishment—the ladies in general wearing over all a cloak or shawl, which they drop ere they reach the edge, and it is taken charge of by a friend or a bathing man. The ladies’ habit, of which the fanciful patterns (possibly imagined and engraved in far-away Paris) exhibited in dressmakers’ shop windows afford but a faint and incorrect idea (as, for example, in representing ladies appearing in lace frills, and trig, tight, little laced boots), usually consists of a short tunic with equally short sleeves, not reaching to the elbows, and knee-breeches reaching barely to the knees, the tunic girt at the waste by a girdle, to which is attached in the majority of cases,à laJohn Gilpin, two empty yellow gourds as floats. Then very often a straw hat is stuck upon the head, and tied by a ribbon over the crown and broad brim and under the chin, giving the appearance of a frightful ‘ugly;’ while on the feet are generally worn a pair of local shoes made of canvas, with thick hemp soles, which, decorated with devices in worsted, are very commonly worn by the residents, and even for walking about the beach by many of the visitors, and are sold for 2 or 3 francs per pair. The bathing dresses vary in pattern and shape, and are of all colours. White is seldom worn. Bright colours—red, scarlet, green, light blue, yellow, amber—are often seen; in short, the aim with many is apparently at something stunning, suitable for the adornment of a pretty mermaid. To add to the effect, smart young ladies will also have their dresses embroidered, and otherwise made attractive and bewitching, in the way only a graceful girl knows how; and really it must be confessed that this bloomer costume is exceedingly becoming, at all events to the younger ladies. Stout old ladies cut a figure in it sometimes remarkable.ill429BIARRITZ BATHERS.The gentlemen, on the other hand, look like harlequins, for their costume in general consists of a somewhat tight-fitting dress either of cotton or woollen, and most commonly in stripes of two colours, and of all colours and shades, though white and blue stripes are the most common. Their dress costs from 6f. to 20f. (a very good woollen one in red and black stripes cost me 13f.). Some of the old gentlemen wear a straw hat loose on their heads, so that occasionally it is seen floating away from the wearer by reason of an accidental wave or submersion. I suppose the object of the straw hat is to obtain protection against the beams of the sun, but it suggests the uncomfortable idea that the wearer never plunges his or her head under water, the doing of which would, I doubt not, afford equal protection against the sun’s heat, and is in any view always necessary to prevent a flow of blood to the brain in bathing.[46]In these varied and brightly-coloured costumes, the bathers cut gay figures. But the picture is composed and completed when they enter into action. At the edge of the water, the gentlemen bathers, sometimes portly and rotund, having threaded in bare feet their way down through the ladies sitting on the stairs, and through the crowd of spectators on the sand, wait with patience in their brilliant, tight, and unusual attire, the observed of all observers, the arrival of their lady friends, if they any have, and ontheir arrival, taking their hand, accompany them into the water; or the ladies take the hand of a bathing man engaged to attend them, and march in under their charge, and presently they are in the clear salt water, alive with bathers in every colour and in every form of movement practised by those who go down to the sea to bathe. Some rush from the shore wildly and inhumanly into the water, and, wickedly regardless of frightening the small fishes, dive head foremost with a splash, and strike out. Others stalk in majestically, and either quietly push far out, or paddle about pretending or attempting to swim in shallow water. Then other gentlemen are giving encouragement to their little boys or girls, or to their wives, or possibly their lovers, or improbably their sisters, either dipping them, or helping them to swim, or teaching them to float, or joining in other usual maritime gyrations. Others catch hold of the rope stretched out if the water be low, and dance about in a mad and profitless way, or if the tide be high, the swimmers catch at it as they pass and take a rest; and sometimes, if at a proper height, an adventurous one will sit upon the rope, like a sparrow on a telegraph wire, when (perhaps beholding admiringly from the treacherous seat some fat lady floating on her back on the surface, her bathing integuments undulating in the water like the tentacular folds of a jelly-fish) of a sudden somebody else, perhaps waggishly, perhaps innocently, clutches at the slack rope, and with unexpected shock upsets the unwary, abstracted philosopher, who with a whirl capsizes heels in the air, and head making discoveries through eyegate, nosegate, and mouthgate in the brine below. Or two recently arrived English young ladies will walk in, hand in hand, scorning the aid of a bathing man, and perform together, with all the regularity of clockwork, an endless series of curtsey ducks in the water without stirring from the safely selected spot. Other ladies, to vary the programme, are carried out by a bathing man and dipped horizontally in the wave, sothat head and feet obtain ablution simultaneously; or a stout matron will take hold of a bathing man, who swims out with her on his back apparently, so that she enjoys the luxury of being buoyed up and drawn through the water, and can say, ‘I’m afloat.’ But these sham swimmers are notably the exceptions. The great matter of observation is that the vast majority of the ladies, young and old, swim about as easily as the gentlemen, though they are in doing so generally accompanied by a man swimming behind or beside them in case of accident; and, indeed, one important occupation of those employed as bathing men is to teach the young idea how to swim, an accomplishment which, after a few lessons, they are usually able to master, and young girls are constantly seen swimming about among the others, like minnows among the tritons. Some ladies, after long practice, are very adventurous; two of them will go out together in a boat a considerable distance, when, throwing off their cloaks, they will dive head foremost from the side of the boat and swim ashore, the boat following. One little girl was most clever. She would go out to what looks like the vestige of an old pier, and, jumping high, perform a somersault, and, diving under the water, ‘come up smiling,’ swim about, and do it again and again. I have, however, seen many older diving belles jumping from the same pier. In fact, bathing in all its forms is here carried by the ladies to an enviable perfection altogether unknown at home; and while it not merely affords a most invigorating exercise, it becomes a most valuable branch of education, tending to lessen the risk of casualties at sea. It were well that at home the good example could be followed.The late King of Hanover was at Biarritz while we were there. Being blind, he was carried into the water upon achaise-à-porteurby four men, his suite bathing with him. His daughter was said to bathe at an early hour in themorning, and many ladies, we were told, bathed as early as six o’clock. During the time we were there, and the weather being cold, forenoon and afternoon were preferable.The bathing men will never dip one’s head unless expressly desired to do so, and never propose it—a great mistake. The bathing dress is not at all inconvenient or uncomfortable while in the water, but it is heavy out of it, especially if of woollen material (decidedly the best kind), because it absorbs and retains a great deal of water.Away from the beach all the walks are on the high roads, which are principally three,—to the railway station, to Bayonne, and to the lighthouse. The distance to the lighthouse by the road is considerably farther than by the beach, from which to the platform on the top of the rocks whereon it stands, access is had by a steep path. From the top of the lighthouse, 220 feet from the level of the sea to the lantern, a most extensive view is had northward up the west coast of France, bordered by the Landes—a low sandy coast, now planted with pine trees to guard against the incursions of the sea—stretching 100 miles towards Bordeaux; and in the other direction along the Spanish coast, bounded by a chain of mountains far as the eye can see; while inland the view extends towards the Pyrenees. A steep path leads from the lighthouse to a small recessed platform half-way down the rock, where in calm weather one can behold the swelling and surging sea below ever and anon dashing against the rocks, and where men repair with long rods and lines to fish. But in stormy weather it is dangerous even to stand on the ground above; people are exposed to be swept away by unexpected rushes of the sea, and many have been drowned there in consequence. The fish caught at this platform, so far as we know, were small. Indeed, at Biarritz there are not many caught, though the table is always supplied from neighbouring fishing stations. Lobsters, however, seem to be plentiful.The Villa Eugenie, between the lighthouse and the town, is an object of interest to every one visiting Biarritz. It is shown to the public on Mondays. Entrance is had by the west approach, where there is a lodge and large but not elegant stabling accommodation. The grounds are not extensive (about thirty acres in all), but sufficient for a marine residence of the kind; nor do they exhibit much attention to horticulture, though perhaps it is hardly fair to judge of them in present circumstances. The house, of three storeys, commenced in the year 1854, forms three sides of a square, with anannexe(I presume, offices) on the east side. It still belongs to the Empress, who, of course, never occupies it now, and she will not sell or let it. Ringing the bell, an old servant (who expects a small fee from each party for his trouble) opens the door and shows visitors through the house. Our troop consisted of several distinct parties, mustering probably above a dozen persons in all. The rooms are of comfortable size, and compose just what an Empress would consider to be a snuggery. The dining-room is the largest room in the house, the windows facing on one side the west to the town and sea, on another northward to the sea and lighthouse. On a rough guess, and speaking from recollection, it is probably from 40 to 50 feet long and from 20 to 25 feet wide, the ceiling lofty. The reception-room is comparatively small. The bedrooms of the Emperor, Empress, and Prince are just of a comfortable size. There are many small bedrooms, very nicely decorated, for use of the suite or for visitors. The floors are polished, and the staircase is so slippery that people are cautioned to take great care in descending, the steps not being carpeted. It was melancholy to think it was no longer possible for poor Eugenie to occupy this delightful residence.[47]Perhaps it is the only place in France wherethe Imperial arms remain, and one sees upon it also the touching monogramƎNE, which reads up or down. The place would to our Queen be objectionable as being so close to a town; but to a French lady this, no doubt, would give it additional attraction, and it must be recollected that Biarritz in reality largely owes its existence to the Empress having built her villa there. For this the French people should be grateful, although it looks a little unlike it, because in the grounds two pillars in front of a small unfinished chapel for the Imperial family use have been much broken. This, however, may merely have been the result of accident.It is a pleasant drive to Bayonne, which lies about five miles off. Like many other roads in France, such as at Pau, the road proceeds a long way in a straight line, flanked by regimental rows of trees, which, affording shade from the sun, have a peculiarly stiff effect. Here, as elsewhere, too, contrary to the Roman beau-ideal of a road that it should be level, this one, though straight, yields to the inequalities of the ground, and is alternately in hollows and on elevations. But people ought to be thankful the road is so good, for, speaking of a time about forty years ago or more, Dr. Taylor (Climate of Pau) says:—‘There was no carriage road from Bayonne to Biarritz, the only conveyance beingen cacolet, which contrivance consisted of a pair of panniers laid on the back of a horse or mule, into each of which a traveller of equal weight, if possible, had to perch himself at the same instant with his fellow, and to preserve their position as best they could. In the event of one being lighter than the other, there was a make-weight of stones put along with him in the pannier to adjust the equilibrium.’Judging from the specimens of comfortable Spanish ladieswe saw at Biarritz, I should pity the horse or the mule which had to carry two of them.About half way to Biarritz, a very elegant white stone villa in the Moorish style is passed—the Villa Sophia. There is something very unique in the appearance of this building, which is covered with arabesques, inducing me to go out one day and take a rough sketch of it. On approaching Bayonne, the road lies through a wood—I suppose, a suburban park. Then on entering the town we see a long many-arched stone bridge spanning the Adour,—here very wide,—and beyond it the fortifications, built by Vauban. These may at one time have been considered strong, but at the present day cannot be thought so, and they are overlooked by neighbouring heights. The fort lacks the picturesquely-imposing appearance of stone wall castles. A good deal of historical interest attaches to Bayonne and its fortifications. The town itself is not remarkable for much save its four bridges, crossing very close to each other the river Nive, which here joins the Adour. The cathedral, above seven hundred years old, is large and handsome, and is in course of restoration. The spires (one of them only is completed, the other being in course of completion) are very beautiful, tapering gradually, with spirelets around; but the church is like too many others abroad, rather hemmed in by the houses around.There are other good drives about Biarritz, and particularly to the Bois de Boulogne and to the old historical maritime town of St. Jean de Luz, about ten miles distant, and not far from the Spanish border. It was here LouisXIV.had a residence and was married. His house, in the French style, with square towers at the four corners, stands now in the centre of the town upon the main street, and in its ground floor is occupied with shops and cafés. St. Jean is also a bathing place, but is not so popular, and is certainly not so attractive, as Biarritz.There is a fine drive to Cambo, at the base of the Pyrenees, but during the first part of the period of our stay at Biarritz the weather was too cold to take it, and in the latter part the days were getting rather too short, the distance being about eighteen miles.[48]Few people visit Biarritz without making an excursion by railway to St. Sebastian to see a little of Spain. It is thirty-seven miles distant by rail, and can be easily managed in a day—in fact, going by morning train, one is left rather too much time in St. Sebastian. Crossing the river Bidassoa, the picturesque town of Fuenterrabia is the first object catching the eye on the Spanish border. A halt of an hour is made at Irun for examination of the luggage, and it is possible, though a risk, to drive off and return in time for the train after a hurried examination of this interesting old town, which from the railway has an appearance of being deserted. Leaving Irun, the railway winds its way through the mountains, and reaches St. Sebastian, which is a tidy-looking town standing at the mouth of a river crossed by a handsome bridge, with view out to the Bay of Biscay and to the fortress of St. Sebastian on a hill next the sea. The town lies on the landward side of this hill, the more modern part of it, at least, consisting of wide streets and lofty square houses with nothing redeeming about their aspect. Passing along the main wide street from the bridge, we arrive at an enclosed natural harbour, a tract of sea, like a bag contracted at the neck, through which communication is had with the bay without. The shipping is not extensive; the harbour proper, lying on the side nearest the sea, being small. On the south side, next the newer portion of the town and the railway, the grandplagebathing-place, with a wooden bathing-house, is found.Behind it the mountains rise picturesquely. It requires an order to see the fortress, which is mainly of earthen ramparts. The town itself has little of interest in it. Close by the railway station, however, there is a very large wooden amphitheatre for bull-fights. Bills containing announcements of one of these savage entertainments were placarded on the building and the railway stations and elsewhere. The dwellings on the line of railway are similar to those about Biarritz, principally of the Basque style; many of them have on the top little glazed houses, sort of huts, no doubt designated, according to the taste of the occupants, as observatories, retreats, or smoking-rooms. Except for seeing a little of Spain, I believe it is better rather to stop and see the curious old town of Fuenterrabia.After 1st October a very marked change came over the appearance of Biarritz. Nearly all of the Spanish and French visitors (coming no doubt for the gaiety) then left, while the English influx for the winter season had scarcely begun. During the first fortnight of this month the town wore a deserted look, and this was greatly aggravated by many of the shops commencing to pack up for migration to other places, and one after another closing. I daresay, a month later, there would be more life in the place.We had all experienced the greatest benefit from our short residence of about a month in Biarritz, and although the weather was, during the greater part of the time, especially at first, very cold, in consequence of the northeasterly winds, we felt that our invalid especially had derived great good from the ‘soothing and invigorating air;’ so much so that we fondly thought, owing to this and the former changes, she was now in recovered health, and that it only wanted another winter in the Riviera to set her completely up. Biarritz is considered too cold a place for delicate persons to winter in, and the approach of its winterseason would in any view have warned us away. But we did feel extremely reluctant to leave; for this agreeable watering-place had quite taken our fancy, and perhaps we felt the leaving all the more that we had not seen it in its stern grandeur of a storm, or even in its wild grandeur of a cloudy sunset, while, under the influence of a gentle wind blowing from the south, the day upon which we left was one of the finest and sunniest we had had while there. Having a good hour before departure, we visited all the beaches and rocks, and lingered sorrowfully upon the scenes now so radiant in sunshine and so genial in their warmth, where we had spent pleasant times, and thence looked out upon the bright sparkling ocean gleaming below us, and the waves gently kissing the shore and bidding us adieu, and with unwilling steps returned to our hotel to leave for Pau. This leave-taking is one of the penalties to be paid for the pleasure of travelling in bright spots where everything has combined to make one happy—where the scenes are new and pleasing, where the object of travel seems to have been secured, and where hearts in perfect harmony and with congenial likings are able to appreciate the blessings they have thus been privileged together to enjoy.

BIARRITZ.

I hadthought it might have been possible to arrange for proceeding across country from Lyons to Biarritz by a westerly line, say by Clermont, instead of by the Mediterranean line, which we had already travelled. But although there are lines in that direction, it seemed extremely difficult to make them fit in so that we could, upon stopping at any place, obtain next day a train at a suitable hour for prosecuting the journey. Not only so, but being quite out of the ordinary beat of tourists, and especially of English tourists, one could not possibly rely on getting such hotel accommodation by the way as is desirable and is procurable on the beaten tracks. I therefore gave up this thought, though not till after some laborious studies of theLivret Chaix, and after consulting Cook’s agent at Geneva, who, I found, did not issue tickets towards Biarritz. There seemed no alternative, therefore, but to go by the Chemin de Fer du Midi, the Paris and Marseilles Railway. We had hoped, it being the 12th September, to have seen the Rhone in all its summer beauty, but were disappointed. The day was dull and misty when we started, and soon after it began to rain; so that we could see little, and everything looked dismal, whereas in summer sunshine the prospect is no doubt very lovely. Before we reached Avignon (in six hoursten minutes) the rain ceased. We stopped a night there (see p. 135), and had fortunately good weather. Next afternoon brought us to Nismes, two hours distant from Avignon by rail; and after another night in our old quarters there, and seeing places this time in sunshine instead of shrouded by the mistral, which prevailed during our visit in the previous year, we left at mid-day for Toulouse, arriving at this large city about eleven o’clock at night. There is not another train by which we could have proceeded from Nismes to Toulouse during day, nor is there any place nearer Toulouse where it is desirable to stop except Montpellier; but Montpellier is only an hour distant from Nismes, and better adapted, therefore, for stoppage coming from Toulouse on the return journey, and on our return journey we accordingly spent a night there. Cette, where we changed carriages and were long detained for no apparent good reason, and where there are extensive salines or manufactories of salt, lies very low and is marshy. It is therefore considered a most unhealthy spot, not to be thought of for sleeping at. The journey to Cette is not particularly interesting. Beyond it to Toulouse the country is more inviting. The distance is about 136 miles, and the train most tiresomely stopped several minutes at every little station, twenty-nine or thirty in all, with an extra halt at Narbonne, amounting to twenty minutes, where a hasty though acceptable dinner waited the arrival of the train. The more interesting part of the road was passed in the dark.

We had been recommended by fellow-passengers to the Hotel Sacaron at Toulouse, and found it remarkably comfortable; but to all appearance it was then out of season, as we seemed to be the only guests, except it might be our old friends the mosquitoes, who, paying nothing but penalties, were unceasing in their attentions, and from whom we might have suffered more than we did had we not beenwell protected by the snowy-white mosquito curtains. Our daughter, however, had a long watch, and discovered in the morning her forehead was jewelled in thirty-two holes.

Leaving next morning for Pau by the 11 o’clock train, we had no opportunity of getting more than a glimpse at this important provincial town. The houses are large, and the streets—such of them as we saw—are wide. The railway station is handsome and tidy. We arrived at Pau about 5p.m., by a quick or express train, having only stopped at eleven out of thirty-four stations. Notwithstanding it took us six hours to go little more than 130 miles, being at the rate of 22 miles per hour. However, it was an improvement upon the previous day’s travelling. The only other trains by which we could have gone from Toulouse to Pau were two,—one which left at midnight, getting in at 10 o’clock next morning; and another which left at 5.20A.M., getting to Pau at half-past 1. I mention these facts just to show that every consideration is not paid here, and elsewhere (and it is better here than elsewhere) on French lines, to the convenience of travellers. Apart from the disagreeableness of starting at such inhuman hours, to travel by the midnight train would be to miss for great part of the way the view of the most interesting scenery along the railway route, which skirts the Pyrenees.

These grand mountains we saw now for the first time. Near to Lourdes the railway approaches them closely, and the church of Lourdes, to which it has been customary of recent years to make pilgrimages, is not far from the railway. It rises loftily from the ground far below. A crowd of pilgrims was marching towards its supposed miraculous shrines. The scenery about Lourdes is very picturesque, and the railway to Pau for a great part of the way runs parallel to and overlooks a mountain river, apparently the Adour, very much resembling at this part such rivers as the Garry in Perthshire: a clear-flowing stream, descendingthrough a rocky bed, with many a rushing fall or rapid between converging rocks.

We arrived at Pau on the Saturday afternoon, and left it on the following Tuesday morning—just having time to rest. I reserve, therefore, any observations regarding Pau till our return journey, when we spent a longer time there. The railway ride (between sixty and seventy miles) from Pau to Bayonne is very beautiful, part of the way being by the banks of the Adour, which, as it approaches Bayonne, becomes wide, and is, indeed, navigable for forty miles up. We were advised to book to Bayonne, and hire thence to Biarritz; but I found the fares asked for the drive so excessive, occasioned, as we afterwards learnt, by races being then held at Bayonne, that we took the train just about to start on to Biarritz. The station La Negresse proved, however, to be two miles out of Biarritz, and only one carriage was waiting disengaged. For this short distance I was charged 8 francs; certainly exorbitant, but during the season at Biarritz everything is very high, and the races had then taken off the usual supply of vehicles, so that we were at the mercy of the gorgeously-attired coachman, who drove us in by a pretty rural road between trees and hedges. In all likelihood he had driven a party to join the train we had just left, so that we may have been indebted even to this chance for finding any conveyance waiting. I do not know why the railway company laid their line so far away from the town, unless it was that they did not appreciate the importance of the station. As an attempt to remedy the evil, a short line intended to connect Bayonne specially with Biarritz has been made; but though the Biarritz terminus is tolerably near the centre of the town, the other terminus does not enter Bayonne, and is a long way from the general railway terminus. It may be useful for excursionists, but it is useless for other traffic, and I should hardly think it would pay.

We had been recommended to the Hotel de Paris, near the rocks, and, with some difficulty, the town being then very full, got accommodation in it; rough enough at the first, but after two nights we obtained a change to first-floor rooms, fairly good. The hotel is situated in a public square planted with trees, the north end being open, overlooking the sea. Here the band played every evening, Sunday included, from half-past 8 till 10 o’clock during the season, making our rooms for the time very noisy; but as our windows looked right down upon the seated enclosure, brightly lighted up with numerous lamps, it was a little variety and divertisement to watch the gay crowd with whom it was at first filled, who paid for admission half a franc each. The charges in the hotels and for lodgings at Biarritz are said to be, during the summer season, immoderately high, and to cost in some cases as much as £5 per day. I cannot help thinking, however, that there must be a little exaggeration in these statements, or some extravagance on the part of the visitor so charged. We were ourselves charged at no excessive rate. The Angleterre and Grand Hotels, with superior arrangements, I believe, charged a good deal more. But there are other and more moderate hotels, such as the Hotel de France and the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, which, however, are both in the town itself, and not so well situated as those I have already named.

We remained at Biarritz till 13th October, nearly four weeks, and enjoyed it very much, although for a considerable part of the time, particularly during the earlier part, east and north-east winds, said to be unusual, prevailed, rendering the place for the time being cold, and giving us a taste of what winter weather is there, a visitor informing us that he had not found it colder in winter. If, however, it be no colder on winter days than what we did experience, it could hardly be described as trying for persons in good,strong health; but the prevailing winds are west and south-west, both mild and salubrious, though sometimes the south wind blows, and brings with it, in the hot months, the parching heat of the sirocco.

Biarritz is a place of very recent growth. Formerly nobody but English people, for the sake of the bathing it afforded, frequented it. Afterwards the civil war of succession in Spain brought many of the best Spanish families to live in it as a frontier town and among others the Countess de Montijo and her two daughters, one of whom became the wife of NapoleonIII.Her fondness for the place induced the Emperor to build the Villa Eugenie as a marine residence, and so, practically, made this delightful watering-place.

There may be said to be two bays, one north and one south; the first lying between the lighthouse and the pier, and the second upon the Basque beach. In the centre of the north bay the Villa Eugenie reposes on a rocky eminence, 40 or 50 feet above the shore to the east of the town, and is seen from many points. East and west of it, the sloping beach, a fine sandy one, stretches away on the right hand to the steep rocks, about 70 feet high, under the lighthouse, resting on a jutting promontory forming the eastern enclosing arm, to the rocks on the west, among which, looking down the small harbour, may be seen the town lying above and back from them. Westward from the Villa Eugenie, perhaps about half a mile distant, an imposing range of lofty hotels—the Grand Hotel and the Angleterre, with the Casino between them, all towering many storeys high—meets the view, and beyond them we see the spire of a large town church; and then still beyond, outward to the sea, running to a point, a range of high rocks or small hills which enclose the bay on the west. Some of the hilly rocks are surmounted by houses, and one prominent one by a semaphore or signal station. The rocks afford some shelter to the beach from the fury of the waves, but are themselves gradually giving way. No doubt at one time they formed a strong natural breakwater and better barrier, and extended well out into the ocean; but year by year they are succumbing to the force of the Atlantic and the storms which visit the Bay of Biscay.

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PORT-VIEUX BATHING ESTABLISHMENT,BIARRITZ.

PORT-VIEUX BATHING ESTABLISHMENT,BIARRITZ.

PORT-VIEUX BATHING ESTABLISHMENT,BIARRITZ.

In the centre of the north bay, and to the westward of the Villa Eugenie, a short promenade has been formed, on or adjoining which the great bathing establishment has been erected, the beach here being called the Grande Plage, in contradistinction to the other beaches. From the west end of it the road winds up below the Casino and past the Angleterre, and along by the top of the rocks overlooking the harbour, and through a tunnel under one of the hills to what was intended to be a breakwater, but is now a sort of pier, at which no vessels ever lie, becoming, therefore, only a place people stroll to in moderately calm weather, to watch the waves dashing upon and over the rocks in wild beauty. In rough weather no one dare venture. From this pier the road winds back towards the town and southward round the Port-Vieux, and through a gap in the rocks to the sandy Basque beach, which extends away southward for miles, the rocks rising perpendicularly from it, perhaps 80 feet high, the curve of the rocks forming the south bay. From any of the heights about the Port-Vieux or the Basque, one can see along the coast 20 miles to the entrance of the Bidassoa (the boundary there between France and Spain), and then on from that to the coast-line of Spanish mountains (offering a strong barrier against the aggression of the sea) for at least 40 miles farther, some even saying, though I should doubt it, seen 100 miles altogether. Southward the range of the Pyrenees bounds the horizon, the eye being caught by the Trois Couronnes or three-cornered or peaked mountain, rising boldly as commander of this battalion of the great guardian mountain chain.

The town of Biarritz bears every mark of its rapid construction. The streets are very irregular, the houses having been placed just any way and according to any plan, at the mere caprice of the builders. One leading street, lined by trees, passes through it to the Port-Vieux. In the centre of the town this widens to what may be called a large square or place, whence the omnibuses or diligences start, and where carriages can be had for hire. The Hotel de Ville has been built at one end of this place, which, in the height of the season, must be full of life. The principal shops are in its neighbourhood, some of them exhibiting in their windows articles of lace worn by the Spanish ladies, and Spanish shawls, sword-sticks, stilettoes, as well as other things of a more agreeable use. Itinerant vendors, too, of Spanish goods are always going about during the season, sometimes gaily dressed in a sort of showy fancy Spanish costume; but when the summer season is over, they migrate to Pau, and even to Cannes, Mentone, and other winter-season places, where we frequently saw the same men and women so occupied we had previously noticed at Biarritz. Some shopkeepers from Nice open establishments during the season at Biarritz, and close them when it is over. Besides many good shops, there is a regular market, though of small size. The town covers a considerable extent of ground, and new houses are being constantly built. The ordinary population now exceeds 4000. The English church had been found too small for its occupants, and a large new one was, while we were there, in course of completion.

Many nice-looking villas have been planted on the outskirts of the town, particularly upon and in the direction of the road to Bayonne. The heights above the Basque beach are likewise studded by various distinctive houses; and about a mile from town, isolated from everything about, there is a house belonging to Lord Ernest Bruce, built in the Moorish style with a glass dome, and surrounded by a garden.

The French and Spanish form the bulk of the visitors during August and September, these months constituting,par excellence, what is called the season, while during the winter months the English take possession. In the winter months the hotel charges undergo great modification, andpensioncan then be had in some of the best hotels at 7 francs per day.[45]It is noteworthy thatpensionat Biarritz and Pau, and elsewhere in the south of France, includes wine. House accommodation, too, in the winter months is correspondingly cheap. The best months for enjoying Biarritz, we were informed, are the months of April and May, when the heat is sufficient but not oppressive. The month of July is sometimes unbearably hot. A family who had been there during July told us that they could hardly venture out in that month till late in the evening; and if the sirocco prevailed, they were even obliged to close the windows, the hot sand percolating through every crevice. The band of music, I understood, plays only during the two months of the season, and removes at its close, when the enclosure is dismantled.

But the great attractions of Biarritz consist in its beach, its rocks, its grand seas, and in its capacities for good bathing. We were never fortunate enough to witness a storm in the bay, although there was occasionally enough of swell upon the water to show what a storm could be. Our landlord, speaking of the appearance of a storm on the ocean, described it as ‘terreeble;’ and no doubt it is, and not very safe, too, as sometimes people are washed away by an unexpected dash and sweep of the ocean. But a standing evidence of the force of the waves is exhibited by the remains or ruins of the breakwater, begun in view of here affording a port of refuge and pier. Regarding this scheme Count Russell says (p. 13):—

‘NapoleonIII.suggested it, meaning to connect by a breakwater several of the detached rocks scattered on the north-western side of the Porte Vieux, and thus to form a small harbour, only open to the north. A clever engineer, M. Palaà, was entrusted with this almost superhuman undertaking, but the only result has been, after years of labour and more than one sacrifice of life, to accumulate a shapeless and useless mass of ruins along the intended harbour. The breakwater (or what is left of it) was built with concrete; artificial square blocks weighing 36 tons (some of them 48) were sunk by hundreds at random and just where they liked to fall! But the tremendous surf has been playing with them as if they were pebbles, and in 1868 one of them was carried right over the pier (22 feet above low-water mark) like a toy or a feather! For these and for financial reasons the works are now suspended. They have already cost £120,000, and all to no purpose. In fact, nothing human can resist such a sea as the Sea of Biscay, except, perhaps, at St. Jean de Luz, where nature has half made a harbour.’

The sea is by far too treacherous and violent to make boating safe, and we seldom, if ever, saw pleasure-boats out, although they were lying in the harbour.

Some isolated rocks stand out in the water, separated from the mainland, with which, I fancy, they have at one time been connected. They are rough, and rugged, and bare, and honeycombed, and even, occasionally, altogether perforated by the water; bearing witness in their haggard condition to the violence of the waves by which they are continually assailed, undermined, broken up, and thrown down. It is, indeed, very beautiful to see, during a swell, the water lashing the rocks and dashing over in clouds of white spray, or sometimes through the perforations or over and down the rocks in streams of white foam. During the day we used to stand and observe the swell surging into the large cavities formed by continual action, and tossed out again, as if the rocks had said with Phineas, ‘Friend, thee isn’t wanted here;’ while the whole water around, nothing daunted, was boiling and excited, dancing and glancing and sparkling in the sun as if in glee, or in the spirit of fun and mischief. This, too, in calm weather. But at night we used to hear the boom of the waves as they tumbled into these caverns and were as promptly turned out again, as if it had been guns firing—forwhich, indeed, at first we were inclined to mistake the sound.

Unlike the Mediterranean Sea, the tide has the usual ebb and flow of the Atlantic, consequently not only is the beach more interesting, but the town is kept more healthy. The sands afford the usual occupation and delight to children, but shells and seaweed are rare. A good many jelly-fish are thrown up; some gelatinous animals of a large size perhaps were octopi. We used often to sit by the beach and watch the sea, especially under the Basque Rocks, where the waves, with the slightest breath of wind, would come charging gallantly in, high and crested, and turn gracefully over in long lines when they neared the shore. Over the rocks the inhabitants would seem to have the odious habit of running their drains or dirty water, both unsightly to the eye and leaving disagreeable black pools below. This surely might be remedied. It does create a drawback to this most enjoyable beach. Equally objectionable, if not more so, is the practice, so offensive at Cannes, of putting the outlets of the town drains close to each of the bathing-places. The tide, no doubt, is such at Biarritz as to remove the stuff carried down, but there could or should be no difficulty in carrying the pipes away to some distance from parts where people enter the water to bathe, and at all events in not making them so obnoxiously near and prominent.

There are three bathing establishments at Biarritz. One, and the largest, is on the Grande Plage, between the Villa Eugenie and the hotels, though much closer to the latter. It is a large wooden building of one storey, in the Moorish style, and opening from the promenade, three or four steps leading down at each end to the sands. When the tide is low there is a long space of sand to traverse. At the west side, where the rocks are, a rope for the use of the bathers is stretched between two rocks runningseaward. The second is on the Port-Vieux, a creek perhaps 400 or 500 feet long by 100 to 150 feet wide. The wooden building forming the bathing establishment, of very neat design, with a balcony running all round, and a red-tiled roof, is built on three sides of the square down to the usual high-water mark. The fourth and open side is to the sea, which for a good way out is hemmed in by rocks, between which a rope, slack but strong, is stretched across the creek, hanging, in very low tide, considerably above water, but in high tide having the middle part submerged. One side of the house is devoted to the dressing-rooms of the ladies and the other to those of the gentlemen, and long wooden stairs on each side enable the bathers to reach the sands. A few yards brings into sufficient depth for bathing, but at low water the sea goes back so as to land one among the rocks, especially in spring tides, and bathing is then not so pleasant, especially to non-swimmers; but this condition does not last above an hour. When the wind is in the west, even when hardly perceptible, there is more or less surf at the edge, and in strong west or north-west winds the swell must be such as to prevent bathing altogether at the Port-Vieux. But in this case more shelter will no doubt be had at the Grande Plage, which is to a small extent protected on the west by rocks. In stormy weather it must be altogether impossible to bathe anywhere. The third bathing establishment is at (though raised some feet above) the Basque beach, and is intended for the convenience of those residing in that neighbourhood on the plateau above. It is smaller considerably than either of the other two, and can be reached from the sands by ascending a ladder or stair of steps, or from the town by descending a zigzag path from the top of the nearly perpendicular rock against which it is placed. The arrangements of all are, I suppose, on exactly the same principles: little boxes under cover of the establishment for undressing and dressing, towels, andthe usual appliances, including a tub of hot water to take the sand out of the feet.

The establishment at the Grande Plage is much the largest, but we always gave the preference to the Port-Vieux, where the Empress formerly used to sit and watch the bathers if she did not bathe herself. The town and road are high above it, and descending by a handsome stone staircase, one is confronted at the bottom by the ticket office, where (those not bathing can without charge go down to the beach) those intending to bathe pay according to their requirements, usually from half a franc to a franc each, the assistance of a bathing man being charged half a franc additional. No gratuities are expected, but a box at the dressing-room entrance-door modestly appears, into which those who choose may in passing drop a coin now and then. Bathers can be supplied with a bathing dress, and have it washed, but most people naturally prefer to have their own habiliments.

Bathing is the great occupation of the visitors. Many bathe twice a day, and some, I believe, all the year round, wind and weather permitting. The sea is full of saline particles, and is usually warm, while the atmosphere is also warm and salubrious, so that bathing is even advantageous to those who dare not venture on it in the British Isles. Unless the wind be blowing, say, from the north-west, it is almost always possible to obtain a dip. To call a bathe there a dip, however, would be exceedingly inappropriate. It is a steady, serious occupation of some duration, and more or less protracted according to the heat of the weather and the enthusiasm of the bather. The times for bathing are in the morning before breakfast, after breakfast between ten and twelve, and in the afternoon between three and six. During the bathing hours spectators in crowds, perhaps not so numerous and certainly not so noisy as at Ramsgate on a forenoon, but stationed uponevery available point, or quietly standing or sitting on rocks, sands, or chairs, or on the steps or balconies of the establishments, amusedly watch the performances, which are extremely interesting, and to British eyes peculiar. At the Port-Vieux special vantage-ground is gained by the road, which, like a gallery, envelopes the three sides, and being higher than the roof of the building, enables the passers-by to peer down from perhaps 50 feet above on the aquatic sport below.

For ladies and gentlemen array themselves in bathing costume, in which they march down to the water from the establishment—the ladies in general wearing over all a cloak or shawl, which they drop ere they reach the edge, and it is taken charge of by a friend or a bathing man. The ladies’ habit, of which the fanciful patterns (possibly imagined and engraved in far-away Paris) exhibited in dressmakers’ shop windows afford but a faint and incorrect idea (as, for example, in representing ladies appearing in lace frills, and trig, tight, little laced boots), usually consists of a short tunic with equally short sleeves, not reaching to the elbows, and knee-breeches reaching barely to the knees, the tunic girt at the waste by a girdle, to which is attached in the majority of cases,à laJohn Gilpin, two empty yellow gourds as floats. Then very often a straw hat is stuck upon the head, and tied by a ribbon over the crown and broad brim and under the chin, giving the appearance of a frightful ‘ugly;’ while on the feet are generally worn a pair of local shoes made of canvas, with thick hemp soles, which, decorated with devices in worsted, are very commonly worn by the residents, and even for walking about the beach by many of the visitors, and are sold for 2 or 3 francs per pair. The bathing dresses vary in pattern and shape, and are of all colours. White is seldom worn. Bright colours—red, scarlet, green, light blue, yellow, amber—are often seen; in short, the aim with many is apparently at something stunning, suitable for the adornment of a pretty mermaid. To add to the effect, smart young ladies will also have their dresses embroidered, and otherwise made attractive and bewitching, in the way only a graceful girl knows how; and really it must be confessed that this bloomer costume is exceedingly becoming, at all events to the younger ladies. Stout old ladies cut a figure in it sometimes remarkable.

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BIARRITZ BATHERS.

BIARRITZ BATHERS.

BIARRITZ BATHERS.

The gentlemen, on the other hand, look like harlequins, for their costume in general consists of a somewhat tight-fitting dress either of cotton or woollen, and most commonly in stripes of two colours, and of all colours and shades, though white and blue stripes are the most common. Their dress costs from 6f. to 20f. (a very good woollen one in red and black stripes cost me 13f.). Some of the old gentlemen wear a straw hat loose on their heads, so that occasionally it is seen floating away from the wearer by reason of an accidental wave or submersion. I suppose the object of the straw hat is to obtain protection against the beams of the sun, but it suggests the uncomfortable idea that the wearer never plunges his or her head under water, the doing of which would, I doubt not, afford equal protection against the sun’s heat, and is in any view always necessary to prevent a flow of blood to the brain in bathing.[46]

In these varied and brightly-coloured costumes, the bathers cut gay figures. But the picture is composed and completed when they enter into action. At the edge of the water, the gentlemen bathers, sometimes portly and rotund, having threaded in bare feet their way down through the ladies sitting on the stairs, and through the crowd of spectators on the sand, wait with patience in their brilliant, tight, and unusual attire, the observed of all observers, the arrival of their lady friends, if they any have, and ontheir arrival, taking their hand, accompany them into the water; or the ladies take the hand of a bathing man engaged to attend them, and march in under their charge, and presently they are in the clear salt water, alive with bathers in every colour and in every form of movement practised by those who go down to the sea to bathe. Some rush from the shore wildly and inhumanly into the water, and, wickedly regardless of frightening the small fishes, dive head foremost with a splash, and strike out. Others stalk in majestically, and either quietly push far out, or paddle about pretending or attempting to swim in shallow water. Then other gentlemen are giving encouragement to their little boys or girls, or to their wives, or possibly their lovers, or improbably their sisters, either dipping them, or helping them to swim, or teaching them to float, or joining in other usual maritime gyrations. Others catch hold of the rope stretched out if the water be low, and dance about in a mad and profitless way, or if the tide be high, the swimmers catch at it as they pass and take a rest; and sometimes, if at a proper height, an adventurous one will sit upon the rope, like a sparrow on a telegraph wire, when (perhaps beholding admiringly from the treacherous seat some fat lady floating on her back on the surface, her bathing integuments undulating in the water like the tentacular folds of a jelly-fish) of a sudden somebody else, perhaps waggishly, perhaps innocently, clutches at the slack rope, and with unexpected shock upsets the unwary, abstracted philosopher, who with a whirl capsizes heels in the air, and head making discoveries through eyegate, nosegate, and mouthgate in the brine below. Or two recently arrived English young ladies will walk in, hand in hand, scorning the aid of a bathing man, and perform together, with all the regularity of clockwork, an endless series of curtsey ducks in the water without stirring from the safely selected spot. Other ladies, to vary the programme, are carried out by a bathing man and dipped horizontally in the wave, sothat head and feet obtain ablution simultaneously; or a stout matron will take hold of a bathing man, who swims out with her on his back apparently, so that she enjoys the luxury of being buoyed up and drawn through the water, and can say, ‘I’m afloat.’ But these sham swimmers are notably the exceptions. The great matter of observation is that the vast majority of the ladies, young and old, swim about as easily as the gentlemen, though they are in doing so generally accompanied by a man swimming behind or beside them in case of accident; and, indeed, one important occupation of those employed as bathing men is to teach the young idea how to swim, an accomplishment which, after a few lessons, they are usually able to master, and young girls are constantly seen swimming about among the others, like minnows among the tritons. Some ladies, after long practice, are very adventurous; two of them will go out together in a boat a considerable distance, when, throwing off their cloaks, they will dive head foremost from the side of the boat and swim ashore, the boat following. One little girl was most clever. She would go out to what looks like the vestige of an old pier, and, jumping high, perform a somersault, and, diving under the water, ‘come up smiling,’ swim about, and do it again and again. I have, however, seen many older diving belles jumping from the same pier. In fact, bathing in all its forms is here carried by the ladies to an enviable perfection altogether unknown at home; and while it not merely affords a most invigorating exercise, it becomes a most valuable branch of education, tending to lessen the risk of casualties at sea. It were well that at home the good example could be followed.

The late King of Hanover was at Biarritz while we were there. Being blind, he was carried into the water upon achaise-à-porteurby four men, his suite bathing with him. His daughter was said to bathe at an early hour in themorning, and many ladies, we were told, bathed as early as six o’clock. During the time we were there, and the weather being cold, forenoon and afternoon were preferable.

The bathing men will never dip one’s head unless expressly desired to do so, and never propose it—a great mistake. The bathing dress is not at all inconvenient or uncomfortable while in the water, but it is heavy out of it, especially if of woollen material (decidedly the best kind), because it absorbs and retains a great deal of water.

Away from the beach all the walks are on the high roads, which are principally three,—to the railway station, to Bayonne, and to the lighthouse. The distance to the lighthouse by the road is considerably farther than by the beach, from which to the platform on the top of the rocks whereon it stands, access is had by a steep path. From the top of the lighthouse, 220 feet from the level of the sea to the lantern, a most extensive view is had northward up the west coast of France, bordered by the Landes—a low sandy coast, now planted with pine trees to guard against the incursions of the sea—stretching 100 miles towards Bordeaux; and in the other direction along the Spanish coast, bounded by a chain of mountains far as the eye can see; while inland the view extends towards the Pyrenees. A steep path leads from the lighthouse to a small recessed platform half-way down the rock, where in calm weather one can behold the swelling and surging sea below ever and anon dashing against the rocks, and where men repair with long rods and lines to fish. But in stormy weather it is dangerous even to stand on the ground above; people are exposed to be swept away by unexpected rushes of the sea, and many have been drowned there in consequence. The fish caught at this platform, so far as we know, were small. Indeed, at Biarritz there are not many caught, though the table is always supplied from neighbouring fishing stations. Lobsters, however, seem to be plentiful.

The Villa Eugenie, between the lighthouse and the town, is an object of interest to every one visiting Biarritz. It is shown to the public on Mondays. Entrance is had by the west approach, where there is a lodge and large but not elegant stabling accommodation. The grounds are not extensive (about thirty acres in all), but sufficient for a marine residence of the kind; nor do they exhibit much attention to horticulture, though perhaps it is hardly fair to judge of them in present circumstances. The house, of three storeys, commenced in the year 1854, forms three sides of a square, with anannexe(I presume, offices) on the east side. It still belongs to the Empress, who, of course, never occupies it now, and she will not sell or let it. Ringing the bell, an old servant (who expects a small fee from each party for his trouble) opens the door and shows visitors through the house. Our troop consisted of several distinct parties, mustering probably above a dozen persons in all. The rooms are of comfortable size, and compose just what an Empress would consider to be a snuggery. The dining-room is the largest room in the house, the windows facing on one side the west to the town and sea, on another northward to the sea and lighthouse. On a rough guess, and speaking from recollection, it is probably from 40 to 50 feet long and from 20 to 25 feet wide, the ceiling lofty. The reception-room is comparatively small. The bedrooms of the Emperor, Empress, and Prince are just of a comfortable size. There are many small bedrooms, very nicely decorated, for use of the suite or for visitors. The floors are polished, and the staircase is so slippery that people are cautioned to take great care in descending, the steps not being carpeted. It was melancholy to think it was no longer possible for poor Eugenie to occupy this delightful residence.[47]Perhaps it is the only place in France wherethe Imperial arms remain, and one sees upon it also the touching monogramƎNE, which reads up or down. The place would to our Queen be objectionable as being so close to a town; but to a French lady this, no doubt, would give it additional attraction, and it must be recollected that Biarritz in reality largely owes its existence to the Empress having built her villa there. For this the French people should be grateful, although it looks a little unlike it, because in the grounds two pillars in front of a small unfinished chapel for the Imperial family use have been much broken. This, however, may merely have been the result of accident.

It is a pleasant drive to Bayonne, which lies about five miles off. Like many other roads in France, such as at Pau, the road proceeds a long way in a straight line, flanked by regimental rows of trees, which, affording shade from the sun, have a peculiarly stiff effect. Here, as elsewhere, too, contrary to the Roman beau-ideal of a road that it should be level, this one, though straight, yields to the inequalities of the ground, and is alternately in hollows and on elevations. But people ought to be thankful the road is so good, for, speaking of a time about forty years ago or more, Dr. Taylor (Climate of Pau) says:—

‘There was no carriage road from Bayonne to Biarritz, the only conveyance beingen cacolet, which contrivance consisted of a pair of panniers laid on the back of a horse or mule, into each of which a traveller of equal weight, if possible, had to perch himself at the same instant with his fellow, and to preserve their position as best they could. In the event of one being lighter than the other, there was a make-weight of stones put along with him in the pannier to adjust the equilibrium.’

Judging from the specimens of comfortable Spanish ladieswe saw at Biarritz, I should pity the horse or the mule which had to carry two of them.

About half way to Biarritz, a very elegant white stone villa in the Moorish style is passed—the Villa Sophia. There is something very unique in the appearance of this building, which is covered with arabesques, inducing me to go out one day and take a rough sketch of it. On approaching Bayonne, the road lies through a wood—I suppose, a suburban park. Then on entering the town we see a long many-arched stone bridge spanning the Adour,—here very wide,—and beyond it the fortifications, built by Vauban. These may at one time have been considered strong, but at the present day cannot be thought so, and they are overlooked by neighbouring heights. The fort lacks the picturesquely-imposing appearance of stone wall castles. A good deal of historical interest attaches to Bayonne and its fortifications. The town itself is not remarkable for much save its four bridges, crossing very close to each other the river Nive, which here joins the Adour. The cathedral, above seven hundred years old, is large and handsome, and is in course of restoration. The spires (one of them only is completed, the other being in course of completion) are very beautiful, tapering gradually, with spirelets around; but the church is like too many others abroad, rather hemmed in by the houses around.

There are other good drives about Biarritz, and particularly to the Bois de Boulogne and to the old historical maritime town of St. Jean de Luz, about ten miles distant, and not far from the Spanish border. It was here LouisXIV.had a residence and was married. His house, in the French style, with square towers at the four corners, stands now in the centre of the town upon the main street, and in its ground floor is occupied with shops and cafés. St. Jean is also a bathing place, but is not so popular, and is certainly not so attractive, as Biarritz.

There is a fine drive to Cambo, at the base of the Pyrenees, but during the first part of the period of our stay at Biarritz the weather was too cold to take it, and in the latter part the days were getting rather too short, the distance being about eighteen miles.[48]

Few people visit Biarritz without making an excursion by railway to St. Sebastian to see a little of Spain. It is thirty-seven miles distant by rail, and can be easily managed in a day—in fact, going by morning train, one is left rather too much time in St. Sebastian. Crossing the river Bidassoa, the picturesque town of Fuenterrabia is the first object catching the eye on the Spanish border. A halt of an hour is made at Irun for examination of the luggage, and it is possible, though a risk, to drive off and return in time for the train after a hurried examination of this interesting old town, which from the railway has an appearance of being deserted. Leaving Irun, the railway winds its way through the mountains, and reaches St. Sebastian, which is a tidy-looking town standing at the mouth of a river crossed by a handsome bridge, with view out to the Bay of Biscay and to the fortress of St. Sebastian on a hill next the sea. The town lies on the landward side of this hill, the more modern part of it, at least, consisting of wide streets and lofty square houses with nothing redeeming about their aspect. Passing along the main wide street from the bridge, we arrive at an enclosed natural harbour, a tract of sea, like a bag contracted at the neck, through which communication is had with the bay without. The shipping is not extensive; the harbour proper, lying on the side nearest the sea, being small. On the south side, next the newer portion of the town and the railway, the grandplagebathing-place, with a wooden bathing-house, is found.Behind it the mountains rise picturesquely. It requires an order to see the fortress, which is mainly of earthen ramparts. The town itself has little of interest in it. Close by the railway station, however, there is a very large wooden amphitheatre for bull-fights. Bills containing announcements of one of these savage entertainments were placarded on the building and the railway stations and elsewhere. The dwellings on the line of railway are similar to those about Biarritz, principally of the Basque style; many of them have on the top little glazed houses, sort of huts, no doubt designated, according to the taste of the occupants, as observatories, retreats, or smoking-rooms. Except for seeing a little of Spain, I believe it is better rather to stop and see the curious old town of Fuenterrabia.

After 1st October a very marked change came over the appearance of Biarritz. Nearly all of the Spanish and French visitors (coming no doubt for the gaiety) then left, while the English influx for the winter season had scarcely begun. During the first fortnight of this month the town wore a deserted look, and this was greatly aggravated by many of the shops commencing to pack up for migration to other places, and one after another closing. I daresay, a month later, there would be more life in the place.

We had all experienced the greatest benefit from our short residence of about a month in Biarritz, and although the weather was, during the greater part of the time, especially at first, very cold, in consequence of the northeasterly winds, we felt that our invalid especially had derived great good from the ‘soothing and invigorating air;’ so much so that we fondly thought, owing to this and the former changes, she was now in recovered health, and that it only wanted another winter in the Riviera to set her completely up. Biarritz is considered too cold a place for delicate persons to winter in, and the approach of its winterseason would in any view have warned us away. But we did feel extremely reluctant to leave; for this agreeable watering-place had quite taken our fancy, and perhaps we felt the leaving all the more that we had not seen it in its stern grandeur of a storm, or even in its wild grandeur of a cloudy sunset, while, under the influence of a gentle wind blowing from the south, the day upon which we left was one of the finest and sunniest we had had while there. Having a good hour before departure, we visited all the beaches and rocks, and lingered sorrowfully upon the scenes now so radiant in sunshine and so genial in their warmth, where we had spent pleasant times, and thence looked out upon the bright sparkling ocean gleaming below us, and the waves gently kissing the shore and bidding us adieu, and with unwilling steps returned to our hotel to leave for Pau. This leave-taking is one of the penalties to be paid for the pleasure of travelling in bright spots where everything has combined to make one happy—where the scenes are new and pleasing, where the object of travel seems to have been secured, and where hearts in perfect harmony and with congenial likings are able to appreciate the blessings they have thus been privileged together to enjoy.

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