Well, then,
I went up the open way, and came in a few miles of that hot afternoon
to the second ridge of the Jura, which they call 'the Terrible Hill',
or 'the Mount Terrible' - and, in truth, it is very jagged. A steep,
long crest of very many miles lies here between the vale of Porrentruy
and the deep gorge of the Doubs. The highroad goes off a long way
westward, seeking for a pass or neck in the chain, but I determined to
find a straight road across, and spoke to some wood-cutters who were
felling trees just where the road began to climb. They gave me this
curious indication. They said -
'Go you up this muddy track that has been made athwart the woods and
over the pastures by our sliding logs' (for they had cut their trunks
higher up the mountains), 'and you will come to the summit easily.
From thence you will see the Doubs running below you in a very deep
and dark ravine.'
I thanked them, and soon found that they had told me right. There,
unmistakable, a gash in the forest and across the intervening fields
of grass, was the run of the timber.
When I had climbed almost to the top, I looked behind me to take my
last view of the north. I saw just before me a high isolated rock;
between me and it was the forest. I saw beyond it the infinite plain
of Alsace and the distant Vosges. The cliff of limestone that bounded
that height fell sheer upon the tree-tops; its sublimity arrested me,
and compelled me to record it.
'Surely,' I said, 'if Switzerland has any gates on the north they are
these.' Then, having drawn the wonderful outline of what I had seen, I
went up, panting, to the summit, and, resting there, discovered
beneath me the curious swirl of the Doubs, where it ran in a dark gulf
thousands of feet below. The shape of this extraordinary turn I will
describe in a moment. Let me say, meanwhile, that there was no
precipice or rock between me and the river, only a down, down, down
through other trees and pastures, not too steep for a man to walk, but
steeper than our steep downs and fells in England, where a man
hesitates and picks his way. It was so much of a descent, and so long,
that one looked above the tree-tops. It was a place where no one would
care to ride.
I found a kind of path, sideways on the face of the mountain, and
followed it till I came to a platform with a hut perched thereon, and
men building. Here a good woman told me just how to go. I was not to
attempt the road to Brune-Farine - that is, 'Whole-Meal Farm' - as I had
first intended, foolishly trusting a map, but to take a gully she
would show me, and follow it till I reached the river.
