A Little After Two I Struck Across The Mimente, And Took A Rugged Path
Southward Up A Hillside Covered With
Loose stones and tufts of heather.
At the top, as is the habit of the country, the path disappeared; and
I
left my she-ass munching heather, and went forward alone to seek a road.
I was now on the separation of two vast water-sheds; behind me all the
streams were bound for the Garonne and the Western Ocean; before me was
the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from the Lozere, you can see in clear
weather the shining of the Gulf of Lyons; and perhaps from here the
soldiers of Salomon may have watched for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley
Shovel, and the long-promised aid from England. You may take this ridge
as lying in the heart of the country of the Camisards; four of the five
legions camped all round it and almost within view - Salomon and Joani to
the north, Castanet and Roland to the south; and when Julien had finished
his famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, which lasted all
through October and November 1703, and during which four hundred and
sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly
subverted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked forth upon a
silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's activity have now
repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once more roofed and sending up
domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens, in low and leafy corners,
many a prosperous farmer returns, when the day's work is done, to his
children and bright hearth.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 118 of 131
Words from 31379 to 31652
of 34922
