a revulsion. M. Ardouin-Dumazet has led the way. He says:—
"The road is fine, without exactly deserving all the hyperbolical praises lavished upon it. That which is the spoiling of this country is the extravagance of the admiration expressed for it. Since the time of Ramond no one who speaks of the Pyrenees can describe a site without declaring it to be incomparable. If they have judged it incomparable, it is because they have seen nothing with which to compare it. The panorama from Pau, truly marvellous, I admit, is not superior to that of the Alps, the Jura, and the Cevennes, seen from the hills above Lyons on a clear day. It is so with this country. I do not venture to use the expression Gasconading with reference to these descriptions, but I cannot pitch my note at the diapason of the Pyrenean infatuists."
This may be true enough of the way to Gavarnie, but I do venture to believe that the Cirque of Gavarnie—the end of this expedition up the Gave—is, pace Ardouin-Dumazet, incomparable.
Gedre was a wretched hamlet some years ago, when I first knew it, but now it has its hotels, and is a very convenient tarrying place whence to explore the valley of the Héas, and visit the two cirques of Estaubé and Troumousse; as also the valley of the Aspé, descending from the glacier of Mallerouge.
The Héas issues from a narrow fissure, foaming over cascades. Higher up in the ravine is the chapel of Notre Dame de Héas, planted on a huge block fallen from the mountain above. It is held that the Virgin once appeared to a shepherd at this spot.
This mass is but one portion of a landslip that took place in 1650, which dammed up the river and formed a lake, which in its turn was destroyed by a flood in 1788. Among the fallen rocks may be found the beautiful Saxifraga pyra-
