of Labassere, famous for its slate quarries. The excavations are in the flanks of the mountain, and are numerous. The products are brought down by a funicular contrivance worked by electricity, taking the place of the zigzag road by which oxen formerly conveyed the slates below. The men who split the slates wear heavy sabots scooped out of billets of beech that have not been shaped externally, so as better to resist, should the sharp, cutting flakes fall on the feet. The men's legs are bound about thickly with rags to protect them from the same danger, as the slate cuts like a razor. The slate-splitters form the aristocracy of the trade, and although their labour is less considerable than that of the quarrymen, they receive double the pay of these latter. For a slate-cutter has to learn the art before he is aged fourteen, whilst the muscles are most flexible. At the age of twenty he has to undergo military service, and when he returns to his shed and tools, at the age of twenty-four, finds it very difficult to recover the skill he possessed before he donned uniform.
One of the most interesting and perplexing themes connected with the Pyrenees is the origin of the Cagots, a "race maudit," that was found throughout the chain, but not there solely. It existed as well in Brittany.
In a considerable number of churches may be seen the Cagots' door, through which alone they might pass into a portion of the church reserved for them, and cut off from the rest, and where alone they might assist at divine worship. In some of the towns are streets called Rues des Cagots, in which these outcasts herded. At one time they were not suffered to inhabit the villages, but were relegated to isolated hamlets, and they had separate burial grounds. They might not associate with the more privileged natives, and inter-marriages with them were strictly interdicted. They were
