region formed by the Valley of Vicdessos and of the Ariège as far as Les Cabannes. The church is Romanesque, and there are remains of an abbey founded for an order of military knights, founded, it is said, by Charlemagne, as a protection of the population and the valuable iron-mines. This is a resort of pilgrims on 8 May and 15 September, when fairs are held at Tarascon, and business, pleasure, and devotion can be harmoniously combined. The Valley of Vicdessos is, and has been from time immemorial, the great seat of iron-mining in the Pyrenees. The ore is nearly pure, and lies in veins and pockets in the limestone of the mountains of Rance, and the deposits form bands alternating with the calcareous rock through a height of over 1800 feet.
The working of the mines is the privilege of the inhabitants of Sem, Goulier, and Olbier, and natives of Vicdessos and other villages about can only be admitted to this privilege by marrying a girl of one of the three named. Otherwise they can be employed only as wagoners drawing the ore to Tarascon.
The earliest mention of these mines is in a charter of the Count of Foix in 1293. For centuries the counts found the utmost difficulty in levying a toll on the iron carried out of the valley; the miners exercised their ingenuity in evading it, and overriding all the restrictions hampering their industry. Unhappily, for many hundred years the mining was not carried on by companies, but by individuals who grubbed where they would and carried on the works in the most wasteful manner. Now the veins of ore are giving out; but the men who have exclusive rights to the mines refuse obstinately and ignorantly to admit of new methods in the extraction of the ore, and disapprove of co-operation. The ancient medieval corporations have survived at Sem, with their traditional rites and formulas. The law on mines of
