extinct as the dodo and the great auk. The sanctuary is the very Mecca of Cerdagne and Capcir. On 8 September as many as three thousand pilgrims assemble here; the place is like a disturbed ant-heap. The visitors do not restrain themselves to devotional exercises; they also dine, drink, sing. Then may be seen the white caps, laced, of Conflent and Roussillon; the kerchief of glaring colours—red, yellow, and blue—of the women of Cerdagne; men wearing the red barretina and the cord-soled spadrillos, Catalonians these who have not abandoned their old costume. The miraculous image is a seated Madonna, with head and hands out of all proportion to the body. It spends the winter in the church of Odeillo, but revisits Font-Romeu as soon as the rhododendrons begin to flush the mountain sides.
In winter Mont Louis is a cold and wretched prison. Clouds envelop the mountain-tops, cold rain and heavy falls of snow alternate with furious and icy gales. In summer the vapours often fill the valley, and from the ramparts of Mont Louis is seen the spectacle of a vast plain of snow, recalling the scenes of winter; but the snow now is the surface of cloud lying low, silvered by the light from above.
This wild country saw the end of Othman abu Nessu, the Moorish Governor of Narbonne.
In 725 Ambessa, Moslem Governor of Spain, crossed the Pyrenees. Cascassonne and Nîmes vainly endeavoured to resist him. In the midst of his successes, however, death surprised him. But he left the Arabs masters of Septimania, where they established themselves in force and made Narbonne their capital. The struggle between Moslem and Christian for the possession of the soil of France now became a struggle desperate in its earnestness.
Eudes, Duke of Aquitania, was at the time hampered by an
