Emerging from this terrific glen, the pastures and fields which surround the village of Gavarnie smile a welcome to the traveller, which is but ill-confirmed when he reaches the gloomy inn--the last and worst in France.

Here we abandoned our horses, and after glancing at the cascade of Ossonne, I passed hastily through the village, and, mounting on a flat rock, threw myself down to gaze upon the stupendous Circus of Gavarnie, which, though still a full league distant, appears, at the first glance, to be within a quarter of an hour's walk.

I was all impatience to reach the foot of that cascade of which I had so often read, but which I scarcely ever hoped to _see_, and, as soon as Charlet had stabled his steeds, we set out.

For the first mile the road lay between narrow meadows, which owe their freshness to the Gave; these then gave place to a stony plain, the dry beds of some ancient lakes; and having traversed their expanse, we crossed the last bridge, constructed by the hands of man, over the river, and then climbing a series of sharp, irregular ascents, which would have passed for very respectable hills elsewhere, but here seemed mole-heaps only, we stood, at length, on the perpetual snow, which forms a solid crust at the foot of the circus of Gavarnie.
It seemed as if I had at length realised one of those dreams which fill the mind when first we read the wondrous tales of old romance: it was, indeed, the very spot described in one of the most celebrated of the earliest cycle; but my thoughts were less of Charlemagne and his paladins--though the Breche de Roland was now within reach--than of the stupendous grandeur of the scene.

It required very little exercise of fancy to imagine that we had arrived at the end of the world--so perfectly impassable appeared the barrier which suddenly rose before us.
The frowning walls of granite which form the lowest grade of this vast amphitheatre, rise to a height of twelve hundred feet perpendicularly, and extend to nearly three-quarters of a league, increasing in width as they ascend to the regions of eternal snow; where may be traced a succession of precipices, until they are lost in the bases of the Cylindre and the Tours de Marbore, themselves the outworks of the Mont Perdu, from whose glaciers flow the numerous cascades which, in summer, shoot from the lower ridge of the Circus.
The great waterfall of Gavarnie--the loftiest in Europe--pours its slender stream from a height of upwards of thirteen hundred feet, on the eastern side of the Circus, and in its snow-cold water I dipped my travelling-cup, qualifying with veritable Cognac the draught I drank to the health of distant friends.
My great desire was to make the ascent of the Breche de Roland; but Charlet had learnt, in the village where he made inquiry, that the snow had fallen heavily on the mountains only the day before, and that, consequently, it would be a matter of extreme difficulty and danger to make the attempt.