Those who seek sunshine during the winter in the Riviera leave the Cévennes far away as a bank of cloud silver-fringed on their right hand beyond the Rhône. On their way back to England in spring they are disinclined to loiter, and break their home journey for the sake of excursions into this region, so little explored. In like manner, those who go to Pau are carried by the railway far away to the west, and see nothing of the plateau, because it slants downwards from the lofty ridge to the east. Those who travel from Toulouse to Montpellier by the railway have their eyes attracted south to the snows and glaciers of the Pyrenees, and do not turn their heads to look north at the range that is so unassertive, sheltering itself behind the desolate Garrigues. In 1894 I published a book, _The Deserts of Central France_, in which I described the great tableland high uplifted that lies in the penumbra of the great crescent, and I shall say nothing in this of the plateaux of Lot, Tarn, and Lozère, dealt with in the former work, but confine myself to the marginal range. Since M. Martel first drew attention to the gorges of the Tarn, and possibly due in a measure to my work, these gorges are becoming annually frequented more and more by tourists. However fine they may be, there are others in the departments of Ardèche, Gard, and Hérault, that fall but little, if at all, short of them in savagery and strangeness. There are no great towns in the Cévennes. Such as there are are sleepy and stationary; but from Béziers, Montpellier, Nîmes, Le Puy, where every comfort may be found, it is easy to run into the mountains, and return from them to recruit. Hotels are vastly improved of late years owing to the insistence of the Touring Club on the sanitary arrangements being at least decent, which they were not ten years ago. Enough has been said to show that the Cévennes abound in scenes of great beauty, and that they are of special interest to geologists. They are interesting in another way. The limestone hills are overgrown with aromatic herbs, mint, marjoram, thyme, sage, lavender, rosemary, so as to be veritable spice mountains over which the warm air wafts fragrance. The shrubs and trees present to our eyes, familiar with northern vegetation, an unfamiliar appearance. They are for the most part evergreens, where the chestnuts do not spread in forests, or the mulberry is not cultivated for silkworm culture. For the geology of the volcanic district of Haute Loire and Ardèche, an excellent guide is Mr. Paulett Scrope's _Geology and Extinct Volcanoes in Central France_, London, second edition, 1858. Lovers of the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson know his _Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes_—a delightful book, but dealing very little with the Cévennes proper, mainly with the Upper Gévaudan, and with that portion of Lozère threaded by the Tarn, and with neither of these do I deal in this volume. [Illustration: LE SUC DE SARA] FOOTNOTES: