Then after five hours or more the walls begin to sink, a stream breaks in through a doorway on the left, and we issue through a portal. The river runs more smoothly, and on the summit of the rock, creeping down its side, studded with ruins, is the imposing dead town of Aiguèze, long a subject of dispute between the counts of Toulouse and the bishops of Viviers. There were houses near the river bank, but all are now in ruins, destroyed by the great floods of 1890 and 1895. On the left bank is the little village of S. Martin, where we disembark, and think we have seen a succession of marvels the like of which are not to be seen elsewhere save—with a difference—on the Tarn. But just here, to spoil the last tableau, a company has erected huge and hideous factories for silk-weaving on the top of the rock opposite S. Martin, to disfigure the last spur of crag on the Ardèche. Failure has attended the attempt, and the factories are abandoned. Even if they fall into ruins, their ruins cannot possibly become picturesque. Below is a light and graceful suspension bridge flung across the river to take the place of a stone bridge, swept away by the great flood of 1895, that rose halfway up the church of S. Martin and filled most of the houses. And now, to conclude this chapter, I must give my personal experiences, which I am usually unwilling to obtrude, but which I give as they may be valuable to others who descend the cañon. There are humours in travelling; some make you laugh out at once, others only after the experience is past. To this latter belong mine on the day I descended the Ardèche.