The sturdy independence and self-respect of the peasantry of Ossau have been broken down sadly by the influx of visitors. Mr. Blackburn observes truly enough:-- “It is said that English visitors have completely demoralized the Valley of Chamounix, and that the _curés_ are in despair; but whatever sins we have committed in Switzerland, the French people have done worse, the difference between the two nations being this, that the latter enjoy indiscriminate almsgiving, and we do not. The result in this valley is demoralizing to an extent that would scarcely be credited excepting by eye-witnesses. As we drive along we see the peasantry leaving their work in the fields at the sound of approaching wheels, and crouching at the roadside in attitudes of pain and misery; girls and boys leave their play to follow the carriages, and whine for _quelquechose_; crops are half-gathered, and work of all kinds is neglected during the season of the sous; the cry is everywhere, ‘Give, give!’ “A girl of sixteen, well dressed and evidently well-to-do, comes up with a bouquet of wild flowers; she asks ten sous for it (about the wages of a day’s work), but will take no less; and on receiving the money will immediately ask for the bouquet back again, to sell to some one else. “And this is not all, for those of the inhabitants who have not brought up their children to the liberal profession of begging, have invented another ingenious and profitable mode of life, that of turning the cascades in the neighbourhood into penny peepshows, shutting them off so that they can only be approached by a wicket gate kept by one of themselves.”[G] [G] Blackburn (H.), _The Pyrenees_. London, 1867. One of the pleasantest short walks is to the Grotte des Eaux Chaudes, passing before a little cave from which issues a stream that proceeds at once to dash headlong down the crags into the Gave. Beyond this is the large cave opening in the face of a cliff. This grotto is traversed by a stream which may be crossed by a bridge of wood to where, in the depth of the cave, it leaps down out of a fissure in the wall in a cascade. It is probably fed by the drainage of the Plateau d’Anouillas, where the water descending from the Pic de Gers disappears. When the stream has left the cavern it again dives underground, and flows below the rocks in stages that descend to the bottom of the valley, and reappears only just before it enters the Gave. But the finest excursion from Eaux Chaudes is to Bious-Oumettes, a plateau whence a superb view is obtained of the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. This peak is 9800 feet high, of porphyry and granite, cleft by a profound vertical fissure, and is perhaps the finest, certainly the quaintest, of the Pyrenean mountains.