We parted after lunch and I resumed my journey along the slope of the valley. Half an hour later the road forsook the more cultivated ground, and, turning sharp to the left, commenced a series of zigzags up the steep side of the cliff. Here the limestone ceased suddenly, and the red rock proper of the Gorge du Cians commenced. It was a dull, deep red, the shade of Egyptian porphyry, and the line of demarcation between it and the limestone of the valley curiously distinct. At the final turn of the path I entered the gorge, and there, where an ancient Roman watch-tower still stood, I turned for a last look down the valley. The sun was gilding the russet autumn foliage, and the poplars along the river-bed stood up like slender golden spires. The fig and cypress still held to their brave, hard green, but elsewhere the vegetation rioted through every shade of brown and yellow. The white road wound away like a thread to the southward, and far off among the trees a curl of smoke showed the inn where I had lunched. It was the second stage of the journey accomplished, and already I had experienced the regrets of a parting, for the Italian bagman with his vile French and muddy gaiters, the companion of a moment, was one who understood the call of "A shadowy highway cool and brown, Alluring up and enticing down." The Gorge du Cians is a great cleft in the rock, with precipitous sides. The road is cut out of the rock itself and climbs bravely, with the river thundering along three or four hundred feet below it, and the cliffs towering a thousand feet above. It is a versatile road, too: no two hundred yards are straight, and occasionally it goes to earth and tunnels beneath an outflung buttress. In places the gorge is so steep that no vegetation but moss and lichen can cling to its sides. At others it leans back to make a lap, as children say, for a wilderness of trees and some copper-coloured shrub like a Canadian maple. Once it narrowed overhead to a few feet, a mere crevice in the mountains. Tiny streams trickled down to join the parent stream below, and presently I came to a spot where a veritable cascade poured on to the road from an overhanging ledge. I ran the gauntlet of this crystal shower, and sat awhile to listen to the voices of the gorge. The scent of damp earth and wet greenery, the murmur of the stream below, and a thousand tricklings and plashings, played their part in the sylvan melody. Somewhere surely along this path I should turn a corner and encounter Pan, or view him afar off among the tree-boles where the sunbeams wheeled to mark the passing hours! But I only met, as the afternoon wore on, an old man driving a donkey laden with faggots; though once (I admit with a momentary quickening of the heart) I did see a goat, horned and venerable of aspect, silhouetted against the pale sky.