Another delightful and but little known corner of Béarn is the valley of the Aspe, leading directly south from Oloron into the high valley of the Pyrenees. The Pas d'Aspe is at an elevation of seventeen hundred metres. Majestic peaks close in the valley and its half a dozen curious little towns; and, if one asks a native of anything so far away as Pau or Mauléon, perhaps fifty miles as the crow flies, he says simply: "_Je ne sais pas! Je ne peux pas savoir, moi, je passe tous mes jours dans la vallée d'Aspe._" Even when you ask the route over the mountain, that you may make your way back again by the Val d'Ossau, it is the same thing; they have never been that way themselves and are honest enough, luckily, not to give you directions that might put you off the road. Directly before one is the Pic d'Anie, the king mountain of the chain of the Pyrenees between the Aspe and the sea to the westward. Urdos is the last settlement of size as one mounts the valley. Above, the carriage road continues fairly good to the frontier, but the side roads are mere mule paths and trails. One of these zigzags its way craftily up to the Fort d'Urdos or Portalet. Here the grim walls, with their machicolations and bastions and redoubts cut out from the rock itself, give one an uncanny feeling as if some danger portended; but every one assures you that nothing of the sort will ever take place between France and Spain. This fortification is a very recent work, and formidable for its mere size, if not for the thickness of its walls. It was built in 1838-1848, at the time when Lyons, Paris and other important French cities were fortified anew. War may not be imminent or even probable, but the best safeguard against it is protection, and so the Spaniards themselves have taken pattern of the French and erected an equally imposing fortress just over the border at the Col de Lladrones, in the valley of the Aragon, and still other batteries at Canfranc. One of the topographic and scenic wonders of the world which belongs to Béarn is the Cirque de Gavarnie, that rock-surrounded amphitheatre of waterfalls, icy pools and caverns. Of the Cirque de Gavarnie, Victor Hugo wrote:-- "Quel cyclope savant de l'âge évanoui, Quel être monstrueux, plus grand que les idées, A pris un compas haut de cent mille coudées Et, le tournant d'un doigt prodigieux et sûr, A tracé ce grand cercle au niveau de l'azur?" Just below the "Cirque" is the little village of Gavarnie, which before the Revolution was a property of the Maltese Order, it having previously belonged to the Templars. Vestiges of their former _presbytère_ and of their lodgings may be seen. A gruesome relic was formerly kept in the church, but it has fortunately been removed to-day. It was no less than a dozen bleached skulls of a band of unfortunate chevaliers who had been decapitated on the spot in some classic encounter the record of which has been lost to history.