Neighbouring close upon Tarbes is the ancient feudal bourg of Ossun, which most of the fox-hunters of Pau, or the pilgrims of Lourdes, know not even by name. It's only the traveller by road--the omnipresent automobilist of to-day--who really stands a chance of "discovering" anything. The art of travel degenerated sadly with the advent of the railway and the "personally conducted pilgrimage," but the automobile is bringing it all back again. The bicycle stood a chance of participating in the same honour at one time, but folk weren't really willing to take the trouble of becoming a vagabond on wheels. Ossun was the site of a Roman camp before it became a feudal stronghold, and with the coming of the château and its seigneurs, in the fifteenth century, it came to a prominence and distinction which made of it nearly a metropolis. To-day it is a dull little town of less than two thousand souls, but with a most excellent hotel, the Galbar, which is far and away better (to some of us) than the popular hotels of Pau, Tarbes or Luchon. The château of Ossun, or so much of it as remains, was practically a fortress. What it lacks in luxury it makes up for in its intimation of strength and power, and from this it is not difficult to estimate its feudal importance. The Roman camp, whose outlines are readily defined, was built, so history tells, by one Crassus, a lieutenant of Cæsar. It was an extensive and magnificent work, a long, sunken, oblong pit with four entrances passing through the sloping dirt walls. Four or five thousand men, practically a Roman legion, could be quartered within. It was from the Château d'Odos, near Tarbes, in the month of December, 1549, that the Queen of Navarre observed the comet which was said to have made its appearance because of the death of Pope Paul III. Says Brantome: "She jumped from her bed in fright at observing this celestial phenomenon, and presumably lingered too long in the chill night, for she caught a congestion which brought about her death eight days later, 21st December, 1549, in the fifty-eighth year of her age." According to Hilarion de Coste her remains were transported to Pau, and interred in the "_principal église_," but others, to the contrary, say that she was buried in the great burial vault at Lescar. This is more likely, for an authentic document in the Bibliothèque Nationale describes minutely the details of the ceremony of burial "_dans l'antique cathédrale de Lescar_." On the Landes des Maures, near by, was celebrated a bloody battle in the eighth century between the Saracens and the inhabitants of the country. Gruesome finds of "skulls of extraordinary thickness" have frequently been made on this battlefield. Just what this description seems to augur the writer does not know; perhaps some ethnologist who reads these lines will. At any rate the combatants must have died _hard_. [Illustration: _A Shepherd of Bigorre_]