The difficulty of ascending to the Breche-de-Roland does not consist so much in its height--though this is 9537 feet--as in the nature of the ground to be surmounted; and after I had accomplished the feat, I no longer wondered that several persons had given in, and retraced their steps without attaining the Breche. Before detailing my ascent to this wonderful place, it may be proper to state what it is like. On the flanks of the formidable and gigantic Mont Perdu rises Mont Marbore, from the summit of which stretches to the west a wall of rock from 400 to 600 feet high, in most places absolutely vertical. This huge natural wall forms the crest of the Pyrenees, and divides France from Spain at this part of the chain. In the middle of the natural barrier is a gap, which, when viewed from the French valley of the Gave de Gavernie, appears like a notch made in a jaw by the loss of a single tooth, but which is in reality a magnificent and colossal portal, 134 feet wide and 330 feet high. Of course, legendary lore is not at fault to account in its own poetical manner for this natural phenomenon. According to that oracle, the Breche owes its origin to Roland, the brave Paladin, who, mounted on his war-horse, in his hot pursuit of the Moors, clove with one blow of his trusty sword Durandal a passage through this mighty wall; and it must be admitted that the sides of the gap are so smooth, that it requires no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that they were fashioned in some such artistical manner. Independently of the Breche itself, which alone is highly deserving of a visit, the surrounding scenery is of the most imposing and magnificent character, and the whole, therefore, most justly ranks as one of the chief lions of the Pyrenees. The most usual, and by far the most advantageous starting-place, is the village of Gavarnie, near the Cirque of that name. In my ignorance, however, of the toilsome nature of the excursion, I started from Luz, eighteen miles from Gavarnie, where I was sojourning. Reader, were you ever at Luz? Sweet Luz! with its babbling crystal brook, in which tribes of pigs undergo sanitary ablutions; and its inn, famous for good cookery and active fleas. If you have been there, you will not have forgotten Madame Cazean--a model of a hostess. To her I made my wishes known respecting the ascent to the Breche, and begged that she would find me a guide.