For the Roussillon depends upon the Canigou just as the Bay of Syracuse depends upon Etna, or that of Naples upon Vesuvius, and its familiar presence has sunk into the patriotism of the Roussillon people, as those more famous mountains have into the art and legends of their neighbours. There are I know not how many monographs upon the Canigou, but not one has been translated, I would wager, into any foreign language. Yet it is the mountain which very many men who have hardly heard its name have been looking for all their lives. It gives as good camping as is to be had in the whole of the Pyrenees. I believe there is fishing, and perhaps one can shoot. Properly speaking, there is no climbing in it; at least, one can walk up it all the way if one chooses the right path, but there is everything else men look for when they escape from cities. It is so big that you would never learn it in any number of camps, and the change of its impressions is perpetual. From the summit the view has two interests--of colour and of the past. You have below you a plain like an inlaid work of chosen stones: the whole field is an arrangement of different culture and of bright rocks and sand; and below you, also, in a curve, is all that coast which at the close of the Roman Empire was, perhaps, the wealthiest in Europe. In the extreme north a man might make out upon a clear day the bulk of Narbonne. Perpignan is close by; the little rock harbour of Venus, Port Vendres, is to the south. From the plain below one, which has always been crammed with riches, sprang the chief influences of Southern Gaul. It was here that the family of Charlemagne took its origin, and it was perhaps from here that he saw, through the windows of a palace, that fleet of pirates which moved him to his sad prophecy. That plain, moreover, will re-arise; it is still rich, and all the Catalan province of Spain below it, of which it is the highway and the approach, must increase in value before Europe from year to year. The vast development of the French African territory is reacting upon that coast: all it needs is a central harbour, and if that harbour were formed it would do what Narbo did for the Romans at the end of their occupation;--it would tap, much better than does Cette, the wealth of Gascony, perhaps, also, an Atlantic trade, and its exchanges towards Africa and the Levant. The Mediterranean, which is perpetually increasing in wealth and in importance to-day, would have a second Marseilles, and should such a port arise--then, when our ships and our travellers are familiar with it, the Canigou (if it cares for that sort of thing) will be as happy as the Matterhorn. For the present it is all alone. THE MAN AND HIS WOOD I knew a man once that was a territorial magnate and had an estate in the county of Berkshire. I will not conceal his name. It was William Frederick Charles Hermann-Postlethwaite.