But, like "all waste and solitary places," the scenery had its own peculiar charm. Poussin and Salvator Rosa would have seated themselves afresh at every twist of the glen, and sketched the new picture which it unfolded. The huge rocks, fallen from above, or shattered in the original upheaval of the chain, presented a thousand sharp, forcible outlines and ragged facets of shadow, and the two native growths of the Pyrenees--box and cork-oak--fringed them as thickets or overhung them as trees, in the wildest and most picturesque combinations. Indeed, during this portion of the journey, I saw scores of sketches waiting for the selected artist who has not yet come for them,--sketches full of strength and beauty, and with a harmony of color as simple as the chord of triple tones in music. When to their dark grays and greens came the scarlet Phrygian cap of the Catalonian, it was brighter than sunshine. The French fortress of Bellegarde, crowning a drum-shaped mass of rock, which blocked up the narrow valley in front, announced our approach to the Spanish frontier. The road wound back and forth as it climbed through a stony wilderness to the mouth of a gorge under the fortress, and I saw, before we entered this last gateway into Spain, the peak of the Canigou touched with sunset, and the sweep of plain beyond it black under the shadow of storm-clouds. On either side were some heaps of stone, left from forts and chapels of the Middle Ages, indicating that we had already reached the summit of the pass, which is less than a thousand feet above the sea-level. In ten minutes the gorge opened, and we found ourselves suddenly rattling along the one street of the gay French village of Perthus. Officers from Bellegarde sat at the table in front of the smart _café_, and drank absinthe; soldiers in red trousers chatted with the lively women who sold tobacco and groceries; there were trees, little gardens, arbors of vine, and the valley opened southwards, descending and broadening towards a cloudless evening sky.