However, as it must be done, I will begin boldly, and give a regular account of Pau, the chief town of the Basses Pyrenées--a very neat little place, situated on the ridge of a hill, crowned by the château where that love and war-making monarch, Henri Quatre, first saw the light of day. In the valley below runs a broad, shallow river, called the Gave[14] of Pau, which frets on with the tumultuous hurry of a mountain stream, and dashing petulantly over every little bank of stones it meets in its way, passes under a pretty stone bridge, which leads on the road to the Eaux Bonnes, and to the village of Jurançon, famous for its wines. Beyond the town, proceeding along the ridge of the hill, (which runs with the course of the river due west), there is a fine park planted with beech-trees, which afford a complete shade from the heat of the sun. The highest walk, extending for nearly a mile, commands a most beautiful and ever-changing view of the mountains, which lie, pile above pile, stretched along the whole extent of the southern sky. Indeed, they form a scene of enchantment, and are never for a moment the same--sometimes so involved in mist, that they form but a faint blue background to the nearest hills--sometimes so distinct, that one might fancy he saw the izzard[15] bounding from rock to rock. The course of the sun, also alters them entirely by the difference of the shadows; and the clouds, frequently rolled in white masses half-way down their peaks, give them an appearance of much greater height than when they stand out in the plain blue sky. But however they may appear, even at the times they are clearest, there is still that kind of airy uncertainty about them which makes one scarcely think them real. They seem the bright delusion of some fairy dream, and indeed, I was almost inclined to suppose it a deception, when on waking the third morning after my arrival, I looked for the mountains, and found that, like Aladdin's palace, they were gone--not a vestige of them remaining--not a trace where they had been. The sky, indeed, was cloudy, but the day otherwise fair; and to any one unaccustomed to mountain scenery, it would appear impossible that any clouds could hide objects at other times seen so near. But so if was: for two days we saw nothing of them, and then again the curtain of clouds rose majestically from before them, and left the whole as clear and grand as ever. --------------- [Footnote 14: "Gave" signifies water; and in the Pyrennees this name is given to all the mountain-streams.] [Footnote 15: The chamois of the Pyrennes.] ---------------