Dauphiné (France) -- Description and travel; Huguenots; Waldenses
The view from the inn at the bridge is really charming. The little
river which runs down the valley, and becomes lost in the distance, is
finally fringed with trees--alder, birch, and chestnut. Ridge upon
ridge of mountain rises up behind on the right hand and the left, the
lower clothed with patches of green larch, and the upper with dark
pine. Above all are ranges of jagged and grey rocks, shooting up in
many places into lofty peaks. The setting sun, shining across the face
of the mountain opposite, brings out the prominent masses in bold
relief, while the valley beneath hovers between light and shadow,
changing almost from one second to another as the sun goes down. In
the cool of the evening, we walked through the fields across the
plain, to see the torrent, visible from the village, which rushes from
the rocky gorge on the mountain-side to join its waters to the
Romanche. All along the valleys, water abounds--sometimes bounding
from the heights, in jets, in rivulets, in masses, leaping from rock
to rock, and reaching the ground only in white clouds of spray, or, as
in the case of the little river which flows alongside the inn at the
bridge, bursting directly from the ground in a continuous spring;
these waterfalls, and streams, and springs being fed all the year
through by the immense glaciers that fill the hollows of the mountains
on either side the valley.
Though the scenery of Bourg d'Oisans is not, as its eulogists allege,
equal to that of Switzerland, it will at least stand a comparison
with that of Savoy. Its mountains are more precipitous and abrupt, its
peaks more jagged, and its aspect more savage and wild. The scenery of
Mont Pelvoux, which is best approached from Bourg d'Oisans, is
especially grand and sublime, though of a wild and desolate character.
The road from Bourg d'Oisans to Briançon also presents some
magnificent scenery; and there is one part of it that is not perhaps
surpassed even by the famous Via Mala leading up to the Splügen. It is
about three miles above Bourg d'Oisans, from which we started early
next morning. There the road leaves the plain and enters the wild
gorge of Freney, climbing by a steep road up the Rampe des Commières.
The view from the height when gained is really superb, commanding an
extremely bold and picturesque valley, hemmed in by mountains. The
ledges on the hillsides spread out in some places so as to afford
sufficient breadths for cultivation; occasional hamlets appear amidst
the fields and pine-woods; and far up, between you and the sky, an
occasional church spire peeps up, indicating still loftier
settlements, though how the people contrive to climb up to those
heights is a wonder to the spectator who views them from below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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