BOOK CXLII. Pau. the harbours situated on them, afford great advantages to the commerce of the department; the inhabitants are not solely occupied with agricultural labours, many of them are employed in different manufactories, and in working iron mines. When the Arabs, masters of the greater part of Spain, extended their devastations beyond the Pyrenees, a prince of Bearn marked with three stakes, the site of a castle, which was afterwards raised to impede their progress. The same edifice, built in the ninth century, was at one time a palace and a fortress. The people of Bearn called it Paou, which signifies a stake, and from the protection it afforded, houses were grouped round it in the tenth century; a town was thus formed, which increased and prospered under the government of good and enlightened princes. Such was the origin of Pau, a city built with some sort of elegance, near the extremity of the heights that command the fruitful valley watered by the Gave, which derives its name from the ancient capital of Bearn. A lofty bridge rises with the majesty of an aqueduct; it as well as the castle, a court of justice, and a public walk adorned with a fine fountain, are the principal ornaments in the town. Pau is renowned as the birthplace of Henry the Fourth, but it has produced Gaston de Foix, the celebrated duke of Nemours, Joan d'Albret, who, as queen of a petty state, acted an important part in French history, the viscount d'Orthès, who in Bayonne and on St. Bartholomew's day, spared the victims devoted by Charles the Ninth; it was also the native town of Peter Marca, the most learned prelate in the Gallican church, of Pardies the astronomer, and lastly, of the general, who accepted the Swedish throne, and renounced his country. It may be repeated that Henry the Fourth was born in the castle of Pau, which, during the revolution, was changed into a barrack, and after the restoration, into a royal palace. A large tortoise-shell, the cradle of the monarch, is preserved with almost religious veneration; other relics of the great and good king are kept with the same care. But Pau has more titles to celebrity than those arising from historical associations, it holds no mean place among the industrious towns in France; the manufactures consist of cloth, carpets and woollen stuffs. Nay, situated above it, on the left bank of the Gave, is a place of some trade, it was the native town of Abbadie, a famous protestant theologian. BOOK CXLII. Oleron or Oloron on the right bank of the Gave d'Ossau, Oleron. carries on a trade with Spain; it sends among other articles into that country, a great many boxwood combs made by machinery; it exports timber for the royal navy, and the wood it receives from Spanish Navarre into different parts of France. Mauleon stands in a fruitful valley, it is the smallest capital of a district in the department. Orthez, another chief town of a district, and a place of greater importance, is well built and commanded by the ruins of an old castle. Joan d'Albret granted it an university, and founded a school, in which a trial was made of what has been since called the system of mutual instruction, a system renewed in the present day, and generally believed to be of English invention.* A destructive battle was fought at the gates of the town in 1814; Marshal Soult, at the head of 20,000 men, maintained the shock of 70,000 English, Spaniards and Portuguese under the command of the Duke of Wellington, who purchased a victory with the loss of 10,000 men. The salt springs near Salies, a small town in the same district, abound in salt of a pure whiteness, and to it has been attributed the superiority of the hams cured at Pau and Bayonne. It was in the last town that the bayonet was invented in the eighteenth century, a formidable weapon by which many victories have been since decided. Bayonne is the only trading town in France, that pos- Bayonne. sesses the advantage of two rivers, into which the sea ascends. The Nive and the Adour divide it into three nearly equal parts, they are called Great Bayonne, Little Bayonne and the suburbs Saint Esprit. The streets are broad and straight, the squares and market places are adorned with different edifices; the finest are the cathedral and the exchange. As a strong place, it may be ranked in the first class, it is the seat of a diocess, and the capital of a district. Great Bayonne is commanded by an old castle, Little Bay * See histoire de Jeanne d'Albert by Mlle. Vauvilliers. BOOK CXLI. Depart ment of Landes. Dax. onne by a modern castle, and the suburbs of Saint Esprit by a citadel, the work of Vauban, which has been since enlarged and improved. The harbour, although difficult of access for large ships, is safe and much frequented by small vessels. Many persons are engaged in the coasting trade and in the cod fisheries. Bayonne rivals Andaye in the liqueur that bears the name of the village; it sends chocolate into most parts of France, and wines of the first quality are produced in the neighbourhood. The people in the department of Landes see the summits of the Pyrenees at a distance; the Adour and the Lay which descend from these mountains, water lands fruitful in maize and wheat, and the hills on the left are covered with vineyards. But on leaving the Adour, vast plains of sand fatigue the eye by an uniformity which is only broken by fens, marshes or heaths, and at distant intervals, by meadows and cultivated fields. A long green belt near the sea shore is formed by a forest of maritime pines; the same part of the country is thinly peopled. These monotonous and dismal heaths or landes give their name to the department. The peasants live in isolated cottages; the father of the family employs himself in cultivating the ground, or in other rural labours, while the young people often travel ten leagues round the country for the purpose of making charcoal in the forests, or of leading their flocks to pastures. It might be supposed that the people were wanderers, and not unwilling to quit an ungrateful soil; certainly their great sobriety, their wants comparatively few, and the velocity with which they move along their deserts by means of long scatches, might afford them great facility; but the love of country prevails. The land, however, is not wholly unproductive; the peasant cultivates hemp, makes sailcloth, and derives considerable profit from the pitch of his fir trees. The soil abounds in iron ore, and there are not fewer than seventeen places in the department in which it may be smelted. Dax on the Adour, above its junction with the Lay, may be considered an important town, not from its population, but as being the capital of a district. It is well built and encompassed by old walls flanked with turrets The hospital may be mentioned for the excellent way in which it is managed, and on account of the attention bestowed on the inmates. It possesses a collection of natural history, containing many fossil shells mostly collected in the neighbourhood; some species still found near the coasts, prove that the sandy downs in the department, were covered by the ocean at a later period than the marine deposits round Paris. The thermal springs are frequented, their mean temperature may be about 165° of Fahrenheit. The waters are collected in a pentagonal reservoir nearly 25 feet in depth, surrounded with porches and iron rails. The vapours that rise from them in the morning when the air is cold, form a dense fog, which covers sometimes the whole town. The Romans were not ignorant of the thermal springs in this ancient city of the Tarbelli; it was styled Aqua Tarbellica, it is still not unfrequently called Aqo, which is evidently derived from the same name. It passed from the Roman domination to that of the Goths, who were succeeded by the Franks, the latter were expelled by the Vascones or Gascons. The Arabs took it in the year 910, and the English in the twelfth century; it was freed from a foreign yoke about the middle of the fifteenth by Charles the Seventh; it. carries on at present a considerable trade in the products of the department. It was the native town of Borda, the inventor of the reflecting circle. The small village of Poy in the vicinity claims the honour of having given birth to Vincent de Paul, whom the church adores as a saint, and humanity reveres as a benefactor. BOOK CXLII. Saint Sever rises on the left bank of the Adour, at the St. Sever. distance of ten leagues above Dax. It owes its origin to William Sanche, duke of Gascony, who, in the year 982, founded there a celebrated abbey of Benedictines. Aire, at the base of a hill, is the ancient Vicus Julii, which was called Atures before the reign of Augustus, from the Atur, the name given by the Tarusates to the Adour, that flows below the town. Tartas rises like an amphitheatre on the declivity of a hill, it is watered by the Midouze, a feeder of the Adour; the country in the neighbourhood abounds in tortoises, red partridges and different sorts of game. Lastly, Mont de Marsan, situated at the confluence of the BOOK CXLII Department of Gironde. Douze and Midou, formerly a very insignificant town, has increased in population, since it became the capital of Landes. It bears the name of the founder, Peter viscount de Marsan, by whom it was built in the year 1140. Although not a manufacturing town, its position at the entrance into a vast plain, renders it the principal mart for the trade of the department. The Leyre, a small river, which rises on the north of Mont de Marsan, and throws itself into the bay of Arcachon, serves as a boundary to the department of the Gironde. The heaths or landes extend near the banks of the Garonne, from which they are separated by the rich vineyards of Medoc, Haut-Brion, Saint Emilion and Grave; they terminate on the west in sandy downs that reach to the sea-shore; the particles of sand carried by the wind, covered formerly every year a space seventy-two feet in breadth by fifty leagues in length. The steeple of a church was long seen near the canal of Furnes, the other parts of the building were buried in the sand. Several houses on the coast of Medoc, have been destroyed in the same manner, and the tops of the highest trees are only observed in an ancient forest near the bay of Arcachon. It was the opinion of Bremontier the engineer, that plants well adapted for such kinds of soil, might be raised on these downs; his advice was followed, and they have since become fruitful. The marble monument, which records the memory of the event, and the gratitude of the inhabitants, is now surrounded by cultivated fields. The most varied and picturesque sites in the country between the Garonne and the Dordogne, succeed the uniformity of the heaths. The soil between the last river and the Dronne, which forms the northern limit of the department, consists of calcareous heights, covered with coppice or vineyards, and separated from each other by fruitful vallies. Enriched by agriculture and trade, the people are industrious and enlightened; iron and other mineral substances are worked with profit; flocks of merinos are by no means uncommon on the estates of the wealthy proprietors, and of late years, the best breeds from England have been introduced into the country. |