with beautiful stalactites, are situated in the vicinity. Argeles, the chief town of a district, is only remarkable for its romantic position in a valley watered by the Gave d'Azum, which unites with the Gave de Pau. On the banks of the last river, and at the distance of five leagues below Argeles, Lourdes rises on a rock, commanded by a fortress, which was ceded to the English by the treaty of Bretigny, and afterwards changed into a state prison.

Cauterets, not far from the summits of the Pyrenees, ist situated near roaring cataracts and foaming streams; it is | Cauterets. mentioned in history as the residence of Margaret of Valois, its celebrity depends chiefly at present on the mineral waters. The village of Saint Sauveur is visited on account of the sulphureous springs in the neighbourhood. The church in the small town of Luz, was originally a convent of the templars. The thermal springs of Bareges, to which more than 600 strangers repair, vary in temperature from 106° to 122° of Fahrenheit. The village is formed by a single street, consisting of eighty houses, a chapel, a hospital built by Lewis the Fifteenth for disabled soldiers, and lastly, by large baths. Although a pleasant summer residence, it is hardly habitable in winter, most of the inhabitants then repair to Luz, where they remain until the beginning of spring. The famous cataract of Gavarnie, more remarkable than any other in Europe, may be observed in the neighbourhood, it falls from the height of 1270 feet.

Pyrenees.

Part of Navarre and the ancient principality of Bearn are Department of included in the department of the Lower Pyrenees, the only the Lower remains of the kingdom which Rome took from the grandfather of Henry the Fourth, and granted to Ferdinand, king of Arragon. A new title, that of king of Navarre, was assumed by the French sovereigns, when a descendant of the house of Bearn mounted the throne of France. The territories of Soule and Labourd are situated in the same department. The Pyrenees do not occupy one half of the country; they have not the appearance of lofty mountains covered with eternal glaciers, but of heights crowned with forests, of fruitful and well peopled vallies. Hills planted with vineyards extend at their base, plains rich in corn line both the banks of the Gave de Pau, and the sandy lands on the north, still susceptible of much improvement, add to the varied products of the department. The Bidassoa bounds it on the west, and determines the line which separates the kingdoms of France and Spain. On the same river

is situated the isle of Faisans, or Conference, so called from the interview between Mazarin and Lewis de Haro, an interview that brought about the treaty by which Artois and Roussillon were ceded to France. Although the coasts watered by the Gulf of Gascogny are not extensive, 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.

Pau.

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.

Joan d'Albret

Oleron, or Oloron, on the right bank of the Gave d'Ossau, carOleron. | ries 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. granted it a 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 twenty thousand men, maintained the shock of seventy thousand English, Spaniards, and Portuguese, under the command of the Duke of Wellington, who purchased a victory with the loss of ten thousand 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 possesses

Bayonne. I 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 Bayonne 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.

See historie de Jeanne d'Albert, by Mlle. Vauvilliers.

Department

of Landes.

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 a 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 Dax. 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 twenty-five 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. Saint Sever rises on the left bank of the Adour, at the dis| St. Sever. tance of ten leagues above Dax. It owes its origin to William Sanche, duke of Gascogny, 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

Department

the 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. of Gironde. | 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.

The Leyre, a small river, which rises on the north of Mont

The towns situated on the landes are poor and thinly peoBazas. pled; such is Bazas, the capital of a district. Although it possesses no other antiquities than medals and mosaics, it is known to have been an important place in the time of the Romans, who called it Cossium Vesatum, because it was situated in the territory of the Vesates. The diocess, of which it was formerly the seat, must have been very ancient, since one of the bishops was present at the council of Agde, in the year 506. The cathedral is a fine Gothic edifice of the fourteenth century. The ruins of the church of Ozeste, another Gothic building, erected by pope Clement the Fifth, may be seen at a short distance from Langon. 1 the walls. Langon, surrounded by the vineyards of Grave, is better built; it rises on the left bank of the Garonne, where the tide still perceptible, favours the trade of the town, and the conveyance of wines. Of late years, steam boats have sailed regularly to Bordeaux, and the communication between the two towns, has in consequence been much increased.

Many islands are scattered in different parts of the river, Bordeaux. | and the banks are bounded by fruitful hills. On the right

bank are situated the old towers and embattled walls of Cadillac, as well as the fine castle of Epernon. Rions, at a greater distance from the same bank of the river, contains 1500 inhabitants. Castres, on the left bank, near the confluence of the Gué-Mort, is not so important a place as the last, but better built and more agreeably situated, on the road from Toulouse to Bordeaux. The last city rises majestically on the banks of the Garonne, at the place where the river forms a large curve, and renders the harbour very imposing. The space it encloses may contain a thou

sand ships; it describes an arc, of which the two extremities are more than a league distant from each other. Bordeaux may be ranked, from its commerce and importance, among the first towns in the kingdom. A line of fine buildings extends throughout the whole length of the city; vessels of every size and from every nation repair to the harbour. The mean breadth of the river may be more than a mile; it flows with rapidity, and a magnificent bridge, consisting of seventeen arches, erected on the narrowest part of the Garonne, covers a space equal to 648 yards in length. The difficulties against which the architect had to contend, in building such a bridge in such a situation, were apparently insurmountable. It was necessary to overcome the obstacles arising from the sandy and moving bed of the river, from the depth of twenty-five to forty feet, from the flux of the tide, which twice a day raises the waters the height of four or five yards, from the current occasioned by the same cause, and from its velocity, exceeding sometimes three yards in a second. Old Bordeaux extends on the right of the bridge; the streets are narrow and crooked, the squares and market places are irregular. The quarter Chartrons is the most commercial part of the town, but the finest and best built is the quarter of Chapeau Rouge. Lewis the Fourteenth destroyed. the remains of an ancient temple, dedicated to the tutelary gods, in order to lengthen the glacis of Chateau Trompette; but the castle itself has been destroyed since the revolution, and modern buildings, not unworthy of so wealthy a city, are now raised on the site. All that remains of the old fortifications, now useless, are the ruins of the fortress St. Croix, at the extremity of Chartrons: the dock yards extend at their base. The old dungeons in the castle of Ha are still entire; they I Castle of Ha. are used as a prison. The Burgundian gate, a fine triumphal arch, rises on the harbour, opposite the bridge; it was built to commemorate the birth of the grandson of Lewis the Fourteenth. Another gate, near the old trenches of Salinieres, may be remarked on account of the edifice which rises above them; it is the ancient town-house. The Royal square is more worthy of the name from the buildings which adorn it, than from its size. The place Dauphine, more regular than the last, is situated at the extremity of a much frequented walk, called the alleys of Tourney; the others worthy of notice, are the Place d'Armes, and Saint Germain. The cathedral, the largest church in the town, is a Gothic edifice; the interior, imposing from its size, is adorned with a costly altar. The large theatre, a circular building, surpasses most places of the same kind in elegance of architecture, and in the commodious arrangement of the boxes. A light and graceful dome towers above the exchange, the rendezvous for merchants from every part of the world. The ancient archiepiscopal palace, an edifice remarkable for its regularity, was changed into a royal palace at the restoration. Bordeaux, like Paris, has a pompous cemetery, where the wealthy accumulate marbles and inscriptions; it is situated at the extremity of the town, in the enclosure of the new Chartreuse, near a handsome modern church, embellished with fresco paintings. Within the same rich city are situated several hospitals, an asylum for the deaf and dumb, different academical societies, a public library, consisting of 110,000 volumes; among others, a copy of Montaigne's essays, with marginal corrections written by the author; it possesses besides, a botanical garden, one of the four established by government for the purpose of naturalizing exotic plants, a collection of natural history, schools of theology, medicine, surgery, drawing and painting, and lastly, a museum of antiquities, in which are tombs and basso-relievos, collected in the town or neighbourhood. We have had occasion to mention the site of an ancient temple, now wholly destroyed; some arcades of an amphitheatre, called the palace of Gallienus, are the only remains that serve to recall the Roman domination. It is