shone out with
unveiled splendour, the rays fell with summer warmth. While the
tinkling of sheep-bells from the ledges of the rocks came down to me,
the passionate warble of nightingales, that could not wait for the
night, must have risen from the leafy valley to the ears of the
listless shepherd-boy gathering feather-grass where goats would not
dare to venture, or eating his dark bread in the sun on the edge of a
precipice. Time flowed gently like the river, and I was surprised to
find myself at Lacave so soon. This village is near the spot where the
Ouysse falls into the Dordogne. A little beyond the clustering houses,
upon the edge of a high rocky promontory overlooking the Ouysse, is
the castle of Belcastel, still retaining its feudal keep and outer
wall. In this fortress the English are said to have kept many of their
prisoners.

I now left the Dordogne and ascended the valley of the Ouysse. This
stream is one of the most remarkable of the natural phenomena of
France. To judge from its breadth near the mouth, one would suppose
that it had flowed fifty or a hundred miles, but its entire length is
less than ten miles. It is already a river when it rises out of the
depths of the earth. The narrow valley that it waters is a gorge 500
or 600 feet deep through the greater part of its distance. The
traveller at the bottom supposes, or is ready to suppose, that he is
in some ravine of the high mountains; in reality, it is simply a
fissure of the plateau that was once the bed of the sea. There is no
igneous, no metamorphic rock here; nothing but limestone of the
Jurassic formation. The convexities on one side of the fissure
correspond with marked regularity to the concavities on the other.

For awhile I walked on the lush grass by the brimming river, where in
the little creeks and bays the water-ranunculus floated its small
white flowers that were to continue the race. Then I left the water
and the green ribbon that followed its margin, and, taking a
sheep-track, rose upon the arid steeps, where the thinly-scattered
aromatic southern-wood was putting forth its dusty leaves. The bare
rocks, yellow, white, and gray, towered above me; they were beneath
me; they faced me across the valley; wherever I looked they were
shutting me off from the outer world. No nightingales were singing
here, but I heard the melancholy scream of the hawk and the harsh
croak of the raven. And yet, when I looked down into the bottom of
this steep