but the villagers seek out little patches in the valley
below and on the mountain shelves, from which they contrive to grow a
little grain for home use. The place is so elevated and so exposed,
that in some seasons even rye will not ripen at Dormilhouse, while the
pasturages are in many places inaccessible to cattle, and scarcely
safe for sheep.

The principal food of the people is goats' milk and unsifted rye,
which they bake into cakes in the autumn, and these cakes last them
the whole year--the grain, if left unbaked, being apt to grow mouldy
and spoil in so damp an atmosphere. Besides, fuel is so scarce that it
is necessary to exercise the greatest economy in its use, every stick
burnt in the village having to be brought from a distance of some
twelve miles, on the backs of donkeys, by the steep mountain-path
leading up to the hamlet. Hence, also, the unsavoury means which they
are under the necessity of adopting to economize warmth in the winter,
by stabling the cattle with themselves in the cottages. The huts are
for the most part wretched constructions of stone and mud, from which
fresh air, comfort, and cleanliness seem to be entirely excluded.
Excepting that the people are for the most part comfortably dressed,
in clothing of coarse wool, which they dress and weave themselves,
their domestic accommodation and manner of living are centuries behind
the age; and were a stranger suddenly to be set down in the village,
he could with difficulty be made to believe that he was in the land of
civilised Frenchmen.

The place is dreary, stern, and desolate-looking even in summer. Thus,
we entered it with the snow falling on the 1st of July! Few of the
balmy airs of the sweet South of France breathe here. In the hollow of
the mountains the heat may be like that of an oven; but here, far up
on the heights, though the air may be fresh and invigorating at times,
when the wind blows it often rises to a hurricane. Here the summer
comes late and departs early. While flowers are blooming in the
valleys, not a bud or blade of corn is to be seen at Dormilhouse. At
the season when vegetation is elsewhere at its richest, the dominant
features of the landscape are barrenness and desolation. The very
shapes of the mountains are rugged, harsh, and repulsive. Right over
against the hamlet, separated from it by a deep gully, rises up the
grim, bare Gramusac, as black as a wall, but along the ledges of
which, the hunters of Dormilhouse,