the gorge, it was passable only on foot, or on mule-back. Yet
light-footed armies have passed into Italy by this route. Lesdiguieres
clambered over the mountains and along the Guil to reach Chateau
Queyras, which he assaulted and took. Louis XIII. once accompanied a
French army about a league up the gorge, but he turned back, afraid to
go farther; and the hamlet at which his progress was arrested is still
called Maison du Roi. About three leagues higher up, after crossing
the Guil from bank to bank several times, in order to make use of such
ledges of the rock as are suitable for the road, the gorge opens into
the Combe du Queyras, and very shortly the picturesque-looking Castle
of Queyras comes in sight, occupying the summit of a lofty conical
rock in the middle of the valley.

As we approached Chateau Queyras the ruins of a building were pointed
out by Mr. Milsom in the bottom of the valley, close by the
river-side. "That," said he, "was once the Protestant temple of the
place. It was burnt to the ground at the Revocation. You see that old
elm-tree growing near it. That tree was at the same time burnt to a
black stump. It became a saying in the valley that Protestantism was
as dead as that stump, and that it would only reappear when that dead
stump came to life! And, strange to say, since Felix Neff has been
here, the stump _has_ come to life--you see how green it is--and again
Protestantism is like the elm-tree, sending out its vigorous
offshoots, in the valley."

Chateau Queyras stands in the centre of the valley of the Guil, which
is joined near this point by two other valleys, the Combe of Arvieux
joining it on the right bank, and that of San Veran on the left. The
heads of the streams which traverse these valleys have their origin in
the snowy range of the Cottian Alps, which form the boundary between
France and Italy. As in the case of the descendants of the ancient
Vaudois at Dormilhouse, they are here also found at the farthest limit
of vegetation, penetrating almost to the edge of the glacier, where
they were least likely to be molested. The inhabitants of Arvieux were
formerly almost entirely Protestant, and had a temple there, which was
pulled down at the Revocation. From that time down to the Revolution
they worshipped only in secret, occasionally ministered to by Vaudois
pastors, who made precarious visits to them from the Italian valleys
at the risk of their lives.

Above Arvieux is the hamlet of La C