Having taken an hour’s rest and a light meal in the village, I commenced the ascent towards the ‘Devil’s City.’  A mule-path wound up the steep side of the gorge, which had been partly reclaimed from the desert by means of terraces where many almond-trees flourished, safe from the north wind.  Very scanty, however, was the vegetation that grew upon this dry stony soil, burning in summer, and washed in winter of its organic matter by the mountain rains.  Tall woody spurges two feet high or more, with tufts of dusty green leaves, managed to draw, however, abundant moisture from the waste, as the milk that gushed from the smallest wound attested.  An everlasting pea, with very large flowers of a deep rose-colour, also loved this arid steep.  I was wondering why I found no lavender, when I saw a gray-blue tuft above me, and welcomed it like an old friend.  The air was soon scented with the plant, and for five days I was in the land of lavender.  On nearing the buttresses of the plateau the ground was less steep, and here I came to pines, junipers, oaks, and the bird-cherry prunus.  But the tree which I was most pleased to find was a plum, with ripe fruit about the size of a small greengage, but of a beautiful pale rose-colour.

I am now upon the causse and already see the castellated outworks of the ‘Devil’s City.’  The city itself lies in a hollow, and I have not yet reached it.  The mule-path fortunately leads in the right direction.  On my way multitudes of very dark, almost black, butterflies flutter up from the short turf, which is flecked with the gold of yellow everlastings.  Here and there a solitary round-headed allium nods from the top of its long leafless stem.  I walk over the shining dark leaves and the scarlet beads of the bearberry, and am presently roaming in the fantastic streets of the dolomitic city.  To say streets is scarcely an exaggeration, for these jutting rocks have in places almost the regularity of the menhirs of Carnac.  But the megalithic monuments of Brittany are like arrow-heads compared to the stones of Montpellier-le-Vieux.  In placing these and in giving them that mimicry of familiar forms at times so startling to human eyes, Nature has been the sole engineer and artist.  There is but one theory by which the working cause of the existing phenomena can be brought to our understanding.  It is that these honeycombed and fantastically-shaped masses of dolomite or magnesian limestone represent the skeletons of vaster rocks whose less resisting parts were washed away by the wearing action of the sea.  Some are formed of blocks of varying size, lying one upon another, with a pinnacle or dome at the summit; others show no trace of stratification, but are integral rocks which in many cases appear to have been cut away and fashioned to the mocking likeness of some animal form by a demon statuary.  Now it is a colossal owl, now a frightful head that may be human or devilish, now some inanimate shape such as a prodigious wineglass which fixes the eye and excites the fancy.  A mass of rock on which can be seen half sitting, half reclining, a monstrous stony shape with head hideously jovial, has been named the ‘Devil’s Chair.’