A little beyond this impressive and legendary spot, the gorge, widening, displays an immense concavity on the left, nearly semicircular.  Here among the spur-like rocks which jut out from its steep sides—­much clothed, however, with vegetation—­was the hermitage of St. Ilere, and the spot where it is supposed to have been is a place of pilgrimage.  Here, too, are numerous caverns, in some of which many implements of the Stone Age have been found, as well as the bones of extinct animals and others which disappeared from Europe before the historic period.  To those who have the special knowledge that is requisite, the caverns of the Causses de Sauveterre and Mejan offer great enticement, for only a few of their secrets, covered by the darkness of incalculable ages, have yet been brought to light.

Again the cliffs draw closer together, and the tower-like masses on the brink of each precipice lift their inaccessible ramparts higher and higher in the blue air.  Gray-white or ochre-stained layers and monoliths shine like incandescent coals in the unmitigated radiance of the sun.  I pass a little group of houses in the hollow of overhanging rocks, splashed by the shadow of the wild fig-tree’s leaves.  One side of the gorge is all luminous with sunbeams, down to the lathy poplars leaning in every direction by the edge of the torrent, their leaves still wet with last night’s rain.  Another boat is being tugged laboriously up the rapids, a mule taking the first place at the end of the rope.  The impetuous water looks strong enough to carry the beast off his legs; but he, like the boatman, is used to the work, and has good nerves.  The path—­if path it can be called, when it has lost all trace of one—­now leads over large pebbles which are not pleasant to walk upon; but presently the way along the water-side is absolutely closed by vertical rocks some hundred feet high.

To enter the mad torrent in order to get beyond these terrible rocks, forming a narrow strait, was an undertaking only to be thought of if the case were desperate.  I believed that there must be a path somewhere running up the cliff, and after going back a little I found one.  It led me four or five hundred feet up the side of the gorge; but on looking down the distance seemed much less, because the rocks rose a thousand feet higher.  I was gazing at the loftiest peak on the opposite side, when two eagles suddenly appeared in the air above it; and so long as I remained did they continue to circle over it without any apparent movement of their wings.  The eyrie upon this needle-like point is well known; according to the popular belief, it has always been there.