As I went on I soon found that the stony wastes had their flowers too.  It would seem as if Nature had wished to console the desert by giving to it her loveliest and most enticing blossoms.  I came upon colonies of the poet’s narcissus, breathing over the rocks so sweet a fragrance that it was as if a miracle had been wrought to draw it out of the earth.  I walked knee-deep through blooming asphodels, beautiful and strange, but only noticed here by the wild bee.  I gathered sprays of the graceful alpine-tea, densely crowded with delicate white bloom, and marvelled at the wanton splendour of the iris colouring the gray and yellow stones with its gorgeous blue.

Still following the Ouysse, I came to a spot where the valley ended in an amphitheatre formed by steep hills more than 600 feet high, and covered for the most part with dwarf oak.  In the hollow under the dark cliffs was a little lake or pool forty or fifty yards from shore to shore.  The water showed no sign of trouble save where it overflowed its basin on the western side, and formed the river that I had been keeping in sight for hours.  The pool filled the Gouffre de St. Sauveur.  Until the Ouysse finds this opening in the earth it is a subterranean river, and it must flow at a great depth, probably at the base of the calcareous formation, inasmuch as it continues to rise from the gulf the whole year, although from the month of August until the autumn rains nearly every water-course in the country is marked by a curving line of dry pebbles.  The funnel-shaped hole descends vertically to the depth of about ninety feet, but there is no means of knowing how far it descends obliquely.  The tourist may occasionally catch sight of a shepherd boy or girl with goats or sheep upon the bare or wooded rocks, but his feeling will be one of deep loneliness.  He will see ravens and hawks about the crags, and about the river half covered in summer with floating pond-weed, watercress, and the broad leaves of the yellow lily, he will notice many a water-ouzel bobbing with white breast, water-hens gliding from bank to bank, merry bands of divers, and the brilliant blue gleam of the passing kingfisher, which here is allowed to fish in peace, like the otter.

The Gouffre de St. Sauveur has its legend.  It is said that when the church of St. Sauveur, on the neighbouring hill, was in imminent danger at the time of the Revolution, the bells were thrown into the pool so that they should not fall into the hands of the enemy.  Imaginative people fancy that they can sometimes hear them ringing at the bottom of the water.

After leaving the pool—­now very sombre in the shadow of the wooded hill—­I crossed a ridge separating me from the Gouffre de Cabouy, out of which flows a tributary of the Ouysse.  Thence I reached the deep and singularly savage gorge of the Alzou, which brought me to Roc-Amadour, when the after-light of sunset was lingering rosily upon the naked crags.