They certainly do work exceedingly hard, these peasant-proprietors and metayers, never counting their hours like the town workmen, but wishing that the day were longer, and if they can contrive to save anything in these days it is only by constant self-denial.  A man’s labour upon his land to-day will only support him, taking the bad years with the good, on the condition that he lives a life of primitive simplicity.  Even then the problem of existence is often a terribly hard one to solve.  In the South of France the blame is almost everywhere laid to the destruction of the vines by the phylloxera, but here in the plain of Albi the land is quite as suitable for corn as it is for grape-growing, which is far from being the case elsewhere; nevertheless, the peasants cry out with one voice against the bad times.  They have to contend with two great scourges:  hail that is so often brought by the thunder-storms in summer, and which the proximity of the Pyrenees may account for; and the south-east wind—­le vent d’autan—­that comes across from Africa, and scorches up the crops in a most mysterious manner.  But for this plague the yield of fruit would be enormous.  On the other hand, the region is blessed with lavish sunshine from early spring until November, and a half-maritime climate, explained by the neighbourhood of the ocean—­not the Mediterranean—­renders long periods of drought such as occur in Provence and Lower Languedoc rare.  In the valleys the soil is extremely fertile, and, favoured by moisture and warmth, its productive power is extraordinary.  Four crops of lucern are taken from the same land in the course of a season.  Unfortunately, these valleys being mere gorges—­cracks in the plain, with precipitous rocky sides—­the strip of land bordering the stream at the bottom is usually very narrow.

On reaching Arthez, the character of the country changed suddenly and completely.  Here the plain with its tertiary deposits ended, and in its stead commenced the long series of schistous rocks wildly heaped up and twisted out of their stratification, by which the Tarn is hemmed in for seventy miles as the crow flies, and nearly twice that distance if the windings of the gorge be reckoned.  When the calcareous region of the Gevaudan is reached, the schist, slate, and gneiss disappear.  On descending to the level of the river at Arthez, I saw before me one of the grandest cascades in France—­the Saut de Sabo.

It is not so much the distance that the river falls in its rapid succession of wild leaps towards the plain as the singularly chaotic and savage scene of dark rocks and raging waters, together with the length to which it is stretched out, that is so impressive.  The mass of water, the multitude of cascades, and the wild forms of the rocks, compose a scene that would be truly sublime if one could behold it in the midst of an unconquered solitude; but the hideous sooty buildings of a vast iron foundry on one bank of the river are there to spoil the charm.