This region I had now fairly entered.  The road had gone somewhere up the hills, and I was walking beside the river upon sand glittering with particles of mica.  This sand the Tarn leaves all along its banks.  It is one of the most uncertain and treacherous of streams.  In a few hours its water will rise with amazing rapidity and spread consternation in a district where not a drop of rain has fallen.  Warm winds from the south and south-west, striking against the cold mountains in the Lozere, have been condensed, and the water has flowed down in torrents towards the plain.  The river is as clear as crystal now, and the many-coloured pebbles of its bed reflect the light, but a thunderstorm in the higher country may change it suddenly to the colour of red earth.

The path led me into a steep forest, where I lost sight of the Tarn.  The soil was too rocky for the trees—­oaks and chestnuts chiefly—­to grow very tall; consequently the underwood, although dense, was chequered all through with sunshine.  Heather and bracken, holly and box, made a wilderness that spread over all the visible world, for the opposite side of the gorge was exactly similar.  Shining in the sun amidst the flowering heather or glowing in majestic purple grandeur in the shade of shrubs stood many a foxglove, and almost as frequently seen was its relative digitalis lutea, whose flowers are much smaller and of a pale yellow.  Now and again a little rill went whispering downward through the woods under plumes of forget-me-nots in a deep channel that it had cut by working age after age.  Reaching at length a spot where I could look down into the bottom of the fissure, I perceived a small stream that was certainly not the Tarn.  I had been ascending one of the lateral gorges of the valley, and had left the river somewhere to the north.  My aim was now to strike it again in the higher country, and so I kept on my way.  But the path vanished, and the forest became so dense that I was bound to realize that I was in difficulties.  I resolved to try the bank of the stream, and reached it after some unpleasant experience of rocks, brambles and holly.  Here, however, was a path which I followed nearly to the head of the gorge and then climbed to the plateau.  There the land was cultivated, and the musical note of a cock turkey that hailed my coming from afar, as he swaggered in front of his harem on the march, led me to a spot where a man was mowing, and he told me where I should find the Tarn, which he, like all other people in the country, pronounced Tar.

Evening was coming on when I had crossed this plateau, and I saw far below me the village of Marsal on the banks of the shining Tarn.  The river here made one of those bold curves which add so much to its beauty.  The little village looked so peaceful and charming that I decided to seek its hospitality for that night.