Here the road ends, in a confined level across the bridge.  At the bend above stand a rough shanty and a shed, and near by our waiting saddle-horses are unobtrusively browsing.  Drivers and carriages now leave us and turn back, and the guide helps us to roll wraps and coats into cylinder-form and straps them snugly behind the saddles.  The shanty is not too primitive to vend refreshing drinks, and the ancient Frenchman in the doorway vainly lures us to lemonade and sour wine.  The guide hands out sticks for those of us who walk, swings the camera strap over his shoulder, and we all wave a friendly hand to the old mountain-taverner, who grins a forgiving au revoir.

We strike at once into the thicket.  There is only the footway to pierce it, crooked and steep and stony from the start.

     “The winding vale now narrows on the view,”

and the crowding trees at times shut out all sight of the cliffs opposite and above, though we always hear the noise of the torrent.  The sun can rarely find the path, which is damp and at places muddy.  The slant of the gorge has grown steeper, and when we come to breaks in the forest, we see the water tearing down toward us along its broken trough in increasing contortions, often in great flying leaps.  No path could hold this incline directly, and this one gracefully yields and adopts the usual expedient, ricochetting upward in short, incessant lacings, tracing up in the main the run of the Gave, but often diverted, zigzagging, always mounting, quadrupling the distance while it quarters the angle.

Two other cascades are passed.  The horses, used to the work, strain forward uncomplainingly, the guide leading the foremost; they toil quietly along the easier spots, but tug themselves rapidly, almost convulsively, up over the hard ones.  The jolting, pitching motion is severe and somewhat trying; and at intervals the ladies dismount and join us in walking,—­relieving the effort of rest with the rest of effort.

An hour or less of this, and then another roar presages another cataract, and soon we emerge upon the scene.  This is the Pont d’Espagne, a bridge of long logs stretching across the torrent at the spot where two streams unite and throw themselves together into the hollow, twenty-eight or thirty feet below.  We pause on the rough bridge and gaze down at the plunging water and foam and upward at our surroundings.  The entire picture, framed in by the sharp blackness of the pines and the broken escarpments of cliff and mountain, has been well compared to a scene in Norway.

At the other side of the bridge stand another shanty and another shed; also another refreshment-vendor.  A cool beverage has an attraction now which it had not earned an hour ago, and we feel that a breathing-spell will not be wasted.