The air is warm, even sultry, but not oppressive.  In fact, the thermometer has not throughout the tour given any markedly choleric displays of temper.  The Pyrenees, lying as they do so far toward the south, had held for us vague intimations of southern heat:  linked closely in latitude with the Riviera and with mid-Italy, we had half feared to find them linked as well with Mediterranean and Italian temperatures, and so far ill adapted for summer traveling.  But the fear was uncalled for.  The weather has, on infrequent days, been undeniably warm, but no warmer than the summer heat of the valleys of the Alps or the Adirondacks.  In fact, as a matter of geography, the Pyrenees lie in the same northerly latitude as the Adirondacks themselves.  In point of elevation above the sea, the belt, even in its lowlands, is everywhere higher than the neighboring parallels of Nice or Florence; the air is fresher, shade and breeze are more abundant, as always among mountains; our trip, aiding, to verify this, convinces us that apprehensions as to excess of heat will here find gratifyingly little fulfilment.

II.

We beguile the three hours’ wait with a lunch, a walk, and an idiot beggar with an imposing wen or goitre.  This creature crouches persistently by the carriages while the horses are reharnessed and we are taking our places.  The form is misshapen, the face distorted and scarcely human; we can get no answer from the mumbling lips save a sputter of gratitude for our sous; it is cretinism, hideous, hopeless, a horror among these beautiful valleys, yet as in the Alps pitifully common.

In the presence of this frightful disease, destroying every semblance of fair humanity, one can see some reason also for the belief in witchcraft and diabolism once so intense in the Pyrenees.  If the body and mind of an “innocent” can thus come to part with the last vestige of its holy lineage, the soul of a “wicked” might with good reason seem to be capable of growing into full fellowship with the devil himself.  So late as 1824, not far from this spot, they nearly burned an old woman for alleged sorcery; and in 1862, one was actually so burned, in the town of Tarbes, a few leagues away.  This superstition of witchcraft has here been strong in all eras, but it is at last becoming extinct; cretinism, as anachronous and as horrible,—­a fact, not a superstition,—­remains unaccounted for and unlessened.

III.

By four o’clock, we are at the base of the Col d’Aspin and commence on the long curves that lead to its top.  The valley behind extends as we rise; new breaks and depressions appear, branching off right and left on all sides.  After a half hour, peaks begin to peep over the hills at our rear; they come up one by one into sight, each whiter and sharper than the last, until the southern line is a serrate row of them, gradually lifted wholly above