It is a repaying prospect; a majestic salutation, preceding the nearer acquaintance to come.  One thing we know instantly.  There will be no lack of noble scenery in these mountains.  We shall find wild views among their rocks and ice,—­views, it must be, which shall dispute with many in the Alps.

This prospect from the terrace at Pau is a celebrated one.  Icy peaks are not all that is seen.  In front of them the ranges rise, still high from the plain, but smoothed and softened with the green of pines and turf.  Between these and the Pau valley spread hidden leagues of rolling plains, swelling as they approach us into minor ravelins of foothills known as the coteaux; and little poplar-edged streams, “creaming over the shallows,” winding their way toward the valley just below us, are coming from the long slopes to join the hurrying Gave de Pau.  Houses and hamlets are here and there, and the even streak of the railway; and over toward the coteaux we see the village of Jurancon, famed for its wines.

The terrace falls sheer away, a fifty-foot wall from where we stand, and at its base, as we lean over the parapet, we see houses and alleys and just beneath us a school-yard of shouting, frolicking children.  We brighten their play with a few friendly sous, as one enlivens the Bernese bear-pit with carrots.

Behind us, the Hotel Gassion rises to cut off the streets beyond it; to the right, along the terrace a few hundred yards, stands a stout old building, square and firm, which we know at once for the castle of Henry of Navarre.

III.

“In most points of view,” as Johnson observes, in his Sketches in the South of France, “we look down the valley and see on either side its mountain walls; or we are placed upon culminating points overtopping all the rest of the prospect; but here the view is across the depression and against the vast panorama, which opposes the eye at all quarters, and comprehends within it the whole of the picture.  High up in the snow the very pebbles seem to lie so distinctly that, but for the space between, a boy might pick them up; lower down, from among the brown heather thin blue streaks stream aloft from some cottage chimney, winding along the brae-side till melted into air.  We half expect to see some human figure traverse those white fields and mark the footprints he leaves behind, some shepherd with his dog crossing from valley to valley.  Alas! it is twenty miles away, the pebbles are huge masses of projecting rock, precipices on which the snow cannot rest; yonder smoke is from the charcoal-burner’s fire, which would take in a cottage for a mouthful of fuel, and a dozen men piled on each other’s shoulders might at this moment be swallowed up in these snow-beds and we never the wiser.