CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE

Broadly speaking, one half of France is mountainous, and the other flat or undulating. All the mountains are on the eastern half, the high grounds of Normandy and Brittany being scarcely more than hills. The whole country might, for some purposes, be considered as an inclined plane, for in travelling from the Alps on the eastern frontiers to the Atlantic coast the altitudes (omitting the valley of the Rhone) are constantly decreasing. Thus, with the exception of the Rhone, which carries the snow-waters of the Bernese and Pennine Alps, the Vosges and the Jura chains, into the Mediterranean, the waters of nearly the whole of the more habitable three-quarters of the country drain westwards to the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel. Most of this immense reticulation of river and stream is included in the three great systems of the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne. The Adour drains the triangle between the Pyrenees and the Garonne; the Charente waters the Plain of Poitou between the Garonne and the Loire, but both are of small account in comparison to the vast areas included in the basins of the great rivers.

Both the Rhone and the Garonne are of foreign birth, the first beginning life at the foot of the great Rhone Glacier in Switzerland, feeding on her snows and glaciers all the year round, and the second rising in a Spanish valley of the Pyrenees.

The Loire, the longest of her rivers, is, however, entirely a possession of France. It is, like the Seine, a cause of very much anxiety on account of its inconstancy. At one season of the year it inundates large areas with its superabundance, and at another it is capable of running so low that only mere streams flow between the sand-banks. So unfortunately situated is the city of Tours in times of flood that it has found it necessary to surround itself with a protective dyke. The chief cause of sudden inundations is when the flood-waters of two or three tributaries conspire to pour in their contributions to the main channel simultaneously, and only when these headstrong young things are held in check will there be any hope of a fairly regular level of water in the main course. Two centuries ago (1711) the need for curbing the flood-waters was recognised so clearly that a dam was constructed at Pinay, a village 18 miles above Roanne. It held up 350 to 450 million cubic feet of water, and has been very successful in maintaining the supply of water in the river-bed during seasons of drought, as well as checking the violence of the floods. In recent times three other dams have been built, two of them near the busy industrial centre of St. Etienne, but until several others have been constructed the flood-waters cannot be held in check.

Its immense length of 625 miles takes the Loire through ten departments, but the changes of scenery are not so remarkable as those of the Rhone. The source is in the Cevennes, about 4500 feet above sea-level, on the east side of the Gerbier de Jonc, and almost in sight of the Rhone. Through Haute Loire in the marvellously picturesque region of dead volcanoes near Le Puy-en-Velay it takes its course northwards, flowing at the foot of basaltic cliffs and chestnut-clad slopes. On commanding spurs ruined castles are perched in most romantic fashion, and if it were not for their painful inaccessibility, the demand among the wealthy for these little strongholds of the Middle Ages would run up their value to astonishing figures.

The action of water in the past has been vastly more energetic in the Auvergnes and the Cevennes in the ages since their masses of plutonic rock were produced than at the present day, for the scoria and the general debris of seismic disturbance has been so much eroded that the throats of volcanoes filled with the last product of the immense heat below here and there stand out stripped of their cones. One of the most remarkable of these phenomena is to be seen at Le Puy. This strange _aiguille_ has been crowned with a beautiful Romanesque chapel for some nine centuries, and it is just possible that a Roman temple stood there at an earlier date.

In the neighbourhood of St. Etienne the Loire is considered to be navigable. It traverses the alluvial plain of Forez, the mountains of that name to the west separating it from the basin of its great tributary the Allier, which takes a roughly parallel course and joins it just below Nevers. If rivers could express their feeling by other means than overproduction and strikes, the Allier would no doubt say something forcible as to the ascendency of its neighbour, whose claims to be the parent stream are open to question.

Nearly all the way through this plain of Forez the Loire, in fine weather, resembles a ribbon of fairest blue threaded through lace of exquisite delicacy, for it is bordered by trees growing close to the water-side, and only now and then does the band of blue show an uninterrupted surface. Lower down bare red hills are encountered, through which the river has forced its way to the plain in which stands the town of Roanne, after which its course is less picturesque for a time. This is perhaps a scarcely accurate statement, for picture-making qualities with trees, cattle, and distant hills are scarcely ever absent, but there is a certain monotony in the scenery such as one can hardly find on the Thames or the Wye. From Nevers to Orleans there are no towns on the river, which gradually turns its course to the west, flowing exactly in that direction at Orleans, where its ample width adds much interest and charm to a very much modernised city. Its habit of flooding, and so causing immense damage over large areas, has made it necessary to construct very formidable dykes, which now protect the country it traverses between La Martiniere and Nantes. Between Orleans and Tours, where embankments do not exist, the writer has seen the cream-coloured flood-waters foaming and swirling past trees, fences, and hay-stacks over large areas of the Sologne. Here and there it has been almost impossible to see any indications of the usual river-bed, and so level is the country to the south in the neighbourhood of Beaugency that there seems nothing to check the floods for several kilometres from the river. On these occasions one trembles on account of the danger to which the thirteenth-century bridge at Beaugency, patched, and in part rebuilt, is hourly exposed. It is the oldest bridge on the Loire.

Below Blois embankments contain the river, and the roadway on that which defends the north side provides the charming riverside drive to Amboise and Tours familiar to all who have visited the romantic _chateaux_ of Touraine. The average rise of the river in flood is 14 feet, and these dykes are quite equal to this task, but when, as in 1846 and 1856, the Loire raised its surface to over 22 feet, even these banks were useless. With dredging, embanking, and dam construction the river is being gradually harnessed, but there is still much to be done before riverside towns can contemplate the rapid melting of snow in the mountains without the gravest anxiety.

An upper course in a country of impervious rock means that the volume of water is not reduced by absorption, and the difficulties of the river are increased when it encounters the tertiary beds of the formation to which Paris gives its name. In this soft soil the Loire gathers up great quantities of detritus, which it deposits farther down, producing the sand-banks which cost the communities large sums to remove.

If the middle part of its course is not very interesting, the Loire removes that reproach between Orleans and its mouth. Its waters, and those of some of its shorter tributaries, reflect the towers and crenellated walls of some of the most remarkable and interesting of all the _chateaux_ of France. Blois, the scene of the murders of the Duc de Guise (who had instigated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew) and of his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine; Amboise, with its great tower, containing a spiral roadway for carriages and the courtyard in which Mary Stuart had, in 1560, been the swooning witness of a most appalling massacre of 1200 Huguenot prisoners, the Duc de Guise refusing to listen to her entreaties that they should be spared; Chenonceaux, the scene of many a royal hunting party, and the possession for a time of Diane de Poitiers, and Chaumont, which Catherine de Medici obliged Diane to take in exchange; Langeais, where rich furnishings of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance bring one into the very atmosphere of the poignard and of deadly intrigue; and Angers, with its seventeen round towers, begun by Philippe Auguste, are all eloquent of the romantic age of French history, of human passion, of love, hate, and despair.

It would not be easy to think offhand of any river of similar length and importance whose course shows such amazing dilatoriness as that of the Seine. The statue of a nymph placed at its source by the city of Paris is only 250 miles from the sea in a direct line, but the river seems to have an unconquerable desire to postpone the hour when it is swallowed up by the English Channel, and by turning out of its normal direction, northwards or southwards, every few miles it has dug for itself a channel 482 miles in length. Such sinuosities on the course of a great river might be called undignified, if one could not point to that part of the course of the Moselle that lies between Treves and Coblentz, and to the Ebro in the middle part of its journey between Saragossa and the sea. The increased friction at the numerous sharp curves prevents the flood-waters from getting away with the rapidity the Parisians sometimes desire, and this is partly responsible for the serious damage done in the capital when circumstances combine to send down an abnormal quantity of water from the higher tributaries. In January 1910 the height of the river above the normal was 24 feet, and the racing waters swirled against the keystones of the bridges. But if the Seine misbehaves itself at intervals,[12] its average flow is so steady that its navigability is greater than the other important rivers. This excellent quality is due to the fact that about three-quarters of the basin (an area of some 30,000 square miles) is formed of permeable deposits, and consequently a vast absorption is constantly taking place. The waters subtracted in this way are given back by the perennial springs supplied by the saturation of different strata. In rainless summer weather the first two or three dozen miles of the river frequently dry up, and only from Chatillon is it a permanent river. Tributaries of importance then begin to flow in. The Aube and the Yonne are followed by the Loing and the Essonne, and just before Paris the confluence with the Marne takes place. At the door of the last-mentioned river, longer than the Seine by 31 miles, is laid much of the blame for the volume of the floods. Its source is in the Plateau de Langres not many miles to the north-east of the Seine. Rich pasture-lands broken with long lines of tall-stemmed trees and brown-roofed villages are typical of the scenery of the main river and its tributaries above Paris. The painter who loves to be in the midst of opulent nature is happy here. Quaint groups of tall trees, whose foliage in the fall of the year turns to those delicate yellow greens and subtle browns that are a never-failing joy to those with seeing eyes, are everywhere arranged in some delightful scheme in which reflections in smooth oily waters add a double charm to the scene.

[12] Great risings of the Seine occurred in 1658, 1740, 1799, 1802, 1876, and 1883.

It is not until Paris has been left behind that the river begins to wash the bold white ramparts of the cretaceous beds. In and out of the deeply indented front the meandering river takes its way, on the right bank a wall of gleaming white cliffs and on the left green savannahs stretching to a far and level horizon. In many places the escarpments of chalk have the characteristics of ruined drum towers, of barbicans, and of broken curtains, so that when Richard Coeur-de-Lion's "_fillette d'un an_," the Chateau Gaillard which he caused to be built with such incredible speed, comes into view, it is at first difficult to believe that it is anything more than a still more realistic natural effect. From the high ground that commands the _chateau_ one looks over one of the giant loops of the river, hemmed in by green-topped cliffs of the same marine deposits that form Gris Nez and the curious caves of Etretat, as well as the white cliffs of Albion. At one's feet are the still very perfect ruins of a castle that stood on the frontier of England's possessions in France seven centuries ago, and lower still is the little town of Le Petit Andely huddled for protection at the base of the castle cliff.

Farther west, where the cliffs fall away, stands that historic city of France--Rouen, the ancient capital of Normandy. It is a port, for the Seine at this point becomes navigable for fair-sized sea-going steamers, and one may watch the unloading of china clay from Cornwall among the various imports carried directly to the quays.

Possibly the waterway to the sea was looked upon with little joy by the inhabitants of the city during the ninth and tenth centuries, when at any time, and without much warning, the shallow-draught vessels of the Vikings might appear on the river. How these bloodthirsty pirates came and came again in spite of strenuous resistance, heavy losses, and much Dane-geld, is a terrible chapter in the story of the Seine. How the night sky became copper-coloured under the furnace glow of burning houses, churches, and monasteries, is a picture which no historian of the river can fail to put into vivid words. Long ago, however, Rouen recovered from the disasters inflicted by the Northmen, and those who wander through her picturesque streets can find traces of buildings that came into existence not very long after this period.

A rare type of steel bridge spans the Seine at Rouen. It consists of a travelling platform, large enough to take horses and carts, and all the usual load of a ferry-boat, which is slung from a light framework connecting two tall lattice steel towers. This curious achievement of modern engineering and the very tall iron fleche of the cathedral form the salient features of all distant views of the city.

Some of the peninsulas carved by the vagaries of the river are entirely given up to forest, and for many miles dark masses of trees extend to the southern horizon. Dykes hold the river to its course below Rouen. Before they were built it was impossible for vessels of 20-feet draught to navigate the river except under exceptional conditions. A notable feature of the lower reaches is the bore which occurs at every tide and reaches its maximum height of about 8 feet in the neighbourhood of Caudebec, where enterprising watermen entice the visitor into their boats to enjoy a natural water-show that quite eclipses the artificial thrills of the "Earl's Court" order.

Beautiful and historic buildings are thickly strewn along the lowest reaches of the Seine. The ruined abbey of Jumieges, where Edward the Confessor was educated, raises its lofty Norman towers high above the trees at the southern end of a big loop; the monastery of St. Wandrille, which is now converted into a private house and became the home of Maeterlinck a few years ago, is in a pretty valley leading from the river; Caudebec, with its glorious Gothic church and romantic old streets, stands on the right bank and has a sunny quay, and an open view across the sparkling waters, the opulent level pastures, and the belts of forest beyond; Lillebonne is the _Julia Bona_ of Roman times, and has important remains of a Roman theatre, besides the castle, in whose great hall--alas! no longer existing--William the Norman announced to a great gathering of leading men his project of invading England; Tancarville Castle, with its prominent circular tower, is reflected in the broadening waters nearer the estuary, where Harfleur looks across to Honfleur, and both seem to dream of the days when their great neighbour Le Havre was not.

Being an entirely French river, the Loire has been described first in this chapter; the Seine followed, being a smaller river, although of more commercial importance. Its basin, it should be mentioned, is not entirely French, some of its water being taken from Belgium. Of the two great rivers of foreign birth the Rhone is of the greater importance. It has a drainage area of close upon 38,000 square miles, and is the greatest river of all those that pour their waters directly into the Mediterranean. Besides this the Rhone is numbered in that distinguished group composed of the greatest of the rivers of Europe. More than any of the rivers of France it stands out as a big factor in history. One thinks of Hannibal with his host and his elephants faced by the swiftness and breadth of its flow; of the terrible struggle of the Romans with the Cimbri and Teutones on its banks; of St. Benezet in the twelfth century copying the methods of the Roman architect of the Pont du Gard, and accomplishing what had never been done before, _i.e._ the construction of a stone bridge that could resist the onslaught of the flood-waters for centuries. Four of the big elliptical arches still stand, seemingly as strong as the day they were erected, and above one of the piers rises the little Romanesque bridge chapel where the body of the good builder was buried.

The source of the Rhone is fitting for such a mighty waterway. It begins life as a torrent that pours from the foot of the great Rhone Glacier, 5909 feet above sea-level. It is now ascertained that it is the glacier itself from under which it emerges which gives birth to the river, and not the warm springs which issue from the ground at the point formerly reached by the glacier. Very early on its course another glacier-fed torrent adds its waters to the Rhone, which foams and rages through a gorge of typical Alpine grandeur. The exuberance of its youth is maintained by the torrents that feed its adolescent stages. It falls more than 3600 feet in less than thirty miles from its source, joined at frequent intervals by companions born of ice and snow, such as the Eginen, the Binna, and the Massa, a child of the Aletsch Glaciers. Below Brieg comes the Saltine, and then follows a quiet stretch, when the growing river passes through a stretch of alluvium--a dull period, a first governess, as it were, to a high-spirited youth--where floods are frequent. Below the old town of St. Maurice the river is confined within the narrow gorge that forms the western entrance of the Vallais, and it emerges from this gateway to Switzerland to flow across the marshy plain that was formerly the south-eastern end of the Lake of Geneva. Year by year the debris of the Bernese and the Pennine Alps is washed down by the tireless waters, and the date is approximately ascertainable when the lake will have ceased to exist. That will be a sad day for the Rhone, for it is through the filter-like action of the lake that the river flows forth freed from its burden of detritus, and Byron's "blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone" will describe a river whose character has changed for ever, unless the hand of man erects barriers in its course, and so introduces periods of artificial repose. But France to-day does not receive from Switzerland the gift of a river in its unsullied youth, for not long after it has passed from the lake it is contaminated by an untutored glacier-bred youth fresh from the Mont Blanc range, whence it has carried down much solid matter. For a certain distance the two rivers do not recognise one another, the waters refusing to mix, but propinquity brings its familiar result and justifies the copy-book maxim concerning evil companionship.

All through the long journey to Lyons the Rhone preserves the character of an uncivilised mountain-bred river, of small service to commerce or communication, although it is termed "navigable" from a point between Le Parc and Pyrimont. It must be said in defence of the river that the circumstances of its path in life do not tend towards the restful stability beloved of commerce. No sooner does it enter France than it is obliged to fight its way through a constricted channel between the Credo and the Vuache, and gorge succeeds gorge for the greatest part of the distance between Geneva and Lyons. And who is there possessing any love for untrammelled nature who does not love the river's wild moods, its impetuosity, its generosity, and its reckless enthusiasm. By the time it has reached the great city of Lyons it has, however, subdued its wild ways, for having come within sight of the beautiful Saone it passes through the city on a sedately parallel course, and very soon they are wedded. For the rest of its life--a distance of 230 miles--the Rhone is a hard-working member of society, carrying day by day the manufactures of Central France down to the ancient "middle sea." It was the little time of engagement, the brief interval before the marriage with the Saone was consummated, that produced the peninsula whereon the second city of France was founded, and gave it a situation of the greatest security in unsettled times. No doubt the Segusiani, who are generally mentioned as the earliest people to occupy the tongue of land, had had predecessors on the same spot, but the fogs of prehistoric times prevent one from knowing much of the settlement before the Roman had reached the confluence of the rivers. Then the mists roll away, and one has a vision of Agrippa making it the centre of four great roads; Augustus is seen giving the city a senate and making it the place of annual assembly of representatives from the sixty cities of Gallia Comata. Besides conferring these distinctions, the reign of Augustus saw the building of temples, aqueducts, and a theatre. In A.D. 59, during the reign of the half-demented Nero, the city was burnt and afterwards rebuilt on grander lines. Great buildings succeeded one another until the two rivers must have reflected as fine a city as could be found within the Roman Empire. But the unsettled centuries of the Dark Age of Europe brought successive waves of destructive invasion to _Lugdunum_, and for evidences of the Roman period of the city it is necessary to go to the museum, where, however, the Gallo-Roman objects are numerous and of the greatest importance.

Farther down its course the great river's swift-flowing flood has on its banks the towns of Vienne, Valence, Avignon, Tarascon, and Arles, all by a curious chance on the left bank, although at Avignon and Tarascon there are sister towns on the opposite side, and Arles has a suburb across the water. Vienne and Arles still boast notable Roman structures, and Orange and Nimes, as well as the Gard, the last tributary the river receives before entering the period of its dotage in the Carmargue, preserve vast Roman buildings at no great distance from the Rhone. It is just possible that the great part this river has played in the making of France might have received a far less adequate recognition had these visual tokens of the days of imperial Rome vanished as did so many others.

In its journey southwards from Lyons the character of the country traversed by the Rhone undergoes remarkable changes, and after Valence there is a decidedly southern aspect in the landscapes. The olive begins to appear, the vine is cultivated on all sides, and dark lines of cypresses become conspicuous. From Avignon the dusty limestone country extends across Provence to the sea, and the arid sun-baked hills terraced here and there for vineyards, the lines of sentinel cypresses, and the constant presence of the olive are the chief features of scenery that might be in Turkey, in Asia, or the Holy Land. And yet this river began life in an Alpine glacier and passed its middle age in the fertile lands of west-central France. The delta of the Rhone is a huge triangular area enclosed between the Grand Rhone and the smaller branch it throws off near Arles. It is called the Carmargue, and is a flat waste only cultivated at the river sides, and in certain patches helped by irrigation. Almost treeless in great portions, and exposed to the fierce mistral that blows its cold Alpine breath upon the delta whenever the mood arises, it is surprising to find any towns or villages in the whole district. Yet Aigues Mortes and St. Gilles, and a few villages, keep alive under the most adverse conditions. Below Arles, to the east of the river, and extending to the Etang de Berre, is the stony plain of La Crau, and there too, in spite of the climatic discomforts and lack of soil, two or three villages have come into existence along the main road between Arles and Aix-en-Provence. The Crau is probably more the work of the Durance than of the Rhone, which has deposited its burden of ice-carried boulders in the Lake of Geneva for ages, while the Durance in its comparatively short course from the Maritime Alps has no filtering vat, and in its periods of flood has forced millions of large stones down to the Rhone delta, gradually building up a barrier between itself and the sea, and necessitating a junction with the Rhone just below Avignon. When the sun beats down on the level waste of stones, whose depth averages from 30 to 45 feet, such heat is produced that a mirage is a not uncommon result. Any explanation for such a remarkable number of stones accumulated in one place was so hard to be found in early days that it was necessary to resort to the supernatural, and Strabo records the legend that it was Zeus who bombarded with these projectiles the Ligurian tribesmen who attacked the early Phoenician traders and colonisers of the mouth of the Rhone.

The Garonne, the last of the four great rivers of France, is the least interesting. As already mentioned it is of foreign birth, its head-waters being in the Maladetta chain of peaks in a Spanish portion of the Pyrenees, and the river has traversed about 30 miles before it enters France through the _cluse_ of the Pont du Roi. One of the two torrents in which the river begins its life plunges into a cavity in the rock, known as the Trou du Taureau, and does not appear again for two and a half miles. The Rhone also had formerly a small subterranean experience in its upper course, but the roof of rock has been destroyed.

The course of the river is roughly north-westward until it reaches the formidable plateau of Lannemezan, where it is turned sharply to the east, carrying with it the waters of the Neste, a considerable stream fed by the snows of Mont Perdu and its big neighbours. In this part of its course the scenery is exceedingly fine. Before the snows have melted off the mountains there are always the pale blue-grey peaks flecked with sunny patches, and slopes forming a magnificent background to dark wooded hills full of purples and ambers, and in spring the more subtle browns turning to yellow and the palest suspicion of green. Immense views are obtained from the Lannemezan plateau, the frontier mountain-range stretching away east and west in a most imposing perspective of white peaks.

On its eastward course the Garonne passes the little town of St. Gaudens, whose name is derived from a Christian boy who was martyred in 475 by Euric, king of the Visigoths. St. Martory, the next town, spans the river with a bridge guarded by a formidable eighteenth-century gateway which Arthur Young thought could have been built for no other purpose than to please the eye of travellers. After this the westward tilt of France begins to assert itself, and the river works northwards to the city of Toulouse, where it gradually turns towards the west. Toulouse, while owing much to its river, does not forget the ill-turns it has received from its mountain-born waterway, which carried away the suspension bridge of St. Pierre in 1855, and twenty years later, in a disastrous flood, demolished the bridge of St. Michel and 7000 houses in the Faubourg St. Cyprien, while about 300 people were drowned. This suburb is on the left bank, and its situation on the inner side of the curve made by the river as it passes through the city makes it peculiarly liable to suffer from floods. The Pont Neuf, occupying a central position, was built about the middle of the sixteenth century by the sculptor Nicholas Bachelier, whose arches have proved capable of resisting the angry moods of the Garonne until the present day. He adorned with his work many of the churches and mansions of Toulouse.

For the remainder of its course the river keeps to a north-westerly direction, and passing along the northern edge of the plateau which diverted its course, it absorbs all the rivers that flow from it. There is no other town of any consequence until the great port of Bordeaux is reached. This is not many miles from the mouth of the Garonne, for when the Dordogne adds its flood to the longer river the wide tidal estuary called the Gironde has been entered. It is scarcely fair on the Dordogne to call it a tributary of the Garonne when it does not join that river until it has entered the broad waterway common to both, but it is undoubtedly a part of the Garonne system. With the exception of the town of Bergerac--a place of no importance and of less interest--the Dordogne has only one other town on its banks, the little port of Libourne at its mouth where the wines of the locality are shipped.

The Adour and its important tributary the Gave de Pau figured conspicuously in Wellington's successful operations against Marshal Soult in the concluding period of the Peninsular War, and it was during the siege of Bayonne by Sir John Hope, while the Duke was following Soult towards Orthez, that the famous bridge of boats was built across the river below the town. The construction of this bridge entailed enormous risks in getting the boats across the bar at the river's mouth, and its successful accomplishment was considered one of the greatest engineering feats achieved by the British army during this period.