A railway must of necessity follow the floor of the valley and
tunnel and creep round the shoulders of the bulwarks. There is perhaps
one exception to this rule, which is the sight of the Pyrenees from the
train as one comes into Tarbes. It is a wise thing if you are visiting
those hills to come into Tarbes by night and sleep there, and then next
morning the train upon its way to Pau unfolds you all the wall of the
mountains. But this is an accident. It is because the railway runs upon
a sort of high platform that you see the mountains so. With all other
hills that I remember it is best to have them burst suddenly upon you
from the top of some pass lifted high above the level and coming, let us
say, to a height half their own. Certainly the Bernese Oberland is more
wonderful caught in one moment from the Jura than introduced in any
other way, and the snows on Atlas over the desert seem like part of the
sky when they come upon one after climbing the red rocks of the high
plateaux and you see them shining over the salt marshes. The Vosges you
cannot thus see from a half-height; there is no platform, and that is
perhaps why the Vosges have not impressed travellers as they should. But
you can so watch the grand chain of old volcanoes which are the rampart
of Auvergne. You can stand upon the high wooden ridge of Foreze and see
them take the morning across the mists and the flat of the Limagne,
where the Gauls fought Caesar.
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