The manufacture of rough shoes in jute or hemp (espadrillas) is a growing element of local trade.  Marble and slate works are plentiful, mainly concentrated round Lourdes and at Bagneres de Bigorre....  Persons who are insensible to marble can turn to the knitted woollen fabrics of which such quantities are made at Bagneres; many of them are as fine as the best Shetland work, with the additional merit of being as soft as eider-down.  The barley-sugar which everybody eats at Cauterets must also be counted; for it rises there to a position which it possesses nowhere else in the world,—­it is regarded as a necessity of life; the commerce in it attains such proportions that 10,000 sticks are sold each day during the season.  The little objects in boxwood which are hawked about by peddlers must be included too; and the list of special Pyrenean industries may be closed by bird-catching, which is carried on in the autumn months, especially round St. Pe and Bagneres de Bigorre.

“There remains one trade more, however,—­the greatest of all,—­the traffic in hot water.  Numerous as are the natural beauties of the district,—­varied as are its attractions and its products,—­it owes its success, its prosperity and its wealth to its mineral springs.  Some two millions of gallons are supplied each day by them.  Fifty-three towns and villages exist already round the sources, and others are being invented each year.  The inhabitants of the valleys are making money out of them in every form; for though the harvest is limited to the warm months, it is so various, so widespread, and so productive while it lasts, that everybody has a share in it, from the land-owner who sees his grass converted into building ground, to the half naked boy who cries the Paris newspapers when the post comes in.

“That hot water should become a civilizer and should mount in that way to the level of religion, education, monogamy, wealth and the fine arts, is a new view of hot water; but it is a true one in this case, for nothing else could have evolved the Pyrenees so widely or so fast.  Neither commerce nor conquest has ever changed a region as hot water has transformed these valleys.”

VI.

“There are corners here and there,” remarks the same writer in another connection, describing this valley of Luz, “which have about them such an atmosphere of purity and innocence that people have been known in their enthusiasm to proclaim that they felt inclined to repent of all their favorite sins and to exist thenceforth in total virtue.  They produce on nearly every one a softening effect; indeed they almost make you better.  The vale of Luz is certainly the most winning of these retreats.  Its soothing calm, its welcoming tenderness, its look of friendship and of wise counsel, wind themselves around you; and the beauty of its grassy shades, of its leafy brakes and color-changing hills, delights