Here paths unite as well as streams.  We have been nearing the Spanish frontier-line again, and the trail following the right-hand stream would lead up toward its source and pass on over the crest of the mountain down to the Spanish baths of Panticosa, as did the path from Gabas in the Ossau valley.  The top of the pass is three hours away, and the view, it is said, is very extensive.  These passes over the main chain are known as ports, as those over its branches are called cols.  They are generally simple notches in the dividing ridges, massive but narrow, and the winds blow through them at a gallop.  In a storm or in winter the danger is extreme.  The Basques and Pyreneans have a saying that “he who has not been on the sea or in the port during a storm knows not the power of God.”

The path following the leftward stream leads to the Lac de Gaube, two miles farther on, and is the one we now take.  The way continues much the same as before, but the trees become sparser and the outlook wider and more desolate as we ascend.

Our guide is a sunburnt, athletic Frenchman of middle age, noticeable so far chiefly for his huge grey mustachios and for his silence.  He has been willing but laconic,—­taciturn, in fact.  But I have felt sure he has a “glib” side.  Can I find it?  The stillest of men are fluent on their loved topics; there is some key to unlock every one’s reserve.  Can I hit upon the key to his?  Which of possible interests in common will bring us into talk?

I am ahead with him now, in front of the horses, stepping up the crooking staircase of stones, sounding him on the weather and the way.  Unexpectedly the key is hit upon.  A chance comparison I make of a view in the Alps lights up the old fellow’s face, and when I happen to mention an exploit of Whymper, his tongue is loosed.  It is not merely a name to him,—­this of Edward Whymper, scaler of mountains, the first to stand on the summit of the Matterhorn, one of the three who descended it alive out of that fated party of seven.  This man knows him, he tells me joyously; he has been his guide here in the Pyrenees.  It was many years back; he does not recall the year.  It is evidently his proudest recollection, and he is more than willing to talk of it.  In fact, I am as interested as he; for the pages of my copy of Whymper’s Scrambles among the Alps have been very often turned.

Whymper came here, it seems, with his usual desire to conquer, and the guide tells me of some of the peaks they stormed together.  The more familiar giants, the Vignemale, Mont Perdu and others, were climbed as a matter of course.  Their ardor was greatest, however, in assaulting some uncaptured summit; and several such fell before their conquering attack.  Monsieur Wheempair, the guide goes on, was “tres intrepide”; not stout, but firmly compacted, lithe and very active, and he never asked a hand.  “He told me,” adds my companion, “that some time we would go to the Alps together;” and the man turns to me as we work onward, and questions me about those mountains.  That is his ambition now,—­to visit Switzerland and the rivals of his Mont Perdu and Maladetta.