Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/208

138 lights in recesses under relieving arches. The tower has a zigzag ornament above the bell windows in black lava alternating with white limestone.

The Ardèche is joined below the town by the river of La Beaume, that flows through a canon very similar to that through which the Ardèche itself has run before it reaches the bridge of Ruoms. These cañons through the lias are curious rather than picturesque, the strata lie horizontally as regularly disposed as stones in an artificial wall. On the high ground some way up the Beaume, on the plateau, or gras, is the aven or pot-hole of Réméjadou, twenty-five feet in diameter and eighty feet deep. One can hear the rush of water below, and this issues from the rock in the spring of Bourbouillet, two miles off, with sufficient volume to turn a mill. M. Janet says:—

This pot-hole was explored in 1892 by M. Gaupillat, and he established the curious fact that the underground stream enters and leaves the aven by natural