Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/247

Rh summit of a peak 1,500 feet high, commanding the river and the roads. In 1865 a discovery was made at S. Privat of a cache of a Roman oculist of the third century. Along with his little store of coins lay his delicate instruments, and a cube as well, bearing on each face the name of one of the medicaments employed by him, and the cube used probably by him for sealing up his packets. The man seems to have known his business, or at all events of having both instruments and remedies not by any means barbarous. On reaching Alleyras the valley opens into a basin. Above the little town shoots up a mass of rock looking like a gigantic thumb as we approach from the north, but changing form as Alleyras is passed. It is actually a huge slab of rock that is detached from the mountain by a wide fissure.

The basin of Alleyras was once a lake, where the river paused to rest before it renewed its efforts to break a way through the lava. From this point upwards the scenery is less savage and gloomy. At Chapeauroux the railway describes a great curve, and pursues its way through tunnel and over viaduct till it draws up at Langogne, a busy little town of the Gevaudan, of some commercial importance. A monastery was founded here in 998 by Stephen Count of the Gevaudan, and Silvester II. presented to it the relics of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, and further conferred on the town the more than doubtful privilege of being out of episcopal jurisdiction, to be looked after or let alone by the Holy See only. The place suffered severely in the Hundred Years War, and again and worse even in those of religion. From 1562 for nearly a century and a half the Gevaudan was devastated turn and turn