Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/346

 districts of Dordogne and Lot, and in the sandstone regions of Maine-et-Loire and Vienne, troglodite habitations abound.

After crossing the Col de la Pierre-Plantée, the road winds down into the valley of the Dourbie, which wriggles along at a great depth below between rocks of quartz and schist, then passes among chestnut trees, and reaches S. Jean-du-Bruel, when we are in the valley of the Dourbie. Here comes in the road from Saudières, where is a station on the line from Le Vigan to the junction on the main line opposite Roquefort; and the lower valley of the Dourbie can be visited from Le Vigan by taking the train to Saudières and a carriage thence to Milau.

Nant, a little town on the left bank of the Dourbie, has a Celtic name, very descriptive, for Nant signifies a valley or a river bottom. Nantes in Brittany has the same derivation, as has also Devon in Welsh, Dyffneint, the county of valleys. So also the Dourbie and the Durzon proclaim that they were named by Celts, for dour signifies water in Welsh.

The church of S. Pierre of the twelfth century is all that remains of a Benedictine abbey; the Romanesque chapel of S. Alban stands on a barren rock 2,400 feet high. But the great attraction is the source of the Durzon, as Reclus describes it:—

"A little river issuing from a deep foux some six or seven kilometres from Nant, near the Mas-de-Pommier, at the bottom of a cirque where walls, which are those of the Larzac, rise above the well to the height of 900 feet. There opens a great gulf, un dormant qui ne dort pas toujours. A slight rain on Larzac agitates it, and it begins to boil languidly in the centre of the well; but after a long rain, a storm, or the