Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/63

Rh memory. Carroty hair, white and very smooth forehead, green eyes, a purple-reddish lower face, whiskers that had a kind of crimson tinge, and an enormous mouth worn open, so as to show the protruding teeth.

In due time we reached Pau in the Pyrenees, the capital of the Basses Pyrénées, and the old Bearnais. The little town on the Gave de Pau was no summer place. The heats are intense, and all who can, rush off to the Pyrenees, which are in sight, and distant only forty miles. Our family followed suit, and went off to Bagnières de Bigorres, where we hired a nice house in the main Square. There were few foreigners in the Bagnières de Bigorres; it was at that time a thoroughly French watering-place. It was invaded by a mob of Parisians of both sexes, the men dressed in fancy costumes intended to be "truly rural," and capped with Basque bonnets, white or red. The women were more wonderful still, especially when on horseback; somehow or other the Française never dons a riding-habit without some solecism. Picnics were the order of the day, and they were organized on a large scale, looking more like a squadron of cavalry going out for exercise than a party of pleasure. We boys obtained permission to accompany one of those caravans to the Brêche de Roland, a nick in the mountain top clearly visible from the plains, and supposed to have been cut by the good sword "Joyeuse."

Here we boys were mightily taken with, and tempted to accept the offer made to us by, a merry party of contrabandistas, who were smuggling to and fro chocolate, tobacco, and aguardienta (spirits). Nothing could be jollier than such a life as these people lead. They travelled au clair de la lune, armed to the teeth; when they arrived at the hotels the mules were unloaded and turned out to grass, the guitar, played à la Figaro, began to tinkle, and all the young women, like "the Buffalo girls," came out to dance. Wine and spirits flowed freely, the greatest good humour prevailed, and the festivities were broken only sometimes by "knifing or shooting."

We also visited Tarbes, which even in those days was beginning to acquire a reputation for "le shport;" it presently became one of the centres of racing and hunting in France, for which the excellent climate and the fine rolling country admirable adapted it. It was no wonder that the young French horse beat the English at the same age. In the Basque Pyrénées a colt two years old is as well grown as a Newmarket weed at two and a half.

When the great heat was over, the family returned to Pau, where they found a good house over the arcade in the Place Gramont. Pau boasts of being the birthplace of Henry IV., Gaston de Foix,