Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865. Excerpt: ... At the railway station, where one is obliged to take a billet de correspondance to insure a place in the old diligence, the superintendent, M. Thoumin, who found me lounging about the station, waiting for its arrival, offered to show me his cabinet of curiosities. He had things worth seeing. Foix is very rich in minerals; there are iron mines, and lead is also found in the lodes. M. Thoumin had some splendid specimens of iron ore, of crystals, stalactites from a neighbouring cavern, which, he told me, was full of them, antediluvian fossils, and other curious productions of the country. Some of the stalactites were singular in form; they resembled the wooden trees of a child's toy farmhouse; upon slender little stems, the thickness of a drawing pencil, grew little oval tufts. I could not fancy them natural; I imagined they were plants or toy trees petrified by being placed under a stream of water like the dropping well at Kharesboro', but was told that it was their natural conformation. At last the coach came; Keeper and my bag were hoisted on the roof, Keeper astonishing everybody by the celerity and adroitness with which he climbed up the ladder. 'Ce n'est pas pour la premiere fois!' cried the conductor, amazed; and I, a lady, and a gentleman, got into the coupe. From the coupe I had a good view of the rich and beautiful, though narrow, valley, which narrows more and more as one approaches the heart of the mountains. Every time the road turned, new combinations of hills rising above hills--they were scarcely to be called mountains--gave new beauty to the scenery. The hills are generally rather rounded, at least towards the base, but very irregular in outline. Sometimes the summit is broken into peaks; sometimes a bare bluff of granite rock juts out grand...
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