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The Path to Rome by Hilaire Belloc
page 98 of 311 (31%)

Yes. There are other things in St Ursanne. It is a little tiny town,
and yet has gates. It is full of very old houses, people, and speech.
It was founded (or named) by a Bear Saint, and the statue of the saint
with his bear is carved on the top of a column in the market-place.
But the chief thing about it, so it seemed to me, was its remoteness.

The gorge of the Doubs, of which I said a word or two above, is of
that very rare shape which isolates whatever may be found in such
valleys. It turns right back upon itself, like a very narrow U, and
thus cannot by any possibility lead any one anywhere; for though in
all times travellers have had to follow river valleys, yet when they
come to such a long and sharp turn as this, they have always cut
across the intervening bend.

Here is the shape of this valley with the high hills round it and in
its core, which will show better than description what I mean. The
little picture also shows what the gorge looked like as I came down on
it from the heights above.

In the map the small white 'A' shows where the railway bridge was, and
in this map, as in the others, the dark is for the depth and the light
is for the heights. As for the picture, it is what one sees when one
is coming over the ridge at the north or top of the map, and when one
first catches the river beneath one.

I thought a good deal about what the Romans did to get through the
Mont Terrible, and how they negotiated this crook in the Doubs (for
they certainly passed into Gaul through the gates of Porrentruy, and
by that obvious valley below it). I decided that they probably came
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