'General Itinerary of France' contains an account of a region very
little known to French tourists, yet well worth visiting, the region
comprising the Causses, the Canon du Tarn and Montpellier-le-Vieux. The
distinguished geographer, alas! did not live to see his little purple
volume, and, I am compelled to add, Baedeker's red rival, in the hands
of scores and hundreds of his fellow-countrymen and women bound for the
Lozere.

If the reader now turns to a map of France, and draws a perpendicular
line from Mende to Lodeve, and a vertical line from Millau to Florac,
he will have a pretty good notion of the area occupied by the Causses,
including that of the Larzac in Aveyron.

When it is taken into account that the superficies thus covered in the
Lozere alone reaches the total of 125,000 hectares, some idea may be
gathered of the magnitude of the whole. The entire population of these
highlands was only 6,662 souls in 1876, and there can be little doubt
that, in the slow process of time, either they will be abandoned
altogether, or by means of scientific methods utterly transformed. The
laborious, long-suffering, hitherto ignored Caussenard will not surely
be long neglected by the patriarchal Government of France. The Republic
has laid iron roads across the Lozere, thus redeeming the department
from the isolation and inertia of former times. Another tardigrade act
of justice will surely ere long complete the work, and the inhabitant
of the French steppes be made to share in the well-being and happiness
long enjoyed by his fellow-countrymen.