of Canaan, we could at least behold it from Mount Pisgah. So I engaged
a carriage with sturdy horses and a trustworthy driver, and we set off
for the plateau rising over against Mende in a south-easterly
direction, the veritable threshold of the Causses.




CHAPTER III.
A GLIMPSE OF THE CAUSSES.


The drive from Mende to the plateau of Sauveterre is a curious
experience. Here the Virgilian and Dantesque schemes are reversed:
Pluto's dread domain, the horrible Inferno, lies above; deep down below
are the Fields of the Blest and the celestial Paradise.

Dazzlingly bright the verdure, fertile and sunny the valleys we now
leave behind--arid and desolate beyond the power of words to express
the tableland reached so laboriously.

Between these two extremes, Elysium and Tartarus, we pass shifting,
panoramic scenes of wondrous beauty, stage upon stage of pastoral
charm, picture after picture of idyllic sweetness and grace. Long we
can glance behind us and see the little gray town, its spires outlined
in steely gray against the embracing hills, its gardens and orchards
bright as emerald--towering above all, the bare, purple, wide-
stretching Lozere.

The weather is superlative, and the clear, gemlike lines of sky and