La Haute-Loire et le Haut-Vivarais Guide du Touriste, du Naturaliste, et de l'rchéologue

Abstract

IN our own islands we have few guide-books precisely of the type of those edited by M. Boule. Praeger's guide to County Down comes first to mind, a book in which scientific considerations associate themselves with the choice of summer quarters and hotels. M. Boule has had the help of specialists in the description of the flora, commerce, archæology, and inhabitants of the picturesque region of which he treats; but the routes by road or footpath are known to him as a geologist, and he rightly loves the contrasts of “les froides et tristes planezes vellaves” and the “chaudes et riantes vallées viva-raises.” He points out the perfectly preserved craters of the chain of the Velay, piled above a fissure sixty kilometres in length, which broke through an upland of old granite, and the fantastic relics of earlier eruptions, like those on which St. Michel d'Aiguilhe and the high castle of Polignac stand. The country is certainly one for lovers of the unusual and the remote. Roman traditions remained in the municipal government of Le Puy down into the fourteenth century (p. 115), and the struggle of the commonwealth against the prince-bishops, who were supported by the kings of France, was as stubborn as the basaltic theatre in which the tragedy was played.

La Haute-Loire et le Haut-Vivarais. Guide du Touriste, du Naturaliste, et de l'rch ologue.

By Marcellin Boule. Pp. viii + 366. (Paris: Masson et Cie., 1911,) Price 4.50 francs.