broom. Snakes rustled as I passed, and hid themselves among the stones. The
cobbler had forgotten to include these with the dangers to be encountered.
To my mind they were much more to be dreaded than the boars, for these
stony solitudes swarm with adders, of which the most venomous kind is the
red viper, or _aspic_. Its bite has often proved mortal.

The path entered the forest which covers the steep sides of the
ever-winding gorge of the Dordogne for many leagues, only broken where the
rocks are so nearly vertical that no soil has ever formed upon them, except
in the little crevices and upon the ledges, where the hellebore, the sedum,
the broom, and other unambitious plants which love sterility flourish where
the foot of man has never trod.

The rocks were now of gneiss and mica-schist, and the mica was so abundant
as to cause many a crag and heap of shale to glitter in the sun, as though
there had been a mighty shattering of mirrors here into little particles
which had fallen upon everything. There was, however, no lack of contrast.
To the shining rocks and the fierce sunshine, which seemed to concentrate
its fire wherever it fell in the open spaces of the deep gorge, succeeded
the ancient forest and its cool shade; but the darkly-lying shadows were
ever broken with patches of sunlit turf. Pines and firs reached almost to
the water's edge, and the great age of some of them was a proof of the
little value placed upon timber in a spot so inaccessible. One fir had an
enormous bole fantastically branched like that of an English elm, and
on its mossy bark was a spot such as the hand might cover, fired by a
wandering beam, that awoke recollections of the dream-haunted woods before
the illusion of their endlessness was lost.

The afternoon was not far spent, when I began to feel a growing confidence
in the value of the cobbler's information, and a decreasing belief in my