asked:

'But the Causses? Have you seen the wonderful Causses of the Lozere?'

It was a curious and highly-characteristic fact that both my informants
should be English, thus bearing out the assertion of an old French
writer, author of the first real tourist's guide for his own country,
that we are 'le peuple le plus curieux de l'Europe'; he adds, 'le plus
observateur,' perhaps a compliment rather paid to Arthur Young than to
the English as a nation. The work I refer to ('Itineraire descriptif de
la France,' by Vaysse de Villiers, 1816) was evidently written under
the inspiration of our great agriculturist.

From French friends and acquaintances I could learn absolutely nothing
of the Causses. The region was a _terra incognita_ to one and all.
I might every whit as well have asked my way to Swift's Liliputia or
Cloud Cuckoo Town, and the Island of Cheese of his precursor, the witty
Lucian. People _had_ heard of l'Ecosse; oh yes! but why an
Englishwoman should seek information about Scotland in the heart of
France, they could not quite make out.

There was nothing for me to do but trust to happy chance and the guide-
book, and set out; and as a stray swallow is the precursor of myriads,
so no sooner had I got an inkling of one marvel than I was destined to
hear of half a dozen.

Wonderful the scenery of the Causses, still more wonderful the canon or
gorge of the Tarn and the dolomite city of Montpellier-le-Vieux, so I
now learned.