Our first night after leaving Gap was spent at Embrun. As we approached
the town, which surmounts an extraordinary platform of rock, its walls
looking like part of the smooth, brown tufa precipice that rises
abruptly out of the valley, we seemed to see in its picturesque and
impressive aspect something of the grandeur and gloom of its long
history. The cathedral where so many archbishops have ministered
preserves little trace of its former splendors: even architecturally it
is without attraction.
For the next two days our route continued to lie through the valley,
which we entered upon leaving Gap, of the Durance. It is an apparently
insignificant but treacherous stream, which by repeated floods has
spread ugly devastation over a hill-girdled country that ought to be
smiling with peace and plenty. At Guillestre we came in sight of the
jagged double peak of Mont Pelvoux, and got a magnificent vista toward
the south, ending in the white slopes of some giant of the Cottian Alps.
The Mont Pelvoux and the Pointe des Ecrins, the greatest of those
mountains from which the department takes its name, although they appear
on none of the ordinary maps, stand, I believe, only twelfth and
thirteenth in the scale of height among the mountains of Europe. The
explorations of Whymper have introduced them to his readers, but they
still remain almost untrodden by other climbers.
On the second afternoon we reached the lateral valley of Fressiniere,
the climax of our journey.
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