It seemed mournfully empty, and many of the houses were in
reality deserted. A shy, bright-faced fellow opened the little _temple_
for our inspection, and Pastor Charpiot reminded us how its interior was
not only planned by Neff, but in large measure his actual handiwork.
Half an hour further on our path led us through the hamlet of Minsas,
now entirely abandoned and in ruins. The desolation of the valley here
becomes appalling. On either hand sheer precipices of crumbling rock
rise above steep slopes of gravel and loose stones. The ground is strewn
thick with great boulders, many of which had left traces of their
furious descent before settling, sometimes close beside the path, or
even after crossing it in a final bound. The precipices from which they
had detached themselves are composed of strangely-twisted strata, and
frequently recurring streaks of lurid red give them a fierce and ghastly
aspect. Landslips and torrents of stones are so frequent of late years
that no more attempts are made to clear away the rubbish thus deposited.
Where these scourges have not fallen the sullen stream has carried
devastation. Floods occur every year. That of 1856 wrought a ruin from
which the villages have never rallied. In the whole upper half of the
valley of Fressiniere there is not, I suppose, an acre of land capable
of cultivation. In the time of Neff, wretched as its condition must
always have been, the poverty of this region was not so utterly hopeless
as it has since become.
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