it is at once the most amusing and the most dramatic feature of our time that we can foresee—for some few years ahead—material things. things moral escape us altogether. never was there a generation of europeans who could less determine what the near future held for the fate of national characters, of religions, or of styles in art; the more foolish attempt to escape this ignorance by pretending that things moral depend upon things material. they observe the cutting of a canal and prophesy the decline of one nation upon its completion, the growth of another—as though the power of nations armed resided in something lower than the mind, and as though the success of armies (upon which all at last depends) were determined by the exchange of metals or by new routes of trade. meanwhile, though the future, even the immediate future, of nations and of faiths is more closely hidden from us than ever, yet it is entertaining, and, as i have said, it is even dramatic, to watch our power of prophecy over material things.

we undertake works of such magnitude and spread[pg 259] over so long a span of years, they are accomplished under such conditions of international comprehension and security, that we can stand (sometimes) in a desert place and say, "here, in five years, will be a town," or on a barren coast and say, "here, in five years, will be a harbour." we can distract ourselves by imagining the contrast beforehand and by returning, when the work is done, to see how nearly one has imagined the truth. bizerta once afforded such an opportunity, rosyth now affords one, and so does that sight which set me writing this, and which i have just witnessed in a remote and hitherto quite silent valley. there, with little advertisement of public interest, one of the immemorial high-roads of europe is under restoration and is about to return to life: the old high road into spain.

it is often remarked that the lines of european travel can hardly be permanently altered, that nature has designed them. generations do sometimes pass in which some profound change in man rather than in nature affects a few of the great roads. the roman line from the south northward, the highway from the saone to the straits of dover, passing by laon and amiens, was deflected as the dark ages closed round the mind of gaul. water carriage succeeded the degraded high-roads. the convergence of water-ways in the basin of paris made that basin the centre of travel, and the old way by laon was forgotten. yet modern conditions restored it. the railway has done again what the roman[pg 260] engineers accomplished, and laon is once again a halt upon the great road southwards, and once again the most direct avenue from the channel to the mediterranean follows the plain to the east of paris. so it has come to be with a road equally famous, equally forgotten, the high road from the north into spain.

the pyrenees lie, as every one knows, like an artificial wall between the valley of the ebro and gaul. how great the division is only those can believe who have seen with their own eyes the meadows and the deep orchards of bearn, and then, after a painful crossing of the hills, have come upon the burnt deserts of aragon. the road from the one to the other, the administrative road which bound spain to gaul, which connected cæsaraugusta with tolosa, that is, saragossa with toulouse, was a roman highway, called "the high pyrenean," the highest and most central of the two main passes. it had, as i have said, toulouse for its northern terminus, saragossa for its southern. it had for two mountain towns, or depots, at the foot of either climb, oloron, the town of the ilurones, on the north; on the south the bishop's town of jaca. it had for its last outpost just before the last steep urdos, the forum ligneum, to the north; to the south a cluster of huts and a station, whose roman name has not come down to us, but which since the barbarian invasions has been called "canfranc." this great road, like so many throughout the empire, fell. you may yet trace its[pg 261] structure in those places where it is not identical with the modern way, but with the close of the empire, and on nearly to our own time its surface was left unrepaired. armies used it, as they used all the great roman roads of the north and west, till the twelfth century. the merovingians crossed it in their raids to the ebro; charlemagne sent men down it in the advance upon (and failure before) saragossa—the expedition whose retreat was clinched by the destruction of his rearguard and the death of roland in roncesvalles. it was still a gate for armies when the reconquest of spain from the mohammedan began. jaca was free before any other town of the central north, huesca fell before the first crusade was fought, saragossa before the second. bearn, and indeed all christendom, still used that high notch until the new civilisation of the middle ages had set in with the twelfth century, but from that beginning till our own time it was more and more forgotten. spain, reconquered, corresponded with europe by the sea. the two land roads that bound the peninsula to christendom ran round either end of the pyrenean chain. the central pass was abandoned when the great development of french roads, which was the work of louis xiv, was imitated—most imperfectly—by his grandson in madrid, it was the road by burgos, vittoria, and bayonne that was renewed; the commercial energy of the catalans in the same generation opened the perthuis, broke into the roussillon, and connected[pg 262] barcelona with perpignan and with narbonne. but aragon, the pivot and centre of the old reconquest, saragossa, the main town of the roman communication with the north, lay off the two tracks of travel, half forgot europe and by europe were ill-remembered. it was napoleon, or, to be more accurate, the revolutionary crusade, which reopened the central pass, and here, as in so many other places, began the return to roman things. while the armies of the empire, with their train and their artillery, were still tied to the sea road from the roussillon, a small force without guns passed up the old roman road (now come to be called the "somport"), marched over its silent grasses, wading the arroyos, the bridges over which had long since fallen in, appeared suddenly before jaca, occupied that citadel, and pursued the way to saragossa, there to join the main army and to lay a siege memorable beyond all modern sieges for an heroic defence. buonaparte seized the advantage of that passage. he desired a road over which artillery could go. it was one of twenty which he so desired over the mountain ranges of europe, and which a full century has barely seen completed; for within four years of his resolution his supremacy was broken at leipsic and destroyed at waterloo. the third empire continued the tradition; the road was carried up on the french side of the pass, but the universal power of 1808 was gone and the spanish approach was neglected. it was not till the other[pg 263] day, till our own generation, that the full work was done, and that the great street from toulouse to saragossa right over the hills was once more open to the full power of travel. yet travel failed it. in the meanwhile the railways had come; they had followed the coast roads, and the main line from madrid to paris ran tortuously through the mountains of castile and turned twenty times in the labyrinth of basque valleys, between vittoria and irun. saragossa was still upon one side; aragon still remained remote; the new road was empty beneath the cliffs of its great hills.

to all this exception in europe i had grown so used that i took pleasure, during each of my yearly passages over this road, in noting its loneliness, and in considering how the noise of this chief way between the south and the north had been silenced for so many centuries. the absence of men and of public knowledge was a perpetual, a renewed, and a permanent curiosity. there are many sites in europe once peopled now lonely, once famous and now ignored, but this place seemed to be especially eccentric, and to have passed from something which had long been like the æmilian way or the stages of the rhone valley to something as untouched as the uplands of cheviot or the moors of the west riding over ribble and above airedale—very lonely places.

this year i found that the last change had come. far down the gave d'aspe, in the gorge where[pg 264] abdurrahman led the mohammedan invasion into gaul, there came loud thunders, for all the world as though it were really thundering on the gloomy shoulders of anie, so many thousand feet beyond the clouds. then, as i neared the head of the vale i saw man at it. he was at it in swarms. he had dammed the torrent; he had fixed great turbine tubes, and he had begun the hole in the hill. for just the few miles of the ridge itself there was still silence—as there is still silence above the gothard on the high road—but up from the spanish valley, rolling up from it as it had rolled down the val d'aspe, came again the human thunder, and when the road had fallen its two thousand feet and touched the water of the river aragon, there again was man in great numbers working like an ant, burrowing under the terrible garganta and determined upon his hole in the hill. the two tunnels will meet when each has accomplished three or four miles, and the work will be done. there will be a straight way from paris to madrid; the pyrenees will have lost their unbroken line; the roman scheme will have re-arisen; saragossa will come forward again into the list of great european cities, and people will hear of aragon. i do not know whether to be glad—seeing such proof that europe always returns to itself—or sorry.