THERE is a pass called the Bon Agua, and also Bon Aigo, which leads from the heights of the Catalans to those other heights of Aragon, or as some would say of Bearn, for the pass is from the south of the mountains to the north; on the northern side one knows why it is called Bon Agua, because one sees many thousands of feet below one the little bracelet, the little chain, of the young Garonne. Do not mistake me, there are two sources of the Garonne. That which is most famous does the most famous thing; for it rises on the far side of the mountains and it plunges into a pond, quite a little pond. Then it cascades underground, through dark passages of which no one knows anything, and comes out beyond the main chain of the hills to join its other quieter sister from the Bon Agua. This startling source, I say, is the most famous, because it does the most startling things, though not more wonderful than what a Yorkshire river does, for there is a Yorkshire river in the West Riding which runs into the pond called Mallam Tarn and reappears afterwards beyond a rocky ridge; but this Garonne of which I speak goes right under high and silent mountains where there[224] are no men, and this is a feat performed, I think, by no other river, not even by the Rhone, which also is lost for the time underground (though few people know it), nor by the River Mole, which plays at being lost and never quite is, and certainly has not the courage to attempt the tunnelling of any hill, though it is proud to be called the “snouzling Mole,” which, by the way, it was first called in the year 1903—but I digress, and I must return to the Bon Agua.
Well, then, there I say under the Bon Agua runs the quieter of the two streams which unite in the Val D’Aran to form the Garonne, and there it was that a companion of mine seeing that little stream looked at it with profound sadness, and said—the things which shall be the text of what I have to say here. For he said:
“Poor little Garonne! Innocent and lovely little Garonne! I have never seen a stream so small, nor so pure, nor so young, nor so far from men. But you are on your way to things you do not know. For first of all you will join that boasting sister of yours which has come from under the hills, and can talk of nothing else; and then you will go past the King’s Bridge being no longer among kind and silent Spaniards, and you will have entered the territory of the Republic which is fierce and evil, and you will grow greater and wider and not more happy until you will come to the perfectly detestable town of Toulouse.... Thence after you will[225] have no pleasure, but only a certain grandeur to be passing through the Gascon fields, and all your desire will be for the sea in which at last you shall merge and be lost. And so strong will be your desire for that dissolution that you will be willing to mix your name with another name, to marry the Dordogne, and then you will die and you will be glad of it.”
This is the way my friend spoke to the Garonne when he saw it first rising in the hills. He did not sing it as he might have sung it, the song it best likes to hear, which is called, “Had the Garonne but wished!” Nor did he try to console it with any flap-doodle about the common lot of rivers, knowing well that some rivers were happier and some less happy. But he spoke to the Garonne as to something that could hear and know. Now this is what men have always done to rivers.
It is in this way that rivers have acquired names, not only among men but among gods; and it is in this way that they convey a fate to the countrysides of which they are the souls.
There is no country of which this is more true than it is true of England. Englishmen of this time—or at least of the time just past—perpetually and rightly complained that somehow or other they missed themselves. Some took refuge in a dream of a sort of a mystical England which was not there. Others reposed in the idea of an older England which may once have been; others, more[226] foolish, hoped to find England again in something overseas. None of these would have suffered their error had they learnt England down English waters, seeing the great memories of England reflected in the English rivers, and meeting them in the silence and the perfection of the streams. But our roads first, and then our railways, our commerce which is from ports, and which must go direct towards them, our lif............