when it was nearly noon my companion said to me:
“by what sign or track do you propose to cross the mountains?” for the mountains here seem higher than any of highest clouds: the valley beneath them is broad and full of fields: beyond, a long day off, stands in a huge white wall the sierra del cadi. yet we must cross these hills if ever we were to see the secluded and little-known andorrans. for the andorrans live in a sort of cup fenced in on every side by the pyrenees; it was on this account that my companion asked me how i would cross over to their land and by what sign i should find my way.
when i had thought a little i answered:
“by none. i propose to go right up at them, and over unless i find some accident by which i am debarred.”
“why, then,” said he, “let us strike up at once, walking steeply until we come into a new country.”
this advice was good, and so, though we had no longer any path, and though a mist fell upon us, we began walking upwards, and it was like going up a moor in the west riding, except that it went on[195] and on and on, hour after hour, and was so steep that now and then one had to use one’s hands.
the mist was all round us; it made a complete silence, and it drifted in the oddest way, making wisps of vapour quite close to our faces. nor had we any guide except the steepness of the hill. for it is a rule when you are caught in a storm or mist upon the hills, if you are going up, to go the steepest way, and though in such a fog this often took us over a knoll which we had to descend again, yet on the whole it proved a very good rule. it was perhaps the middle of the afternoon, we had been climbing some five hours, we had ascended some six thousand or seven thousand feet, when to our vast astonishment we stumbled upon a sort of road.
it must here be explained why we were astonished. the way we had come led nowhere; there were no houses and no men. the andorrans whom we were about to visit have no communication northward with the outer world except a thin wire leading over the hills, by which those who wish to telephone to them can do so; and of all places in europe, andorra is the place out of which men least desire to get and to which men least desire to go. it is like that place beyond death of which people say that it gives complete satisfaction and from which certainly no one makes any effort to escape, and yet to which no one is very anxious to go. when, therefore, we came to this road, beginning suddenly half way up a bare mountain and[196] appearing unexplained through the mist, we were astonished.
it was embanked and entrenched and levelled as would be any great french military road near the frontier fortresses. there was a little runnel running underneath the road, conveying a mountain stream; it was arched with great care, and the arch was made of good hewn stone well smoothed. but when we came right on to this road we found something more astonishing still: we found that it was but the simulacrum or ghost of a road. it was not metalled; it was but the plan or trace or idea of a road. no horses had ever trod its soft earth, no wheels had ever made a rut in it. it had not been used at all. grass covered it. the explanation of this astonishing sight we did not receive until we had spoken in their own tongue the next day to the imperturbable andorrans.
it was as though a school of engineers had been turned on here for fun, to practise the designing of a road in a place where land was valueless, upon the very summit of the world.
we two men, however, reasoned thus (and reasoned rightly as it turned out):
“the tall and silent andorrans in a fit of energy must have begun this road, though later in another fit they abandoned it. therefore it will lead towards their country.”
and as we were very tired of walking up a steep which had now lasted for so many hours, we determined[197] to follow the large zigzags of this unknown and magic half-road, and so we did.
it was the oddest sensation in the world walking in the mist a mile and more above the habitations of men, upon unmetalled, common earth which yet had the exact shape of pavements, cuttings, and embankments upon either side, with no sort of clue as to where it led or as to why men began to make it, and still less of an argument as to why they had ceased.
it went up and up in great long turns and z’s upon the face of the mountain, until at last it grew less steep; the mist grew colder, and after a long flat i thought the land began to fall a little, and i said to my companion:
“we are over the watershed, and beneath us, miles beneath us, are the andorrans.”
when by the continuance of the fall of the land we were certain of this we took off our hats, in spite of the fog which still hung round us very wet and very cold and quite silent, and expected any moment a revelation.
we were not disappointed. indeed, this attitude of the mind is never disappointed. without a moment’s warning the air all round us turned quite bright and warm, a strong gust blew through the whirling vapour, and we saw through the veil of it the image of the sun. in a moment his full disc and warmth was on us. the clouds were torn up above us; the air was immediately quite clear, and we saw[198] before us, stamped suddenly upon the sight, a hundred miles of the pyrenees.
they say that everything is in the mind. if that be true, then he and i saw in that moment a country which was never yet on earth, for it was a country which our minds had not yet conceived to be possible, and it was as new as though we had seen it after the disembodiment of the soul.
the evening sun from over spain shone warm and low, and every conceivable colour of the purples and the browns filled up the mountain tangle, so that the marvel appeared as though it had been painted carefully in a minute way by a man’s hand; but the colours were filled with light, and so to fill colour with light is what art can never do. the main range ran out upon either side, and the foothills in long series of peaks and ridges fell beneath it, until, beyond, in what might have been sky or might have been earth, was the haze of the plains of ebro.
“it is no wonder,” said i to my companion, “that the andorrans jealously preserve their land and have refused to complete this road.”
when i had said that we went down the mountain side. the lower our steps fell the more we found the wealth and the happiness of men. at last walls and ploughed land appeared. the fields grew deep, the trees more sturdy, and under the shelter of peaks with which we had just been acquainted, but which after an hour or so of descent[199] seemed hopelessly above us, ran rivers which were already tamed and put to a use. one could see mills standing upon them. so we went down and down.
there is no rejuvenescence like this entry into andorra, and there is no other experience of the same sort, not even the finding of spring land after a month of winter sea: that vision of brilliant fields coming down to meet one after the endless grey waste of the sea.
it was, i tell you again, a country completely new, and it might have been of another world, much better than our own.
so we came at last to the level of the valley, and the first thing we saw was a pig, and the second was a child, and the third was a woman. the pig ran at us: for he was lean. the child at first smiled at us because we were human beings, and then divining that we were fiends who had violated his sacred home began to cry. the woman drove the pig from us and took in the child, and in great loneliness and very sad to be so received we went until we should find men and citizens, and these we found of our own size, upstanding and very dignified, and recognised them at once to be of the wealthy and reserved andorrans. it was clear by their faces that the lingua franca was well known to them, so i said to the first in this universal tongue:
“sir, what is the name of this village?”
and he replied: “it is saldeu.” but this he[200] said in his own language, which is somewhat more difficult to understand than the lingua franca.
“i take it, therefore,” said i, “that i am in the famous country of andorra.”
to which he replied: “you are not many miles from the very town itself: you approach andorra ‘the old.’”
the meaning of this i did not at first exactly understand, but as we went on, the sun having now set, i said to my companion: “were not those epithets right which we attached to the andorrans in our fancy before we attempted these enormous hills? were we not right to call them the smiling and the tall andorrans?”
“you are right,” he answered to me, thinking carefully over every word that he said. “to call them the secluded and the honourable andorrans is to describe them in a few words.”
we then continued our way down the darkening valley, whistling little english songs.
