The Approach to Dormeilleuse
Dauphiny - High Alps, France
Artist: Bartlett, Engraver:
Willmore
Published by James S. Virtue
Co., London
100+ years old art print ...
in excellent condition ... reverse side is blank !
Size: Size of the image: 4 1/2 x 6 3/4, print size:
8 x 10 1/2 inches.
Condition: Excellent condition.
Printed on heavier paper.
From the original description:
The next village, at the distance of a league, is Freissinieres;
and about another league farther up is Violins; two miles farther is Minsas;
and then comes the toilsome, rough, and clambering route of three miles
to Dormilhouse. Between the two villages first named, " there
is a lovely fertile vale, enclosed on each side by steep mountains,
and producing several kinds of grain and fruit-trees. But this cheerful
prospect soon changes. After passing through Minsas, the face of the country
is perfectly savage and appalling. Blocks of stone, detached
from the overhanging recks, strew the ground, and threaten to impede all
further progress. The signs of productiveness are fewer and fewer.
Here and there some thin patches of rye, or oats, bespeak the poor resources
of the inhabitants who have been driven up into this desert; and the occasional
track of the wolf, and the heavy flap of the vulture's wing overhead, tell
who are its proper natives." The Valley of Freissinieres begins at the
col of the same name, and joins the Valley of the Durance at a considerable
elevation above the ancient town of Rama, already mentioned. While
the latter town existed, the Durance washed the base of the mountains opposite,
as various circumstances still serve to prove. The valley consists of a
sandy clay mixed with calcareous substance; a combination which, in some
parts, favours the ordinary productions of an alpine climate. It
begins in a plain, continues for some time a gradual declivity, and then
rapidly descends. The chief village is Freissinieres, a place anciently
frequented by the Saracens, and near which gold has been found. The village
of DORMILHOUSE, second to the former, and founded originally by the Lombards,
is literally perched upon a rock, full two hundred metres in perpendicular
height. The only way to this sanctuary is by a narrow footpath, vending
along frightful precipices, which the traveller contemplates with feelings
of surprise and astonishment. About the middle of the mountain, a
river precipitates itself with thundering noise over the traveller's
head, who is only preserved from being drenched, by passing within
the arch described by the water as it bounds from the rock, twelve hundred
feet above him. This the reader will perfectly comprehend by reference
to the annexed engraving.
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