Along France's river of romance: . he gorges. At this pointthere used to be a boiling current. A great engineer-ing work was undertaken here two centuries ago,to form a reservoir. The two hills of crystalline rockthat here narrow the bed of the Loire make the construc-tion of a bridge easy ; a fact which the Romans appre-ciated, and the piles of their bridge could still be seenat the beginning of the nineteenth century. To thenatural barrage formed by the rock has been added anenormous digue de retenue, constructed by the engineerMathieu in 1711 under the instructions of Louis was the
Along France's river of romance: . he gorges. At this pointthere used to be a boiling current. A great engineer-ing work was undertaken here two centuries ago,to form a reservoir. The two hills of crystalline rockthat here narrow the bed of the Loire make the construc-tion of a bridge easy ; a fact which the Romans appre-ciated, and the piles of their bridge could still be seenat the beginning of the nineteenth century. To thenatural barrage formed by the rock has been added anenormous digue de retenue, constructed by the engineerMathieu in 1711 under the instructions of Louis was the first effort made towards the regularisationof the dibit of the Loire, and was a complete barrage, often repaired since, reaches the height ofabout fifty feet above the level of the water at itssummer height, and during the big crues can reserve asmuch as 100,000 or 130,000 cubic metres of water. IN THE FOREZ 85 It seems a pity that similar undertakings-—or some stillmore ambitious scheme that would render the great. The Saut de Pinay river navigable from this point—are not carried out alldown its course. Some five miles before emerging from its last 86 THE LOIRE gorges, the Loire passes in a narrow rapid beneatha gigantic crag, at the spot known as the Saut duPerron, just after flowing by the interesting littlevillage of St. Maurice, dominated by the ruins of acastle built in the twelfth century, reconstructed in thefifteenth, and dismantled in the sixteenth. The pilesof an ancient Roman bridge are to be seen in the rivernear St. Maurice—four masses of masonry which origin-ally bore the bridge between two projecting crags ofrock. After the Saut du Perron the river forms a smallisland ; then, flowing beneath the bridge of Villerest,washes the vine-clad slopes of Vernay and widens outto flow past the town and through the plain of Roanne. Undaunted by my adventure at Feurs, I decided thatRoanne, at last, would be my dream-city—untroddenof tourists, virgin, un
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidalongfrances, bookyear1913
