From Tarascon to Ax-les-Thermes, still in the valley of the Ariège, is twenty-five kilometres of superb roadway. All the way are strung out groups of dainty villages surrounded with cultivated country. Here and there is an isolated mass of rock, a round watch-tower, or a ruined fortress, still possessing its crenelated walls to give an attitude of picturesqueness. There are innumerable little villages, a whole battery of them, linked together. At the end of this long peopled highway is an unpretentious mediæval country house, of that class known as a _gentilhommière_, of fawn-coloured stone, and still possessing its two flanking sentinel towers preserved in all the romantic grimness of their youth.
At the junction of the Ariège with the Ascou, the Oriège, the Lauze and the Foins is Ax-les-Thermes--the ancient _Aquæ_ of the Romans, and now a "thermal station" of the first rank. Primarily Ax is noted for its sulphurous waters, but for the lover of romantic days and ways its architectural and Historical monuments are of the first consideration. The ruins of the Château des Maures, the ancient _Castel Maü_, are the chief of these monuments, while a neighbouring peak of rock bears aloft an enormous square tower surmounted by a statue of the Virgin.
There are sixty-one "sources" at Ax-les-Thermes giving a supply of medicinal waters. In part they were known to the Romans, and in 1260 Saint Louis founded a hospital here for sick soldiers returning from the Crusades.
Ax-les-Thermes is not a howlingly popular watering place, but it is far more delightful than Luchon, Cauterets or Bigorre, if quaintness of architecture, manners and customs, and modesty of hotel prices count for anything.
The Porte et Pont d'Espagne at Ax is one of the most interesting architectural reminders of the past that one will find throughout the Pyrenees. The bridge itself is but a diminutive span carrying a narrow roadway, which if not forbidden to automobile traffic should be, for the negotiating of this bridge and road, and the low, arched gateway at the end, will come very near to spelling disaster for any who undertakes it.
Throughout the neighbourhood one sees more than an occasional yawning pit's mouth. All through the Comté de Foix were exploited, and are yet to some extent, iron mines and forges, the latter known as _Forges Catalans_. Roger-Bernard, Comte de Foix, in 1293 gave the first charter to the mine-promotors of the neighbourhood, and the industry flourished in many parts of the Comté until within a few generations, when, apparently, the supply of mineral was becoming exhausted.