Back of the Canigou, between it and the main chain of the Pyrenees, is the smiling valley of the Tech and Vallespir.
The route from Perpignan into Spain passes by Le Boulou, on the Tech. If one is en route to Barcelona, and is not an automobilist, let him make his way to Le Boulou, which is really an incipient watering-place, and take the diligence up over the Col de Perthus and down into Spain on the other side. The hasty travellers may prefer the "Paris-Barcelone Express," but they will know not the joy of travel, and the entrance into Spain through the cut of Cerbère is most unlovely.
France has fortified the Col de Perthus, but Spain only guards her interests by her _carabiniers_ and _douaniers_. The little bourg of Perthus consists of but one long main street, formed in reality by the "Route Internationale," of which one end is French and the other, the Calle Mayor, is Spanish.
Above the village is Fort Bellegarde. It looks imposing, but if guns could get near enough it would doubtless fall in short order. It was built by Vauban under Louis XIV, in 1679, on a mamelon nearly fifteen hundred feet above the pass, and its situation is most commanding. To the west was another gateway into Spain, once more frequented than the Col de Perthus, but it has been made impracticable by the military strategists as a part of the game of war.
Just beyond Le Boulou is Céret, a little town at an elevation of a couple of hundred metres above the sea.
Céret's bridge has been attributed to the Romans, and to the devil. The round loophole, on either side of the great arch, is supposed to have been a malicious afterthought of the engineers who built the bridge to head off the evil influences of the devil who set them to the task. The application is difficult to follow, and the legend might as well apply to the eyes painted on the bows of a Chinese junk. As a matter of record the bridge was built in 1321, by whom will perhaps never be known.
Amélie-les-Bains is ten kilometres higher up in the valley of Tech, and has become a thermal station of repute, due entirely to the impetus first given to it by the spouse of France's "Citizen King" in 1840, whose name it bears.
Bagnères-de-Luchon, or more familiarly Luchon, is called the queen of Pyrenean watering-places. If this is so Amélie-les-Bains is certainly the princess, with its picturesque ring of mountain background, and its guardian sentinel the Canigou rising immediately in front. It enjoys a climate the softest in all the Pyrenees, a sky exempt of all the vicissitudes of the seasons, and a winter without freezing.