Museum at Lourdes. Visitors to the Pyrenees, when they pass through Lourdes, should not fail to visit the museum in the Chateau-Fort. Maintained since 1920 by the Touring Club of France, it is the country’s best regional museum. Besides many exhibits of costumes and folklore, the Salle d’Honneur du Pyrénéisme contains memorials of those who, during. 150 years, made discoveries and ascents in those mountains—as mysterious, in the beginning, as Central Africa or the Poles. The library preserves the richest collection of Pyrenean books and manuscripts in existence (Ramond, Count Russell, Beraldi, et al.). One sees the death mask of Ramond and his scientific instruments, and Russell’s goatskin knapsack. On panels are the axes and batons of celebrated climbers and guides, and on the walls are mountain drawings by Hippolyte Chevalier, who came to the Pyrenees in 1825 and there took the pseudonym under which he became famous: Gavarni.

J.M.T.