It came as a gift , generously and unexpectedly .sx The sun slanting across the valley lent a liquid softness to the depths below us .sx We might have been looking into an unruffled lake , 2,000 feet of clear water .sx A mile distant , where the valley dropped away , the Esera made an elbow turn to the south , thus giving the valley-head its secrecy .sx As so rarely happens in nature , we looked on a work of art .sx The very perfection was strange ; such things do not normally come about .sx We felt for the first time that unreality , that sense of a landscape under spell , which travellers have repeatedly noted in these Pyrenees .sx An alpine valley would have been groomed and put to use , beautiful in a different way :sx pastures subdivided into toy-like rectangles and rhomboids , tousled mops of hay drying on ash poles , ruminating cattle , brown chalets .sx Here there seemed no sign of life or husbandry , until our muleteer indicated , among the boulders on the opposing mountain-side , the hut to which Don Miguel had secured the key , and drew our attention to a curious brown blotch on the pastures below .sx " Mares , " he said .sx We descended knee-deep through feathery grasses .sx They parted easily and we walked , scattering myriads of grass seeds , as through green foam .sx There were Turk's head lilies and patches of iris , islands of brilliant blue set capriciously in the green sea .sx Quail , unusual at such altitude , flushed at our feet but their straight brusque flight , as always , lacked determination and they collapsed into the grass fifty yards away .sx We were silent .sx One talks in a hut or by a fire in the open , but not much when walking or climbing :sx one is either too preoccupied , or too happy .sx Going down to the Val d'Esera we were happy .sx Approaching the valley bottom we remarked that the hundreds of horses pasturing there did not stray .sx The brown blotch they made extended no more than a quarter-mile , as though they were confined within this area by a mysterious social tie .sx They varied from cream to black and these colours were seen against sward , the curve of each back outlined against the green .sx They were not mere quadrupeds , for they had the presence of the animals that obsessed Piero di Cosimo .sx Though sharing with the valley the permanence of art- and here again was strangeness- they seemed to wheel in continual movement about an invisible centre .sx This was the more surprising for when one looked closely , narrowing vision to ten square yards , one detected only a shaken mane , a lifted hoof , an occasional arbitrary turn .sx Our route brought us to the fringes of the herd and , as we threaded our way among them , I was glad that they disregarded us .sx They had grown larger , as landowners do on their own estates , and we seemed to reach only their withers .sx They were the aborigines of the valley , the proper owners , and intruding on their gathering we were lucky not to be challenged in an unknown language .sx We trod delicately among the cropping beasts , who so generously ignored us .sx They had , we found , a herdsman ; that he , in his rags and with domed mud-hovel , could perform some useful office for these noble creatures seemed improbable .sx Here at the headwaters of the Esera to be human was a disadvantage .sx Less confident than his herd , the man jumped to his feet and held a great staff like a barrier towards us .sx We spoke from a distance and he was still watching uncertainly ( though of the herd not a head was lifted ) as we moved from the soft nap of the valley to the boulder-strewn slopes of the Aneto .sx In half an hour we had reached the hut .sx There is pleasure in an untenanted hut ; in disposing one's gear methodically ; in finding employment for hook , table , and bench , perhaps long unused ; in starting a fire and creating warmth .sx The process offers the satisfaction of moving into a new house , but is accomplished in an hour .sx It is a satisfaction rarely to be enjoyed in the Spanish Pyrenees .sx We little realised that we slept that night in comfort such as existed nowhere else in Aragon at 7,000 feet .sx In an area which knew little of climbing history , of guides , guide-books , or huts , the Aneto and the Rencluse Hut were exceptional .sx As the highest point of the Pyrenees , the Aneto had been attempted in the eighteenth century .sx It had been climbed in 1842 and , though lying well in Spanish territory , had for decades been a popular ascent .sx The logical approach was from Luchon ; the frontier was crossed , and the Esera gained , by a dramatic notch in the watershed , the Port de Benasque , a passage between rock walls at some 8,000 feet .sx Before the first hut was built , people made their bivouac and lit their fires in a cave-like shelter , 'la Rencluse .sx ' Later a cabin was built nearby , where the amiable and rugged Madame Sayo , whose reputation has long outlived her , ministered to mountaineers .sx Time passed .sx With the Civil War the frontier was closed and those who found their way into the region did not come to climb .sx When the authorities regained control of the area , after 1945 , the Rencluse was in ashes .sx It had been rebuilt by Jose@2 Abadias , whom we were later to meet , patriarch and innkeeper at Benasque , six hours down the Esera valley .sx Thus we slept under a roof .sx We woke to storm and wind , but even these can be acceptable in a quiet hut , if days are not too precious .sx There is a frayed rope-end to re-bind and crumpled flowers to identify .sx Beside the stove we pored over maps ; we talked of other mountains and augured hopefully from other storms on other occasions ; we dozed over our books ; we slept .sx Intermittently we questioned the barometer and from the window looked at the struggle above , watched the battle sway as the peaks threw off the assaulting cloud or went down fighting , blotted out .sx When it cleared towards evening , our spirits lifted like the vapour .sx We stepped out buoyantly to find the air deliciously clear , rinsed by the departed rain and wind .sx Jumping like children from boulder to boulder , we raced along the mountainside .sx Above us the peaks , hidden all day , had returned firm and confident to their stations .sx The valley glistened , no longer obscured by veils of driving rain .sx The mares in their formal circle were grazing unconcerned as ever , and the herdsman was fishing on the bank of the stream .sx Beside him an enormous white Pyrenean sheep-dog sat on its haunches .sx That evening we would not have been elsewhere at any price .sx Though the weather was perhaps a little too warm , the stars were out .sx Tomorrow we should climb the Aneto .sx In itself the climb was nothing , un nada as someone had airily remarked in the cafe@2 at Le@2s .sx But here in Aragon there were no reassuring tracks , no guide-books or maps as the modern climber knows them .sx Imagination was free to play on our 11,000-foot mountain .sx We were back in the nineteenth century and this constituted the very point of our expedition .sx Having set the alarm clock for three-thirty , we should have crawled early into our sleeping bags , but already the morning was with us in anticipation , making sleep difficult .sx We poured more wine and sat talking at the trestle table , while the stove purred .sx Naturally we talked of the Aneto , the inelegant but convincing massif that couched above us in the dark .sx Draped with glaciers it stretched three miles from the Pic d'Alba to the Pic des Tempe@5tes , and its backbone dropped nowhere below 10,000 feet .sx The crux of the climb was the Pont de Mahomet , the airy granite ridge that led to the summit .sx Presumably the name was derived from the rope known to Muslim theology which stretches over hell and which the righteous alone can cross to attain Paradise .sx The name is no stranger than that of the adjoining Maldetta , the Accursed Mountain .sx 'Accursed' they say because Christ wandering in this wilderness , and meeting with fierce herdsmen and fiercer dogs , turned the latter to stone .sx Christ , Mahomet , such are the names that shepherds here have long invoked .sx To talk of the Aneto was also to talk of the two friends to whom , in a sense , the massif and much of the Pyrenees rightfully belong .sx We envisaged them , clad in Norfolk jackets , perhaps wearing the new-fangled balaclava helmets , on the skyline or straddling the Pont de Mahomet .sx By the wheezing stove in the Rencluse it was a duty to remember them , for no mountain chain has been so lovingly pioneered as were the central Pyrenees by Packe and Russell .sx They discovered most of the region nearly a century ago .sx Having no maps , with no guide but observation and a compass , year after year they navigated like sailors among the unknown reefs and glaciers .sx Their first ascents are numberless ; it was their country .sx Perhaps for this reason , their expeditions were not assaults .sx They did not conquer peaks to possess and leave them , as do mountain philanderers .sx Their climbs were not a battle and a parting :sx they cherished their mountains and returned .sx Packe climbed the Aneto six times ; Russell , who made at least five ascents , once spent a night on the summit and at dawn noted the snow blood-red where the first sun struck , but deep blue in the shadows .sx Though friends , they were different , representing two approaches to the mountains on which mountaineering has much depended , the scientific and the romantic .sx Charles Packe was geologist , botanist , cartographer , and scholar ( climbing with Horace in his pocket) .sx He was also the squire of Stretton Hall , the Leicestershire gentleman who found the Pyrenees more exciting than the hunting field .sx Much of this was concealed by a brusque manner , for though a modest man he was not an easy one .sx He began his systematic exploration of the chain in 1859 .sx When a companion was killed on the Pic de Sauvegarde in the same year , while no doubt perturbed , he was clearly not deflected .sx Noting Jurassic limestone , greensand , names of rare flowers , barometric pressures and making in the uncharted country expedition on expedition , he accumulated knowledge .sx It found expression in his first guide-book to the central Pyrenees and the first map of the Maladetta area .sx At this remove the methodical explorer allows a single welcome glimpse of the eccentric squire :sx on solitary expeditions he roped with " e and Azor , his great Pyrenean sheep-dogs .sx Thus a hundred years ago , but surely in misplaced confidence , he crossed a frozen tarn , and perhaps negotiated the icefields of the Aneto .sx 'Mon ami Packe,' the phrase recurs throughout the writings of Count Henri Patrick Marie Russell-Killough .sx The latter's was an affectionate and generous character .sx Born in France , and heir to a papal title , Russell was an Irish catholic .sx These facts were less important to him than the works of Chateaubriand , Lamartine , and Byron , and the mountains which he always saw in some part through their eyes .sx His life was a late but heroic expression of the romantic era .sx From that era both his literary style- for he had weird but considerable talent as a writer- and his attitudes derived much of their bravura .sx Charm , passion , eccentricity , created his legend ; there have been many less well founded .sx As a young man he wrote verse , played the fiddle , and would dance all night " effre@2ne@2 valseur " they said ) before starting on a thirty-mile walk at dawn .sx His romantic daemon sent him briefly and disastrously to sea , and led him in his early twenties happily across Siberia , to Australia , to New Zealand ( where he was lost for three days in the Alps alone and without food ) , to the Americas , and even to within sight of Everest .sx On his return in 1863 , at the age of twenty-nine , he first climbed the Aneto and met Packe .sx The rest of his life was , quite simply , devoted to the Pyrenees .sx The range brought him something like European fame .sx He made at least sixteen first ascents , and it is in character that many of them should have been solitary .sx