it came as a gift , generously and unexpectedly . the sun slanting across the valley lent a liquid softness to the depths below us . we might have been looking into an unruffled lake , 2,000 feet of clear water . a mile distant , where the valley dropped away , the Esera made an elbow turn to the south , thus giving the valley-head its secrecy . as so rarely happens in nature , we looked on a work of art . the very perfection was strange ; such things do not normally come about . we felt for the first time that unreality , that sense of a landscape under spell , which travellers have repeatedly noted in these Pyrenees . an alpine valley would have been groomed and put to use , beautiful in a different way : pastures subdivided into toy-like rectangles and rhomboids , tousled mops of hay drying on ash poles , ruminating cattle , brown chalets . 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 . mares , he said . we descended knee-deep through feathery grasses . they parted easily and we walked , scattering myriads of grass seeds , as through green foam . there were Turk &apos;s head lilies and patches of iris , islands of brilliant blue set capriciously in the green sea . 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 . we were silent . one talks in a hut or by a fire in the open , but not much when walking or climbing : one is either too preoccupied , or too happy . going down to the Val d&apos;Esera we were happy . approaching the valley bottom we remarked that the hundreds of horses pasturing there did not stray . 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 . they varied from cream to black and these colours were seen against sward , the curve of each back outlined against the green . they were not mere quadrupeds , for they had the presence of the animals that obsessed Piero di Cosimo . 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 . 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 . 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 . they had grown larger , as landowners do on their own estates , and we seemed to reach only their withers . 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 . we trod delicately among the cropping beasts , who so generously ignored us . 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 . here at the headwaters of the Esera to be human was a disadvantage . less confident than his herd , the man jumped to his feet and held a great staff like a barrier towards us . 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 . in half an hour we had reached the hut . there is pleasure in an untenanted hut ; in disposing one &apos;s gear methodically ; in finding employment for hook , table , and bench , perhaps long unused ; in starting a fire and creating warmth . the process offers the satisfaction of moving into a new house , but is accomplished in an hour . it is a satisfaction rarely to be enjoyed in the Spanish Pyrenees . we little realised that we slept that night in comfort such as existed nowhere else in Aragon at 7,000 feet . in an area which knew little of climbing history , of guides , guide-books , or huts , the Aneto and the Rencluse hut were exceptional . as the highest point of the Pyrenees , the Aneto had been attempted in the eighteenth century . it had been climbed in 1842 and , though lying well in Spanish territory , had for decades been a popular ascent . 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 . before the first hut was built , people made their bivouac and lit their fires in a cave-like shelter , la Rencluse . later a cabin was built nearby , where the amiable and rugged Madame Sayo , whose reputation has long outlived her , ministered to mountaineers . time passed . with the civil war the frontier was closed and those who found their way into the region did not come to climb . when the authorities regained control of the area , after 1945 , the Rencluse was in ashes . it had been rebuilt by Jos&amp;eacute; Abadias , whom we were later to meet , patriarch and innkeeper at Benasque , six hours down the Esera valley . thus we slept under a roof . we woke to storm and wind , but even these can be acceptable in a quiet hut , if days are not too precious . there is a frayed rope-end to re-bind and crumpled flowers to identify . 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 . 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 . when it cleared towards evening , our spirits lifted like the vapour . we stepped out buoyantly to find the air deliciously clear , rinsed by the departed rain and wind . jumping like children from boulder to boulder , we raced along the mountainside . above us the peaks , hidden all day , had returned firm and confident to their stations . the valley glistened , no longer obscured by veils of driving rain . the mares in their formal circle were grazing unconcerned as ever , and the herdsman was fishing on the bank of the stream . beside him an enormous white Pyrenean sheep-dog sat on its haunches . that evening we would not have been elsewhere at any price . though the weather was perhaps a little too warm , the stars were out . tomorrow we should climb the Aneto . in itself the climb was nothing , un nada as someone had airily remarked in the caf&amp;eacute; at L&amp;eacute;s . but here in Aragon there were no reassuring tracks , no guide-books or maps as the modern climber knows them . imagination was free to play on our 11,000-foot mountain . we were back in the nineteenth century and this constituted the very point of our expedition . 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 . we poured more wine and sat talking at the trestle table , while the stove purred . naturally we talked of the Aneto , the inelegant but convincing massif that couched above us in the dark . draped with glaciers it stretched three miles from the Pic d&apos;Alba to the Pic des Temp&amp;ecirc;tes , and its backbone dropped nowhere below 10,000 feet . the crux of the climb was the Pont de Mahomet , the airy granite ridge that led to the summit . 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 . the name is no stranger than that of the adjoining Maldetta , the accursed mountain . accursed they say because Christ wandering in this wilderness , and meeting with fierce herdsmen and fiercer dogs , turned the latter to stone . Christ , Mahomet , such are the names that shepherds here have long invoked . 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 . we envisaged them , clad in Norfolk jackets , perhaps wearing the new-fangled balaclava helmets , on the skyline or straddling the Pont de Mahomet . 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 . they discovered most of the region nearly a century ago . having no maps , with no guide but observation and a compass , year after year they navigated like sailors among the unknown reefs and glaciers . their first ascents are numberless ; it was their country . perhaps for this reason , their expeditions were not assaults . they did not conquer peaks to possess and leave them , as do mountain philanderers . their climbs were not a battle and a parting : they cherished their mountains and returned . 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 . though friends , they were different , representing two approaches to the mountains on which mountaineering has much depended , the scientific and the romantic . Charles Packe was geologist , botanist , cartographer , and scholar ( climbing with Horace in his pocket ) . he was also the squire of Stretton Hall , the Leicestershire gentleman who found the Pyrenees more exciting than the hunting field . much of this was concealed by a brusque manner , for though a modest man he was not an easy one . he began his systematic exploration of the chain in 1859 . when a companion was killed on the Pic de Sauvegarde in the same year , while no doubt perturbed , he was clearly not deflected . noting Jurassic limestone , greensand , names of rare flowers , barometric pressures and making in the uncharted country expedition on expedition , he accumulated knowledge . it found expression in his first guide-book to the central Pyrenees and the first map of the Maladetta area . at this remove the methodical explorer allows a single welcome glimpse of the eccentric squire : on solitary expeditions he roped with Ossou&quot;e and Azor , his great Pyrenean sheep-dogs . thus a hundred years ago , but surely in misplaced confidence , he crossed a frozen tarn , and perhaps negotiated the icefields of the Aneto . mon ami Packe , the phrase recurs throughout the writings of Count Henri Patrick Marie Russell-Killough . the latter &apos;s was an affectionate and generous character . born in France , and heir to a papal title , Russell was an Irish catholic . 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 . his life was a late but heroic expression of the romantic era . 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 . charm , passion , eccentricity , created his legend ; there have been many less well founded . as a young man he wrote verse , played the fiddle , and would dance all night ( effr&amp;eacute;n&amp;eacute; valseur they said ) before starting on a thirty-mile walk at dawn . 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 . on his return in 1863 , at the age of twenty-nine , he first climbed the Aneto and met Packe . the rest of his life was , quite simply , devoted to the Pyrenees . the range brought him something like European fame . he made at least sixteen first ascents , and it is in character that many of them should have been solitary . 