is no difficulty in
getting to either, and Mortain at least, the one most closely connected
with our own history, is very well worth going to indeed.

The position of Mortain, to say nothing else, is certainly one of the
most beautiful to be found in any region which does not aspire to the
sublimity of mountain scenery. The waterfalls have been famous ever
since Sir Francis Palgrave connected them with the story of the place
and its counts. But the whole position of town, castle, everything about
Mortain, is lovely. The town itself in a strange way suggests Taormina.
It stands in somewhat the same sort on a kind of ledge on a hill-side,
with higher hills rising behind it. But while Taormina looks straight
down on the Ionian Sea, Mortain looks down only on the narrow dale of
the little river Cance, with its steep banks rising on the other side.
Yet there are spots among the limestone rocks which rise about and above
Mortain which call up other Sicilian memories. If the traveller intrusts
himself to the care of a local guide he will certainly be carried to the
little chapel of Saint Michael overhanging the town. From that height he
will be rewarded by a wide view, the most part of which, over the rich
Norman plain, is as unlike Sicily as may be. But, on another side, the
greater Mount of the Archangel may be seen far away floating on its bay,
and the position of the chapel itself--old, but modernised and no great
work of art--called up for a moment that chapel of Saint Blaise on the
Akragantine rocks, which once was the temple of Demeter and her Child.
And, if one only had the means of finding out, it may be that the
Archangel displaced some Celtic powers, such as those which Gregory of
Tours still knew as abiding on the Puy de Dome of Auvergne. But the life
of Mortain as Mortain is, or rather as Mortain, with its counts and its
canons, once was, began at a lower point, at a point lower than the town
itself. The Moretolian akropolis, like some others, was not an akropolis
in the literal sense, for the good reason that the point of most value
for military purposes was not the most lofty. The windings of the little
stream allow of the projection of a bold peninsular rock, joined by a
kind of isthmus to the main hill on which the town stands. Here stood
the castle; town and church rise above it, and higher hills rise above
town and church. But no higher point was so well suited for the purposes
of a great and strong fortress.