LOURDES, capital of a canton, and seat of the civil court of the arrondissement of Argelès, in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées, France, lies 12 miles by rail southsouth-west of Tarbes, on the right bank of the Gave de Pau, and at the mouth of the valley of Argelès. It has grown up around what was originally a Roman castellum, and subsequently a feudal castle, picturesquely situated on the summit of a bare scarped rock. Near the town are marble quarries employing six hundred workpeople; and forty slate quarries give occupation to two hundred and sixty more. The pastures of the highly picturesque neighbourhood support the race of milch cows which is most highly valued in south-western France. The present fame of Lourdes is entirely associated with the grotto of Massavielle, where the Virgin Mary is believed in the Catholic world to have revealed herself repeatedly to a peasant girl in 1858; the spot, which is resorted to by multitudes of pilgrims from all quarters of the world, is now marked by a large church above the grotto, consecrated in 1876 in presence of thirty-five cardinals and other high ecclesiastical dignitaries. There is a considerable trade in rosaries and other “objets de piété,” as well as in the wonder-working water of the fountain, for which a miraculous origin is claimed. Not far from the grotto of Massavielle are several other caves where prehistoric remains, going back to the Stone Age and the period of the reindeer, have been found. The population of Lourdes in 1876 was 5470.