On September 22, 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson left the Monastier-on-Gazeille, near Le Puy, in Velay, to undertake the crossing of the Cevennes in the company of a donkey, Modestine. He was to arrive in Saint-Jean-du-Gard, near Ales, Oct. 3 after a trip very picturesque. 
Every night, he took care of her diary which was published in London in 1879 under the title "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes."
Nothing, however, predisposed to such Stevenson hiking through the mountains of Velay, Gevaudan and Cevennes. Born into a bourgeois family of Scottish Presbyterians, he gave, indeed, to his engineering studies and legal to devote himself to writing. When he died at the age of 44 years in 1894, he bequeathed to posterity tests, travelogues, novels, stories, poems and letters. He was the author of "Treasure Island" (1883) of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886) now classic horror literature.
Breaking with the traditional values of his environment, he frequented literary cafés of the Latin Quarter of 1874 to 1879. And hiking in the Cevennes was the prelude to a vagabond existence. In the "Journal of road," Jacques Poujol showcases the fondness for bohemian and also shows his interest in Camisards.
The famous writer did not know, in this September 22, 1878, he opened a path of legend. Each year many hikers retrace his journey on foot, horseback or mountain bike running!
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