Here are M. Cormier's
own words: "_Mais, par exemple, comme routes, Dieu que c'est mauvais!
Malgre cela, j'y retournerai; le pays vaut la peine que l'on affronte
les cailloux, les ornieres, les dos d'ane at les derapages sur le sol
mouille, comme je l'ai trop trouve, helas!_"

Of the road from Vienna, through Moravia and Bohemia, the tourist
wrote also feelingly. "May I never see those miserable countries
again," he said. Things must have improved in the last two or three
years, but the cause of the little De Dion's troubles was the
frequent recurrence of culverts or _canivaux_ across the road. Five
hundred in one day nearly did for the little De Dion, or would have
done so had not it been carefully driven.

From Prague the German frontier was crossed at Zinnwalo, a tiny
hamlet well hidden on a mountain-top, beyond which is a descent of
fifty kilometres to Dresden. From Dresden to Berlin the way lay over
delightful forest roads, little given to traffic, and most enjoyable
at any season of the year, unless there be snow upon the ground.

From Berlin the route was by Magdebourg, Hanover, Munster, and Wesel,
and Holland was entered at Beek, a little village ten kilometres from
Nymegen. At Nymegen the Waal was crossed by a steam ferry-boat, and
at Arnhem the Rhine was passed by a bridge of boats, a surviving
relic in Continental Europe still frequently to be found, as at Wesel
and Dusseldorf in Germany, and even in Italy, near Ferrara on the Po.

Utrecht came next, then Amsterdam--"a little tour of Holland," as the
De Dion's conductor put it. In the suburbs of the large Dutch towns,
notably Utrecht, one makes his way through miles and miles of garden
walls, half-hiding coquettish villas. The surface of the roads here
is formed of a peculiar variety of paving that makes them beloved of
automobilists, it being of small brick placed edgewise, and very
agreeable to ride and drive upon.

From Utrecht the route was more or less direct to Antwerp. At the
Belgian frontier acquaintance was made with that horrible
granite-block road-bed, for which Belgium is notorious. After
Antwerp, Brussels, then forty-five kilometres of road even worse--if
possible--than that which had gone before. (The Belgian _chauffeurs_
call that portion of the route between Brussels and Gemblout a
disgrace to Belgium.) The French frontier was gained, through Namur,
at Rocroi, and Paris reached, via Meaux, thirty-nine days after the
capital had previousl