an echo of things
Parisian--was good and bountiful. There was no fuss and feathers when
we arrived or when we left, and not all the _personnel_ of the hotel,
from the boots to the manager, were hanging around for tips. The head
waiter and the chambermaid were in evidence; that was all. The rest
were discreetly in the background.

Chapter III
On The Road By The Rhine

[Illustration: Rhine]

We had followed along the lower reaches of the Rhine, through the
little land of dykes and windmills, when the idea occurred to us: why
not make the Rhine tour _en automobile_? This, perhaps, was no new and
unheard-of thing, but the Rhine tour is classic and should not be
left out of any one's travelling education, even if it is
old-fashioned.

At Nymegen we saw the last of Holland and soon crossed the frontier.
There were no restrictions then in force against the entrance of
foreign automobiles, though we were threatened with new and stringent
regulations soon to be put in force. (1906. A full resume of these
new regulations will be found in the appendix.) Legally Germany could
demand eight marks a hundred kilos for the weight of our machine, but
in practice all tourists were admitted free, provided one could
convince the official that he intended to return across the frontier
within a reasonable time.

As we crossed the railway line we made our obeisance to the German
customs authorities, saluted the black and white barber's-pole
stripes of the frontier post, and filled up our tanks with gasoline,
which had now assumed the name of _benzin_, instead of _benzine_, as
in Holland.

Emmerich, Cleves, Wesel, and Xanten are not tourist points, and in
spite of the wealth of history and romance which surrounds their very
names, they had little attraction for us. For once were going to make
a tour of convention.

It is a fairly long step from Nymegen to Duesseldorf, one hundred and
one kilometres, but we did it between breakfast and lunch, in spite
of the difficulty of finding our way about by roads and regulations
which were new to us.

The low, flat banks of the Rhine below Duesseldorf have much the same
characteristics that they have in Holland, and, if the roadways are
sometimes bad as to surface--and they are terrible in the
neighbourhood of Crefield--they are at least flat and otherwise
suited to speed, though legally you are held down to thirty
kilometres an hour.

You may find anything you like in the way of hotel ac