The Car That Went Abroad: Motoring Through the Golden Age

It was the 10th of July that we returned to Vevey, and it was just three weeks later that the world--a world of peace and the social interchange of nations--came to an end.

Now, when one has reached Switzerland, his inclination is not to go on traveling, for a time at least, but to linger and enjoy certain advantages. First, of course, there is the...

There is no record of a time when there was not a city at Arles. The Rhone divides to form its delta there--loses its swiftness and becomes a smooth highway to the sea.

When winter comes in America, with a proper and sufficient thickness of ice, a number of persons--mainly young people--go out skating, or coasting, or sleighing, and have a very...

A little book says: "Thanks to a unique system of tramways, Marseilles may be visited rapidly and without fatigue." They do not know the word "trolley" in Europe, and "tramway"...

It would seem to be the French cantons along the Lake of Geneva (or Leman) that most attract the deliberate traveler. The north shore of this lake is called the Swiss Riviera, f...

It was still drizzling next morning, so we were in no hurry to leave. We plodded about the gray streets, picking up some things for the lunch basket, and Narcissa and the Joy go...

There are at least two ways to leave Marseilles for the open plain of the Provence, and we had hardly started before I wished I had chosen the other one. We were climbing the ru...

Among the things I did on the ship was to read the _Automobile Instruction Book_. I had never done it before. I had left all technical matters to a man hired and trained for the...

We were well down in the Vosges now and beginning to inquire for Domremy. How strange it seemed to be actually making inquiries for a place that always before had been just a pa...

Our tires were distressingly bad now. I had to do some quick repairing at Domremy, also between Domremy and Vaucouleurs, where we spent the night. Then next morning at Vaucouleu...

The drowsy Provence, with its vineyard slopes and poppied fields, warm lighted and still, is akin to Paradise. But the same Provence, on a windy day, with the chalk dust of its...

Now, it is just here that we reach the special reason which had kept us where we had a clear view of the eastward mountains, and particularly to the westward bank of the Rhone,...

One morning as we started toward the express office a man in a wagon passed and called out something. We did not catch it, but presently another met us and with a glad look told...

Francis I had a fine taste for collecting chateaux picturesquely located, but when he built one for himself he located it in the most unbeautiful situation in France. It require...

So we took a new start and made certain that we entirely crossed the river this time. We were in Villeneuve-les-Avignon--that is, the "new town"--but it did not get that name re...

We had meant to go to Barbizon, but we got lost in the forest next morning, and when we found ourselves we were a good way in the direction of Melun, so concluded to keep on, co...

It is a rare and beautiful drive to Aix-les-Bains, and it takes one by Lake Bourget, the shimmering bit of blue water from which Mark Twain set out on his Rhone trip. We got int...

This morning we got away from Tours, but it was after a strenuous time. It was one of those sweltering mornings, and to forward matters at the garage I helped put on all those r...

It was not until near the end of October that we decided to go. We had planned to remain for another winter, but the aspect of things did not improve as the weeks passed. With n...

In fact, neither the Joy nor I hungered for any more Paris, while the others had seen their fill. So we were off, with only a day's delay, this time taking the road to Versaille...

We were not very thorough sight-seers. We did not take a guidebook in one hand and a pencil in the other and check the items, thus cleaning up in the fashion of the neat, busine...

Our bill at Beauchastel for the usual accommodation--dinner, lodging, and breakfast--was seventeen francs-twenty, including the tips to two girls and the stableman. This was the...

Originally I began this story with a number of instructive chapters on shipping an automobile, and I followed with certain others full of pertinent comment on ocean travel in a...

There are more fine-looking fishing places in France than in any country I ever saw. There are also more fishermen. In every river town the water-fronts are lined with them. The...

I ought to say, I suppose, that we were no longer in Provence. Even at Avignon we were in Venaissin, according to present geography, and when we crossed the Rhone we passed into...

We had barely hesitated at Bayeux on the way to Cherbourg, but now we stopped there for the night. Bayeux, which is about sixty miles from Cherbourg, was intimately associated w...

Sometime in the night the rain ceased, and by morning Nature had prepared a surprise for us. The air was crystal clear, and towering into the sky were peaks no longer blue or gr...

Chinon is not on the Loire, but on a tributary a little south of it, the Vienne, its ruined castle crowning the long hill or ridge above the town. Sometime during the afternoon...

It is no great distance from Arles to Tarascon, and, leisurely as we travel, we had reached the home of Tartarin in a little while. We were tempted to stop over at Tarascon, for...

It was the first week in May when we started--the 5th, in fact. The car had been thoroughly overhauled, and I had spent a week personally on it, scraping and polishing, so that...

It is easy enough to get into almost any town or city, but it is different when you start to leave it. All roads lead to Rome, but there is only here and there one that leads ou...

It is grand driving from Le Puy northward toward Clermont-Ferrand and Vichy. It is about the geographical center of France, an unspoiled, prosperous-looking land. Many varieties...

Through that golden land which lies between the Loir and the Loire we drifted through a long summer afternoon and came at evening to a noble bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil...

There is some sight-seeing to be done in Meung, but we were too anxious to get to Orleans to stop for it. Yet we did not hurry through our last summer morning along the Loire. I...

One does not motor a great deal in the immediate vicinity of Vevey; the hills are not far enough away for that. One may make short trips to Blonay, and even up Pelerin, if he is...

We turned north now, toward Fontainebleau, which we had touched a month earlier on the way to Paris. It is a grand straight road from Orleans to Fontainebleau, and it passes thr...

It is a wide, white road, bordered by the rich fields of May and the unbelievable poppies of France. Oh, especially the poppies! I have not spoken of them before, I think. They...

So we went wandering through a rather unpopulous, semi-mountainous land--a prosperous land, from the look of it, with big isolated factory plants here and there by strongly flow...

Turning eastward from Valence, we headed directly for the mountains and entered a land with all the wealth of increase we had found in Provence, and with even more of picturesqu...

The particular day of which I am now writing was Sunday, and when we came to Moulin, the ancient capital of the Bourbonnais, there was a baptismal ceremony going on in the cathe...

In the quest for outlying chateaux one is likely to forget that Tours itself is very much worth while. Tours has been a city ever since France had a history, and it fought again...

Perhaps one should report progress in learning French. Of course Narcissa and the Joy were chattering it in a little while. That is the way of childhood. It gives no serious con...

The informed motorist does not arrive at the gates of Paris with a tankful of gasoline. We were not informed, and when the _octroi_ officials had measured our tank they charged...

It was our purpose to leave Rouen by the Amiens road, but when we got to it and looked up a hill that about halfway to the zenith arrived at the sky, we decided to take a road t...

Avignon, like Arles, was colonized by the Romans, but the only remains of that time are now in its museum. At Arles the Romans did great things; its heyday was the period of the...

When the Romans captured a place and established themselves in it they generally built, first an Arch of Triumph in celebration of their victory; then an arena and a theater for...

It is about forty miles from Bourg to Lyons, a country of fair fields, often dyed deeply red at this season with crimson clover, a country rich and beautiful, the road a straigh...

One of the finest things about a French city is the view of it from afar off. Le Puy is especially distinguished in this regard. You approach it from the altitudes and you see i...

To those tourists who are looking for out-of-the-way corners of Europe I commend Billy. It is not pronounced in our frivolous way, but "Bee-yee," which you see gives it at once...

In a former chapter I have mentioned the mighty natural portrait in stone which Mark Twain found, and later named the Lost Napoleon, because he could not remember its location,...

It may have been two miles out of Rheims that we met the flood. There had been a heavy shower as we entered the city, but presently the sun broke out, bright and hot, too bright...

But with the breaking out of the primroses and the hint of a pale-green beading along certain branches in the hotel garden, the desire to be going, and seeing, and doing; to hea...

The church of Brou is like no other church in the world. In the first place, instead of dragging through centuries of building and never quite reaching completion, it was begun...

We were at Freiburg in the lower edge of the Black Forest some time during the afternoon, one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen, one of the richest in color scheme. Large...

Adjoining our hotel--almost a part of it, in fact, is a remnant of the ancient Roman forum of Arles. Some columns, a piece of the heavy wall, sections of lintel, pediment, and c...

We had climbed two thousand feet from Nimes to reach Villefort and thought we were about on the top of the ridge. But that was a mistake; we started up again almost as soon as w...

There is so much to see at Arles. One would like to linger a week, then a month, then very likely he would not care to go at all. The past would get hold of him by that time--th...

I. THE NEW PLAN 143 II. THE NEW START 146 III. INTO THE JURAS 151 IV. A POEM IN ARCHITECTURE 160 V. VIENNE IN THE RAIN 164 VI. THE CHATEAU I DID NOT RENT 168 VII. AN HOUR AT ORA...

CHAPTER PAGE I. DON'T HURRY THROUGH MARSEILLES 3 II. MOTORING BY TRAM 9 III. ACROSS THE CRAU 19 IV. MISTRAL 27 V. THE ROME OF FRANCE 30 VI. THE WAY THROUGH EDEN 40 VII. TO TARAS...