In England the main travel routes run north, east, south, and west from London as a radiating centre, and each took, in the later coaching days, such distinctive names as "The Portsmouth Road," "The Dover Road," "The Bath Road," and "The Great North Road." Their histories have been written in fascinating manner, so they are only referred to here.
It is in France, one may almost say, that automobile touring begins and ends, in that it is more practicable and enjoyable there; and so la belle France continually projects itself into one's horizon when viewing the subject of automobilism.
It may be that there are persons living to-day who regret the passing of the good old times when they travelled—most uncomfortably, be it remarked—by stage-coach and suffered all the inclemencies of bad weather en route without a word of protest but a genial grumble, which they sought to antidote by copious libations of anything liquid and strong. The automobile has changed all this. The traveller by automobile doesn't resort to alcoholic drinks to put, or keep, him in a good humour, and, when he sees a lumbering van or family cart making its way for many miles from one widely separated region to another, he accelerates his own motive power and leaves the good old ways of the good old days as far behind as he can, and recalls the words of Sidney Smith:
"The good of other times let others state,
I think it lucky I was born so late."
A certain picturesqueness of travel may be wanting when comparing the automobile with the whirling coach-and-four of other days, but there is vastly more comfort for all concerned, and no one will regret the march of progress when he considers that nothing but the means of transportation has been changed. The delightful prospects of hill and vale are still there, the long stretches of silent road and, in France and Germany, great forest routes which are as wild and unbroken, except for the magnificent surface of the roads, as they were when mediæval travelers startled the deer and wild boar. You may even do this to-day with an automobile in more than one forest tract of France, and that not far from the great centres of population either.
The invention of carriage-springs—the same which, with but little variation, we use on the automobile—by the wife of an apothecary in the Quartier de St. Antoine at Paris, in 1600, was the prime cause of the increased popularity of travel by road in France.
In 1776, the routes of France were divided into four categories:
- Those leading from Paris to the principal interior cities and seaports.
- Those communicating directly between the principal cities.
- Those communicating directly between the cities and towns of one province and those of another.
- Those serving the smaller towns and bourgs.
- Those leading from Paris to the principal interior cities and seaports.
- Those communicating directly between the principal cities.
- Those communicating directly between the cities and towns of one province and those of another.
- Those serving the smaller towns and bourgs.