After passing Modane and Lanslebourg he followed the ascent of Mont Cenis for ten kilometres before he reached the summit of the pass. Within three kilometres he struck the snow-line, and the falling snow continued to the summit. Here he found two douaniers and two gendarmes, who appeared glad enough to have the monotony of their lonely vigil relieved by the advent of an automobile, quite unlooked for at this season of the year.
The descent to Susa and the great plain of the Po was long and dangerous. It is sixty-two kilometres from Modane to Susa, either up-hill or down-hill, with the descent by far the longest. It is one of the most enjoyable routes between France and Italy. Once on the Italian side the whole climatic aspect of things changes. The towns are highly interesting whenever met with, and the panoramas superb, but there is a marked absence of that active life of the fields, of cattle and human labourers that one remarks in France.
From Turin the route of this energetic little car passed Plaisance, crossed the Appenines between Bologna and Florence, and so to Venice, or rather to Mestre, where the car was put in a garage while the conductor paid his respects to the Queen of the Adriatic.
From Mestre the route lay by Udine, Pontebba, Pontafel, Villac Judenburg, and Murzzuschlag, through Styria to Vienna, with the roadways continually falling off in excellence. Here are M. Cormier's own words: "Mais, par exemple, comme routes, Dieu que c'est mauvais! Malgré cela, j'y retournerai; le pays vaut la peine que l'on affronte les cailloux, les ornières, les dos d'âne at les dérapages sur le sol mouillé, comme je l'ai trop trouvé, hélas!"
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 previously been quitted.
