We had passed La Voute-sur-Rhône, that classic height which has been pictured many times in old books of travel. It, and Tournon, and Valence, and Viviers, and Pont St. Esprit were once riverside stations for the coches d'eau which did a sort of omnibus service with passengers on the Rhône, between Lyons and Avignon. There is a steamboat service to-day which also carries passengers, but it is not to be recommended if one has the means of getting about by road.
This town, too, and Valence, were directly on the route of the malle-poste from Lyons to Marseilles. The different postes or relays were marked on the maps of the day by little twisted hunting-horns. For the most part an old-time route map of the great trunk lines of the malle-poste and the messageries would, serve the automobilist of to-day equally as well as a modern road map.
The malle-poste, and the hiring out of post-horses, in France was an institution more highly developed than elsewhere.
Post-horses were only delivered one in France upon the presentation of a passport and payment, in advance, according to the following tariff. The price was fixed by law, being the same throughout all France.
| 1 | Poste (about 15 miles) | 1 franc 50 | centimes |
| 1/2 | " | 75 | " |
| 1/4 | " | 38 | " |
The postilion usually got one franc fifty per poste, but could only demand seventy-five centimes.
Certain carriages (chaises and cabriolets) would carry only portmanteaux (vaches), but voitures fermées, calèches, and the like might carry also a trunk (malle).
As one goes north, sunburnt Provence, its olive groves and its oil and garlic-seasoned viands are left behind, until little by little one draws upon the Burgundian opulence of the Côte d'Or, a land where the native's manner of eating and drinking makes a full life and a merry one.
We were not there yet; we had many kilometres yet to go, always by the banks of the Rhône until Lyons was reached.
Near Givors, at eight o'clock at night, within twenty kilometres of Lyons, the motor gave a weak asthmatic gasp, and stopped short. Like the foolish virgins, we had no oil in our lamps, and dusk had already fallen, and no amount of coaxing after the habitual manner would induce the thing to move a yard.