AN OCTOBER ABROAD 185 



III 



A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE 



IN coming over to France, I noticed that the 

 chalk-hills, which were stopped so ahruptly by 

 the sea on the British side of the Channel, began 

 again on the French side, only they had lost their 

 smooth, pastoral character, and were more broken 

 and rocky, and that they continued all the way to 

 Paris, walling in the Seine, and giving the prevail 

 ing tone and hue to the country, scrape away the 

 green and brown epidermis of the hills anywhere, 

 and out shine their white framework, and that 

 Paris itself was built of stone evidently quarried 

 from this formation, a light, cream-colored stone, 

 so soft that rifle-bullets bury themselves in it nearly 

 their own depth, thus pitting some of the more ex 

 posed fronts during the recent strife in a very notice 

 able manner, and which, in building, is put up in 

 the rough, all the carving, sculpturing, and finishing 

 being done after the blocks are in position in the 

 wall. 



Disregarding the counsel of friends, I braved the 

 Channel at one of its wider points, taking the vixen 

 by the waist instead of by the neck, and found her 

 as placid as a lake, as I did also on my return a 

 week later. 



