24 A MONTH IN THE FOKESTS OF FRANCE. 



guage), and on every occasion during the journey 

 was my explaining voice in all difficulties with the 

 natives. 



The country was very pretty on either side of the 

 Seine ; and the low range of hills which bounded the 

 valley remarkable for a uniformity of height. The 

 cultivation, running in strips up the sides of the hills, 

 in a sportsman's eye looked as if the uplands of 

 France (like a horse's leg) had been fired, and gave 

 the prospect a patchy appearance. Agriculturally, I 

 was not pleased ; the French farmers, in carts and 

 ploughs, and method of working them, were half a 

 century behind their near neighbours over Channel, 

 and in no way whatever did they make the most of 

 their mother earth. " There's a wood for a wood- 

 cock or a fox," " There's a rippling shallow and a 

 likely hole for a good fish," were the words perpe- 

 tually arising in my mind as the train rattled by the 

 one or the other ; and a schoolboy going home for the 

 holidays was not more pleased than I was with all I 

 saw. The train, though, is decidedly slower than the 

 trains in England; but the refreshment-rooms are 

 better, and more time is allowed to eat and drink. All 

 the eatables looked nice ; but I did not at all like the 

 use the male cooks or carvers made of their hands in 

 helping me to those cold forced-meat sort of pies. To 



