180 FIRST JOURNEY IN EUROPE.  [1839, 
I have had another fine lesson from Mirbel. He 
showed me all the drawings of the paper, of which 1 
send three copies. I quit to-day. 
Lyons, Wednesday evening, April 17, 1839. 
At six o’elock precisely the malle-postes for every 
part of France began to leave, one after the other: 
that for Lyons came up; our baggage all in, our 
seats selected and arranged for us, in ten seconds we 
were in our places, and before the word adieu was 
fairly beyond my lips we were off at full speed. We 
took the route by Burgundy, passed Sens in the night, 
breakfasted at six next morning at Auxerre, and dur- 
ing the day should have passed through Autun, but I 
believe we did not ; passed Chalons-sur-Sadne at dusk, 
and arrived at Lyons at six precisely the next morn- 
ing, —a rather fatiguing ride, but I saved much time 
over the diligence, which would have been even more 
fatiguing. The mail-coach takes four passengers only, 
three inside and one with the conducteur; it is 
drawn by seven horses guided by a postillion, in boots 
almost as high as himself, and the horses are changed 
every five miles or thereabouts. The time it took to 
change the horses I believe never exceeded a minute. 
I timed them once or twice by the watch, and we were 
moving again before the expiration of the minute. The 
country through which we passed was more fertile and 
in better cultivation than what I saw of Normandy; 
it was beautiful but monotonous, except the latter 
part, which grew quite picturesque as we approached 
the Rhone and the rivers that fall into it. 
Lyons is finely situated just above the confluence 
of the Sadne and the Rhone, occupying the space be- 
tween the two rivers and also the other bank of the 
