The landlord of the inn at Muehlinen, on the road from Kandersteg to Thun, has a worse arrangement than even this, both reins passing through one small leather loop at the top of the kicking-strap; so that when the horse on one occasion ran away down a steep hill in consequence of the break refusing to act, the man in his flurry could not tell which rein to pull, to steer clear of the wall of rock on one side, and the unfenced slope on the other, and finally flung himself out in despair, leaving his English cargo behind.
There has evidently been at some time a vast lake near Besancon, and the old bottom of the lake is now covered with heavy meadow-grass, while the corn-fields and villages creep down from the higher grounds, on the remains of promontories which stretch out into the plain.

The people are in constant fear of inundation, and the driver informed me that in winter large parts of the plain are flooded, the superfluous waters vanishing after a time into a great hole, whose powers of digestion he could not explain.

The villages which lie on the shores, as it were, of the lake, rejoice in church-towers with bulbous domes, rising out of rich clusters of trees, and the early bells rang out through the crisp air with something of a Belgian sweetness.

Farther on, the road passed through glorious wheat, clean as on an English model farm, save where some picturesque farmer had devoted a corner to the growth of poppies.
Here, as elsewhere, potatoes did not grow in ridges, but each root had a little hillock to itself; an unnatural early training which may account for the strange appearance of _pommes de terre au naturel_.
Anyone who has driven through the morning air for an hour or two before breakfast, will understand the satisfaction with which, about seven o'clock, we deciphered a complicated milestone into 14 kilometres from Besancon, which meant breakfast at the next village, Nancray.

The breakfast was simple enough, owing to the absence of butter and other things, and consisted of coffee in its native pot, and dry bread: the milk was set on the table in the pan in which it had been boiled, and a soup-ladle and a French wash-hand basin took the place of cup and spoon.
A cat kept the door against sundry large and tailless dogs, whose appetites had not gone with their tails; and an old woman kindly delivered a lecture on the most approved method of making a ptisan from the flowers of the lime-tree, and on the many medicinal properties of that decoction, to which she attributed her good health at so advanced an age.