valley
watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after
turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout
that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.

We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of
the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it
makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies,--all
on the left is pasture land, all on the right arable. The meadow
stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the
pasture land of the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain,
gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond
cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line
the color of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a
great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of
silver.

Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of
Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top to
bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain-tracks, and these
brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the gray color of the
mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the
neighboring country.

Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France,
a bastard land, whose language is without accent as its landscape is
without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel
cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is
costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full
of sand and flints.

Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but
about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to
that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their
way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of
its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping
up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the
lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread
riverwards. It is seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a
cowherd taking a siesta by the waterside.

At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with
young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the
place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the