h astonishing persistency. Of the
one thousand automobiles at Nice in the season it is certain that
nine-tenths of the number that leave their garages during the day
will be found sooner or later on the famous "Corniche," going or
coming from Monte Carlo, instead of discovering new tracks for
themselves in the charming background of the foot-hills of the
Maritime Alps.

In England, too, the case is not so very different. There are a
thousand "week-enders" in automobiles on the way to Brighton,
Southsea, Bournemouth, Scarborough, or Blackpool to ten genuine
tourists, and this even though England and Wales and Scotland form a
snug little touring-grounds with roads nearly, if not always,
excellent, and with accommodations--of a sort--always close at hand.

In Germany there seems to be more genuine touring, in proportion to
the number of automobiles in use, than elsewhere. This may not prove
to be wholly the case, as the author judges only from his
observations made on well-worn roads.

Switzerland is either all touring, or not at all; it is difficult to
decide which. At any rate most of the strangers within its frontiers
are tourists, and most of the tourists are strangers, and many of
them take their automobiles with them in spite of the "feeling"
lately exhibited there against stranger automobilists.

Belgium and Holland, as touring-grounds for automobilists, do not
figure to any extent. This is principally from the fact that they are
usually, so far as foreign automobilists are concerned, included in
more comprehensive itineraries. They might be known more intimately,
to the profit of all who pass through them. They are distinctly
countries for leisurely travel, for their areas are so restricted
that the automobilist who covers two or three hundred kilometres in
the day will hardly remember that he has passed through them.

Northern Italy forms very nearly as good a touring-ground as France,
and the Italian engineers have so refined the automobile of native
make, and have so fostered automobilism, that accommodations are
everywhere good, and the tourist to-day will not lack for supplies of
_benzina_ and _olio_ as he did a few years ago.

The bulk of the automobile traffic between France and Italy enters
through the gateway of the Riviera, and, taken all in all, this is by
far the easiest, and perhaps the most picturesque, of routes.
Alternatives are through Gap and Cuneo, Briancon and Susa, Moutiers
and Aosta, o