ted in routes and
roads than in mere watering-places, and so, beyond a stop for
gasoline for the motor, not having been able to get any for the last
fifty kilometres, still following the valley of the Ariege, we
arrived at Foix for lunch, at the most excellent Hotel Benoit, just
as the ice was being brought on the table and the _hors d'oeuvres_
were being portioned out.

Taken all in all, Foix was one of the most delightful towns we found
in all the Pyrenean itinerary. It is quite the most daintily and
picturesquely environed town imaginable, its triple-towered chateau
and its _rocher_ looming high above all, and sounding a dominant note
which carries one back to the days when Gaston Phoebus was the
seigneur of Foix.

We planned to spend the night at the Hotel de France at St. Girons,
for it was marked down in the Guide-Michelin as being fitted with
those modern refinements of travel which most of us appreciate, and
there was furthermore a garage and a _fosse_, or inspection pit. We
had need of the latter, for something was going wrong beneath the
body of our machine which manifestly require being attended to
without delay.

We took the long way around, twenty kilometres more out of our direct
road, for novelty of driving our automobile through the Grotto of Mas
D'Azil. We had been through grottoes before, the Grotte de Han in the
north of France, the caves where they ripen Rochefort cheeses, the
Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, and some others, but we had never expected
to drive an automobile through one. The Grotte de Mas-D'Azil is much
like other dark, damp holes elsewhere, and the only novelty is the
magnificent road which pierces it. The sensation of travelling over
this road is most weird, and it was well worth the trouble of making
the experiment.

From St. Girons to St. Gaudens and Montrejeau is sixty odd
kilometres. Nothing happened on the way except that the road was
literally thronged with great slow-moving ox-teams transporting great
logs down the mountainside to the sawmills in the lower valley.

Montrejeau was a surprise and a disappointment. It was a surprise
that we should find such a winsome little hill-town, and such a very
excellent hotel as was the Grand Hotel du Parc, which takes its name
from a tiny hanging garden at the rear; but we were disappointed in
that for a mortal half-hour we tried to make our usually willing
automobile climb up on to the plateau upon which the town sits. Three
separate r