urface was good and the scenery
delightful, so, since most of us require variety as a component of
our daily lives, we were getting what we wanted and no one
complained.

It was easy going by Chateau Thierry and the episcopal city of Meaux,
retracing almost the itinerary of the fleeing Louis XVI., and, as we
entered Paris by the Porte de Vincennes,--always by villainous
roadways, this getting in and out of Paris,--we red-inked another
twelve hundred kilometre stretch of roadway on our record map of
France.

Chapter V
By Seine And Oise--A Cruise In A Canot-Automobile

[Illustration: By Seine and Oise]

If automobiling on land in France is a pleasure, a voyage up a
picturesque and historic French river in a _canot-automobile_ is a
dream, so at least we thought, four of us--and a boy to clean the
engine, run errands, and to climb overboard and push us off when we
got stuck in the mud.

Our "home port" was Les Andelys on the Seine, and we meet in the
courtyard of the Hotel Bellevue at five o'clock one misty, gray
September morning for a fortnight's voyage up the Oise, which joins
the Seine midway between Les Andelys and Paris.

There is nothing mysterious about an automobile boat any more than
there is about the land automobile. It has its moods and vagaries,
its good points _and some bad ones_. It is not as speedy as an
automobile on shore, but it is more comfortable, a great deal more
fun to steer, and less dangerous, and there is an utter absence of
those chief causes of trouble to the automobile, punctures and what
not happening to your tires. Then again there is, generally speaking,
no crowd of traffic to run you into danger, and there is an absence
of dust, to make up for which, when you are lying by waiting to go
through a lock, you have mosquitoes of a fierce bloodthirsty kind
which even the smoke from the vile tobacco of French cigarettes will
not keep at a distance.

Our facile little automobile boat was called the "_Ca et La._"
Rightly enough named it was, too. The French give singularly pert and
appropriate names to their boats. "_Va t'on,_" "_Quand meme,_" and
"_Ca et La_" certainly tell the stories of their missions in their
very names.

The boat itself, and its motor, too, was purely a French production,
and, though of modest force and dimensions, would do its dozen miles
an hour all day long.

We got away from the landing-stage of the Touring Club de France at
Les Andelys in good time, our p