raction is generally by steam towboat,
the more picturesque, if slower and more humble, tow-horse is more
largely in evidence here than elsewhere in France.

The environs of Conflans-fin-d'Oise are of a marvellous charm, but
the immediate surroundings, great garages of coal boats and barges,
coal-yards where towboats are filling up, and all the grime of an
enormous water-borne traffic which here divides, part to go Parisward
and part down-river, make it unlovely enough.

Three kilometres up-river is a little riverside inn called the
"Goujon de l'Oise." It is a pleasant place to lunch, but otherwise
"fishy," as might be supposed.

Back toward Meulan and on the heights above Triel are nestled a
half-dozen picturesque little red-roofed villages which are not known
at all to travellers from Paris by road or rail. It is curious how
many sylvan spots one can find almost within plain sight of Paris.
There are wheat-fields within sight of Montmartre and haystacks
almost under the shadow of Mont Valerian.

At Evequemont, just back of Conflans, some eight hundred souls eke
out an existence on their small farms and live the lives of their
grandfathers before them, with never so much as a thought as to what
may be happening at the capital twenty kilometres away.

Boisemont is another tiny village, with an eighteenth-century chateau
which would form an idyllic retreat from the cares of city ways.
Courdimanche, a few miles farther on, is unknown and unspoiled. It
crowns a hilltop, with its diminutive and unusual red-roofed church
overtopping all and visible from the river, or from the rolling
country round about, for many miles. Here the Oise makes a long
parallelogram-like turn from Maurecourt around to Eragny, perhaps two
miles in a bee-line, but seemingly twenty by the river's course.

The land automobile has a distinct advantage here in speed over the
_canot_, but one's point of view is not so lovely. It is only twelve
kilometres to Pontoise, where one passes the _barrage_ just below the
town and saunters on shore for a spell, just to get acquainted with
the place that Parisians know so well by name, and yet so little in
reality.

Pontoise is the metropolis of the Oise, though it, too, is a
veritable French country town, such as one would hardly expect to
find within twenty kilometres of Paris. The islands of the river are
dotted with trees and _petit maisons de campagne_, and the right bank
is bordered with great chalky