cliffs, as is the Seine in Normandy.

The general appearance of Pontoise is most pleasing. At first glance
it looks like a mediaeval Gothic city, and again even Oriental. At any
rate, it is an exceedingly unworldly sort of a place, with here and
there remains of its bold ramparts and its zigzag and tortuous
streets, but with no very great grandeur anywhere to be remarked,
except in the Eglise St. Maclou.

The history of Pontoise is long and lurid, beginning with the times
of the Gauls when it was known as _Briva Isaroe_. It is a long time
since the ramparts protected the old Chateau of the Counts of
Vexin--literally the land dedicated to Vulcan _(pagus Vulcanis)_
--where many French kings often resided. Many religious
establishments flourished here, too, all more or less under royal
patronage, including the Abbeys of St. Mellon and St. Martin, and the
Couvent des Cordeliers, in whose splendid refectory the exiled
Parlement held its sessions in 1652, 1720, and 1753. Out of this
circumstance grew the proverb or popular saying, "_Avoir l'air de
revenir de Pontoise._" The domain of Pontoise belonged in turn to
many seigneurs, but up to the Revolution it was still practically
_une ville monastique_.

As one comes to the lower streets of the town, near the station, and
between it and the river, the resemblance to a little corner of the
Pays Bas is remarkable, and therein lies its picturesqueness, if not
grandeur. Artists would love the narrow Rue des Attanets, with its
curious flanking houses of wood and stone, and the Rue de Rouen,
which partakes of much the same characteristics. Along the river are
great flour-mills, with wash-houses and red-armed, blue-bloused women
eternally washing and rinsing. All this would furnish studies
innumerable to those who are able to fabricate mouldy walls and
tumble-down picturesqueness out of little tubes of colour and gray
canvas. Here, too, at Pontoise, in its little port, none too cleanly
because of the refuse and grime of ashes and coal soot, one sees the
first of the heavy _chalands_ loaded with iron ore from the Ardennes,
or coal from Belgium, making their way to the wharves of Paris via
the Canal St. Denis.

More distant, and more pleasing to many, is that variety of landscape
made famous, and even popular, by Dupre and Daubigny. So, on the
whole, Pontoise, and the country round about, should properly be
classed among the things to which few have ever given more than a
passing