een the means of having dug up
untold kilometres of Renaissance pavement; has made, almost at its
own expense, a magnificent forty-kilometre road known as the Corniche
de l'Esterel; and has given the backward innkeeper such a shock that
he has at last waked up to the needs of the twentieth-century
traveller. All this is something for a touring organization to have
accomplished, and when one can become a part and parcel of this great
organization, and a sharer in the special advantages which it has to
offer to its members for the absurdly small sum of five francs per
annum, the marvel is that it has not half a million members instead
of a hundred thousand.

Chapter III
Roads & Routes

[Illustration: Roads & Routes]

"Chacun suit dans ce monde une route incertaine,
Selon que son erreur le joue et le promene."--Boileau

The chief concern of the automobilist to-day, after his individual
automobile, is the road question, the "Good Roads Question," as it
has become generally known. In a new country, like America, it is to
be expected that great connecting highways should be mostly in the
making. It is to be regretted that the development should be so slow,
but things have been improving in the last decade, and perhaps
America will "beat the world" in this respect, as she has in many
others, before many future generations have been born.

In the excellence and maintenance of her roads France stands
emphatically at the head of all nations, but even here noticeable
improvement is going on. The terrific "Louis Quatorze pave," which
one finds around Paris, is yearly growing less and less in quantity.
The worst road-bed in France is that awful stretch from Bordeaux, via
Bazas, to Pau in Navarre, originally due to the energy of Henri IV.,
and still in existence for a space of nearly a hundred kilometres.
One avoids it by a detour of some twenty odd kilometres, and the
writer humbly suggests that here is an important unaccomplished work
for the usually energetic road authorities of France.

After France the "good roads" of Britain come next, though in some
parts of the country they are woefully inadequate to accommodate the
fast-growing traffic by road, notably in London suburbs, while some
of the leafy lanes over which poets rhapsodize are so narrow that the
local laws prevent any automobile traffic whatever. As one
unfortunate individual expressed it, "since the local authorities
forbid automobiles on roadways under