The country through which we passed was uninteresting in the extreme, although we had been told by the landlord that our drive would introduce us to a succession of natural beauties such as few countries in the world could show.  The line of hills, at the foot of which we expected our route to lie, looked exceedingly tempting as seen from Pontarlier; but, to our disappointment, we left the hills and struck across the plain.  About ten or eleven kilometres from Pontarlier, however, the character of the country changed suddenly, and we found the landlord’s promise in some part fulfilled.  Rich meadow-slopes were broken by solitary trees arranged in Nature’s happiest style, and grey precipices of Jurane grimness and perpendicularity encroached upon the woods and grass.  We were coming near the source of the Loue, M. Paget said, which it would be necessary for us to visit.  He told us that we must leave the carriage at an auberge on the roadside, and walk to the neighbouring village of Ouhans, which was inaccessible for voitures, and thence we should easily find our way to the source.  The distance, he declared, was twenty minutes.  The woman at the auberge strongly recommended the source, but did her best to dissuade us from the glacieres, of which she said there were two.  She had visited them herself, and told her husband, who had guided her, that there was nothing to see.  That, we thought, proved nothing against the glacieres, and her dulness of appreciation we were willing to accept without further proof than her personal appearance.  Besides, to go to the source, and not to Arc, would mean dining with her; so that she was not an impartial adviser.

M. Paget was a short square man, of very few words, and his one object in life seemed to be to save his black horse as much as possible; a very creditable object in itself, so long as he did not go too far in his endeavours to accomplish it.  On the present occasion he certainly did go too far.  The road was quite as good as that which we had left, and there was no reason in the world why the carriage should not have taken us to the village.  Worse still, we discovered eventually that the ‘twenty minutes’ meant twenty minutes from the village to the source, and represented really something like half the time necessary for that part of the march, while there was a hot and dusty walk of half an hour before we reached the village.  As he accompanied us in person, we had the satisfaction of frequently telling him our mind with insular frankness.  He pretended to be much distressed, but assured us each time we returned to the charge—­about every quarter of an hour—­that we were close to the desired spot.  From the village to the source, the way led us through such pleasant scenery and such acceptable strawberries, that we only kept up our periodical remonstrances on principle, and, after we had wound rapidly down through a grand defile, and turned a sudden angle of the rock, the first sight of that