Nor did we find this description at all inapt as we drove over its excellent roads during the fine July weather.  But the Yorkshire country is doubly interesting, for if the landscape is of surpassing beauty, the cities, the villages, the castles and abbeys, and the fields where some of the fiercest battles in Britain have been fought, have intertwined their associations with every hill and valley.  Not only the size of the shire, but its position—­midway between London and the Scottish border, and extending almost from coast to coast—­made it a bulwark, as it were, against the incursions of the Scots and their numerous sympathizers in the extreme north of England.  No part of England is more thickly strewn with attractions for the American tourist and in no other section do conditions for motor travel average better.

From London to York, the capital city of the shire, runs the Great North Road, undoubtedly the finest highway in all Britain.  It is laid out on a liberal scale, magnificently surfaced and bordered much of the way by wide and beautifully kept lawns and at times skirted with majestic trees.  We saw a facsimile of a broadside poster issued about a century ago announcing that the new lightning coach service installed on this road between London and York would carry passengers the distance of one hundred and eighty-eight miles in the astonishingly short space of four days.  This coach, of course, traveled by relays, and at what was then considered breakneck speed.  Over this same highway it would now be an easy feat for a powerful car to cover the distance in three or four hours.  The great North Road was originally constructed by the Romans to maintain the quickest possible communication between London and Eboracum, as York was styled during the Roman occupation.

The limitation of our time had become such that we could but feel that our tour through Yorkshire must be of the most superficial kind.  Not less than two weeks of motoring might well be spent in the county and every day be full of genuine enjoyment.  The main roads are among the best in England and afford access to most of the important points.  We learned, however, that there is much of interest to be reached only from byways, but that these may lead over steep and even dangerous hills and are often in not much better condition than our American roads.

We left Durham about noon, following a rather indirect route to Darlington; from thence, through hawthorne-bordered byways, we came to Richmond, one of the quaintest and most representative of the old Yorkshire towns.  We happened here on market day and the town was crowded with farmers from the surrounding country.  Here we saw many types of the Yorkshire man, famed for his shrewdness and fondness for what we would call “dickering.”  Much of the buying and selling in English towns is done on market day; live stock, produce, farm implements, and almost every kind of merchandise are sold at auction in the public