On the plains, cows wandered, accompanied always by their own special woman (generally well on in years, with a huge overshadowing hat and large umbrella) in waiting, who paused when the cow paused, moved on when she moved on, ruminated when she ruminated,--"Where the cow goes, there go I," her day's motto. We often saw a solitary cow meandering about up the middle path between two clumps of vines, and nibbling thoughtfully at the leaves of the vines themselves; these last looking like gooseberry bushes. Sometimes a countrywoman would drive three cows in front of her, and besides that would push a wheelbarrow full of cabbages. Other women, again, we noticed working on the line, and some washing in a stream, clad in red knickerbockers and huge boots. As a rule, unlike our own spoilt meadows, the country is singularly little disfigured by advertisements, but everywhere we went we were confronted by the haunting words, "_Amer picon_," sometimes in placards on a cottage wall, sometimes in a field, sometimes blazoned up on a platform. At last it became so inevitable and so familiar, that we used to feel quite lost if a day should go by without a trace of its mystical letters anywhere! It occurred as continually before our eyes as the word "_gentil_" sounds on one's ears from the lips of the French madame. And everyone knows how often _that_ is! Just before reaching the station of Arcachon, our carriage stopped close beside a line of trucks. French trucks, in this part of the country, have an individuality all their own. They have a little twisting iron staircase, a little covered box seat high above the trucks' business end, and very wonderful inscriptions along their sides. On these we made out that it was etiquette for "Hommes 32, 40," and "Chevaux 8" to travel together! But if it were etiquette for them to do so, it would certainly, in practice, be as cramping and reasonless as are many of the injunctions of etiquette in social matters! Arrived at Arcachon, we found an array of curious cabs, furnished inside with curtains on rings, of all kinds of flowrery patterns in which very fully-blown roses and enormous chrysanthemums figured largely. In one of these we drove to the hotel among the pines, to which as we thought we had been recommended. It turned out, later, that we had not been directed to that hotel at all, but then it was too late to change. No one in this hotel could speak a word of English intelligibly. We found later on that the _concierge_ could say "va-terre," "Rome," "carrich" and "yes," but as these words had to be said many times before they even approached the distant semblance of any English words one had ever heard, and as, even when understood, they did not convey much information, taken singly and not in connection with any previous sentence, his assistance as interpreter was not to be counted on.