Upon the less frequented roads civilian traffic is frequent. It's mostly country-women in carts with pigs or oxen behind or with produce (or merchandise) for a village market. The village markets for a whole district are conducted by a sort of mobile column of vendors. They move (under a pass issued from the _gendarmerie_) from village to village in a species of caravan. Every village has a set market-day; the vendors move in agreement with it. They sell under booths on the pavements--sell fabrics, fruit, vegetables, fish, drapery, and clothing; and at some corner agreed upon they have the cattle market, with all the beasts tethered by a rope from horns to knee. Approaching a village which is "holding" its market, you'll meet these beasts being driven in gangs, united in sixes and sevens by a rope connecting their horns. They are almost all conducted by women and boys. The boys are incredibly cruel to them, not only _en route_, but at the market-place. It's not the women and girls conducting the market cattle who abuse them. They (and those in the market wagons) give you a smile and "_Bon jour, m'sieur_." There is a charm about this French usage of looking you in the eye and giving you a frank smile and a cheerful _Good-day_ without ever having met you before. You cannot go far without traversing some part of a military highroad--such is the frequency and the height of mobility. Especially is this so about those railheads adjacent to the line. Troops of cavalry, infantry, and artillery and horsed transport crowd French routes, even to the exclusion of the motor-lorry. For miles you may see nothing but a sea of yellow, bobbing, wash-basin trench-helmets. Unlovely they are, but useful. In such parts, too, the motor-'buses for rushing up reinforcements prevail. They come in long, swaying processions, filled with grinning warriors, who exchange repartee between themselves and the freight of other 'buses, and spend a lot of time in gnawing biscuit and jam. They gesticulate with these morsels. The 'buses are just such as you see in the Strand, except for colour, which here is, of course, a dingy khaki. Above and within, when they are stuffed, they have an enormously useful carrying capacity.