What strikes the holiday traveller about the French shore is that it is so much better managed than the Swiss shore. Its natural advantages are fewer--they are, in fact, very few indeed. Evian--and when one speaks of the French shore one is principally thinking of Evian--stands with its back to the high mountains instead of facing them. Consequently it has no views to compare with the views from Lausanne, Geneva, and Vevey. Its hinterland is commonplace, except for those who make a great effort and go up the Dent d'Oche. The mouth of the Dranse, hard by, is a dreary collection of detritus. There are hardly any literary landmarks, except the few that recall the memory of St. Francis de Sales. Whence English travellers have, almost with one accord, drawn the inference that it is not worth while to go to Evian. But they are wrong. The French think otherwise, and the French are right. They do not go there, as some suppose, because they are crippled with diseases and need the waters to wash poisons out of their blood and their organs: the Evian water is the sort of water that the whole, as well as the sick, can drink by the bucketful without feeling a penny the worse for it. Their purpose in going to Evian is to live a life of luxury and leisure. No doubt they pay through the nose for the privilege. Inquiry at one hotel elicited the statement that the worst rooms were let at eight and the best at eighty francs a day--with service _à la carte_ on the same scale. But other hotels are cheaper, and it is also possible to hire a villa, a flat, a lodging; and, in any case, it is right that Evian should be introduced to the English tourist as the one place on the Lake of Geneva in which the life of leisure and luxury is possible.