Throughout, however, it is of generous width and at times rises in a true torrential manner: this when the spring freshets and melting Alpine snows are directed thither toward their natural outlet to the sea. "Rivers," said Blaise Pascal, "are the roads that move." Along the great river valleys of the Rhône, the Loire, the Seine, and the Rhine were made the first Roman roads, the prototypes of the present-day means of communication. The development of civilization and the arts along these great pathways was rapid and extensive. Two of them, at least, gave birth to architectural styles quite differing from other neighbouring types: the _Romain-Germanique_--bordering along the Rhine and extending to Alsace and the Vosges; and the _Romain-Bourguignon_, which followed the valley of the Rhône from Bourgogne to the Mediterranean and the Italian frontier, including all Provence. The true source of the Rhône is in the Pennine Alps, where, in consort with three other streams, the Aar, the Reuss, and the Ticino, it rises in a cloven valley close to the lake of Brienz, amid that huge jumble of mountain-tops, which differs so greatly from the popular conception of a mountain range. Dauphiné and Savoie are to-day comparatively unknown by parlour-car travellers. Dauphiné, with its great historical associations, the wealth and beauty of its architecture, the magnificence of its scenery, has always had great attractions for the historian, the archæologist, and the scholar; to the tourist, however, even to the French tourist, it remained for many years a _terra incognita_. Yet no country could present the traveller with a more wonderful succession of ever-changing scenery, such a rich variety of landscape, ranging from verdant plain to mountain glacier, from the gay and picturesque to the sublime and terrible. Planted in the very heart of the French Alps, rising terrace above terrace from the lowlands of the Rhône to the most stupendous heights, Dauphiné may with reason claim to be the worthy rival of Switzerland. The romantic associations of "La Grande Chartreuse"; of the charming valley towns of Sion and Aoste, famed alike in the history of Church and State; and of the more splendidly appointed cities of Grenoble and Chambéry, will make a new leaf in the books of most peoples' experiences. The rivers Durance, Isère, and Drôme drain the region into the more ample basin of the Rhône, and the first of the three--for sheer beauty and romantic picturesqueness--will perhaps rank first in all the world. The chief associations of the Rhône valley with the Church are centred around Lyon, Vienne, Avignon, and Arles. The associations of history--a splendid and a varied past--stand foremost at Orange, Nîmes, Aix, and Marseilles. It is not possible to deal here with the many _pays et pagi_ of the basin of the Rhône.