After crossing the River Doux, one passes the village of Arras, cowering beneath a ruined castle with a tall, bulging tower. The busy-looking town of St. Vallier appears on the opposite bank of the Rhone, just before reaching the hamlet of Sarras. On approaching Andance one goes over a level-crossing, and immediately afterwards turns to the left, leaving the river behind, and begins climbing up a beautiful mountainous valley, adorned in April with masses of pink-and-white fruit-blossom. The road winds and gives a last peep of the Rhone--a blue patch in the midst of soft shades of green and purply-brown. Still climbing, one passes through the village of St. Cyr, with prominent Calvaries and great views over the mountains to the west. The main Cevennes range terminates a little to the south, and the confusion of ridges and valleys one passes over and through on the route belong to the Northern Cevennes. They are formed of clay and mica slate, quartz rock and gneiss, while further west, in the neighbourhood of Le Puy, there is a large area of volcanic rock. At Annonay the road turns southwards, along the edge of a steep valley, whose sides are filled with gloomy glove-leather and paper factories and dirty streets of stone houses, very reminiscent of one of the cloth manufacturing towns near Huddersfield in Yorkshire. After crossing the bottom of the valley in the centre of the town, a turning to the right marked _St. Étienne and Bourg-Argental_ is taken along the west side of the valley; so that one leaves Annonay going northwards, the direction from which one came on entering. The scenery is delightful, as the road goes through a valley clothed with fir plantations on steep slopes, with pleasant murmuring streams down below. In spring the banks are starred with cowslips and primroses, and the rich green of growing corn is contrasted with the sombre tones of the woods, where the cuckoos can be heard. At Bourg-Argental the road climbs up to a dour and grey street, not altogether unsuited to a town which, among other things of a less melancholy character, manufactures much crape. The richly carved Romanesque doorway of the church can be seen on the left. The road then climbs higher and higher, winding in long curves, and passing steep ascents of lichened rocks and tall pines growing on boulder-strewn slopes. Mont Pilat, with three peaks--the highest, the Crêt de la Perdrix, 4,705 feet above the sea--is about five miles to the north. The view from the road is modest compared with what one commands from this mountain-top, but without leaving the car the eye sweeps away across the Rhone Valley to the Alps, and westwards the skyline is serrated with the volcanic peaks of the Auvergne Mountains. At the highest portion of the road the views are cut off by dense masses of pines. The resinous scent they exhale and the music of the wind in their waving branches are delicious. Snow lingers up here long after it has disappeared in the open.