On leaving Bayonne, one goes past the entrance to the railway-station on the left, and follows the road that goes off to the right for Orthez and Pau. For several miles there is little calling for comment. Here and there a fine umbrella pine stands in lonely dignity, and in the spring there is much pink-and-white fruit-blossom. The ploughs and the country carts are all drawn by bullocks. The broad Adour is crossed on an iron bridge, and then, near Peyrehorade, the scenery improves. On market-days the narrow street of the little town is choked up with bullock-carts, and the spaces between them thronged with country-folk and soldiers, and the difficulty of getting the car through [Illustration: No. 13. BIARRITZ TO PAU.] the tangle of traffic is so great that it is wiser to take the road going straight ahead at the bridge, passing the grey-towered castle which stands above the road. The church of Peyrehorade is modern, and beyond the castle just mentioned and the ruins of another--the Château de Montréal, built in the sixteenth century on the banks of the Gave--there is little to delay one. All the way to Orthez the road keeps by the river known as Gave de Pau, which was the line of Marshal Soult’s retreat from Bayonne. Puyôo is a pleasant village, with steep roofs covered with brown tiles, and rows of ornamental overhanging courses under the eaves, chiefly formed with curved tiles. The name of the place, according to Mr. Baring-Gould, comes from the patois word for the great mound with a hollowed-out top, which was a stockaded fort of the Franks. The hamlet of Baigts has a railway-station, a ruined castle of the twelfth century, sulphurous baths, and a grand view of the Pyrenees. ORTHEZ is the ancient capital of Béarn, and although it has been robbed of much of its architectural charm, it still retains its conspicuously attractive fortified bridge over the Gave, which is illustrated here. The river flows rapidly along a deep rocky channel, with huge masses of stone standing immovably in the midst of the surging waters. The bridge was built in the fourteenth century, and in the centre rises a machicolated gateway. Although restored in 1873, the window remains through which the Huguenots, under Montgomery, forced priests and friars to leap into the river. There are only a few old houses left in the town, and these are chiefly in the Rue Bourg-Vieux. The church is a fifteenth-century building with a modern spire, but the Tour Moncade is the machicolated keep of the castle built in 1242 by Gaston VII. It was this fortress which was visited by Froissart in 1388, when Gaston VII., surnamed Phœbus on account of his beauty, Count of Béarn and Foix, held his brilliant Court there.