The route from here on leads over the high mountain table-lands until the valley of Clermont-Ferrand comes in view far below us. From this point the descent is rapid, circuitous, and zigzaggy. I cannot imagine a worse one for high speed. It must have been selected because of the difficulty it presents in handling the great cars. Certainly the chauffeur who succeeds in driving such machines at a speed approaching the rapid, should receive a gold medal, and I doubt not that in the coming contest in July for the "Coupe Gordon Bennett" there will be numerous accidents, and I fear fatal ones. I should not care to be in a machine on that occasion.[1] While all this is in consideration we reach the brow of the hill from whence the view down into the Valley of Clermont-Ferrand is superb. From its centre rises the city on a hill with its cathedral in the midst and the whole surrounded by an extended plain, encompassed by a circle of domes, all craters whose life died out almost before time began. [1] Strange to relate there were no casualties and few accidents. Our flight down the mountains is swift and we soon arrive at the excellent little Hôtel de l'Univers. As it has begun to rain, the shelter is very acceptable, and I am cold with my ride of two hundred kilos from Tulle. We left there at nine o'clock and reached here at three, with an hour's stoppage for luncheon, curving up and down the mountains most of the route. That's about forty miles an hour, quite fast enough. On reaching Clermont we learn that already, to-day, there has been a smash-up on the circle. A big auto, with three men, crashed into a tree and then over a bank. Result, three men in the hospital and one expensive ninety horse-power machine a total wreck, loss up in the thousands. The owner had brought the auto here to try the course before the races come on, and yesterday departed for Italy, leaving it in charge of a young man of fifteen. Said young man took two of his friends out in it to-day and essayed the zigzags, with the result above mentioned. Clermont-Ferrand, the ancient capital of Auvergne, is now a city of some fifty thousand people,--a city on a hill in the midst of encircling mountains rising to some five thousand feet above, extinct volcanoes all of them. The city possesses a stately cathedral, surrounded by a maze of narrow crooked streets where the lover of the artistic finds many a bit of beauty to delight the eye,--both beauty in stone and beauty in flesh and blood, for the maidens of Clermont are pleasant to look upon, and also in all her streets and almost every court you will come across some ancient façade or delicate staircase of stone most beautifully carved and mellow with age, and you will spend many hours wandering at will until darkness drives you within doors. CHAPTER XIV CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN IN AN AUTO--THE CHÂTEAU OF TOURNOËL--ITS HISTORY--DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN.