CHAPTER I.

PAU.

Trains and Steamers--Bordeaux and its Hotels--Lamothe--Morcenx--
Dax--Puyoo--Orthez--First impressions of Pau--The Hotels and
Pensions--Amusements--Pension Colbert--Making up parties for the
Pyrenees--The Place Royale and the view--The Castle of Pau and its
approaches--Origin of name--Historical notes--The Towers--Visiting
hours--The Tapestries--The Wonderful Bedstead--The Delusive
Tortoiseshell Cradle--The "Tour de la Monnaie"--The Park--The
Billères Plains--Tennis and Golf--The Route de Billères and the
Billères Woods--French _Sportsmen_--Hunting--Racing--Lescar and its
old Cathedral--Fontaine de Marnières--The Bands--The Pare Beaumont
--Ballooning--The Casino--Polo--The Cemetery--The Churches of St.
Martin and St. Jacques--The "Old World and the New"--Rides and
Drives--to Bétharram--The Start--Peasants and their ways--Vines
trained by the roadside--Sour Grapes--The "March of the Men of
Garlic"--Coarraze--Henry IV.'s Castle--Bétharram--The Ivied Bridge
--The Inn--The "Via Crucis"--Assat and Gélos--The Coteaux--
Perpignaa--Sketching with a Donkey-cart--Over the Coteaux to Gan--
The Drive to Piétat--Picnicking and Rejected Attentions--The
Church--Feather Moss--Bizanos--Carnival time--"Poor Pillicoddy"--
"Idyllic Colbert."


Few Winter Resorts have gained a greater celebrity than Pau, and
its popularity yearly increases. Fifty years ago its English