line between the canton of Geneva and Savoy. At this point the scenery
begins, not too aggressively, to be picturesque; you catch some neat
views of the Voirons, and of the range of the Jura lying on your right.
Beyond is the village of Annemasse, and the Chateau of Etrambiere, with
its quartette of towers, rises from the foot of the Petit-Saleve in the
bluish-gray distance. You no longer see Mont Blanc, except at intervals.
Here and there a knot of hamlets clings to some fir-dotted slope, or
tries to hide itself away in the bosom of a ravine. All these Alpine
villages bear the same resemblance to one another as so many button-
moulds of different sizes. Each has its quaint little church of stucco,
surrounded by clusters of gray and dingy-white head-stones and crosses--
like a shepherd standing in the midst of his flock; each has its
bedrabbled main street, with a great stone trough into which a stream of
ice-cold water is forever flowing, and where comely young women of
substantial ankles, with their flaxen hair braided down their backs, are
forever washing linen; each has its beggar, with a goitre or a wooden
leg, lying in wait for you; and each, in turn, with its purple and green
and red tiled roofs, is charming to approach and delightful to get away
from.

After leaving Annemasse, the road runs up the valley of the Arve and
crosses a bridge over the Menoge. Then comes the village of Nangy, and
then Contamines, beyond which, on a bold height, stand the two wrinkled,
crumbling towers of the ancient castle of Faucigny, whence the province
takes its name. It was at Nangy that a pretty incident befell our
travellers. On the outskirts of the village they met fifty or sixty
school-children marching three abreast, the girls on one side of the
road and the boys on the other. The girls--each in a coarse blue or
yellow frock, with a snowy neckerchief pinned over her bosom and a pig-
tail of hair hanging down her shoulders--seemed for all the world like