more dignity than harmoniousness. One advantage Pougues possesses over
its rivals, is position. At Aix-les-Bains, Plombieres, Salins, and how
many other inland spas, you are literally wedged in between shelving
hills. If you want to enjoy wide horizons, and anything like a breeze,
you must get well outside the town. Never in hot, dusty, crowded cities
have I felt so half-suffocated as at the two first named places.
Pougues, on the contrary, lies in a broad expanse of beautifully varied
woodland and champaign, no more appropriate site conceivable for the now
popular air-cure. "Pougues-les-Eaux, Cure d'Eau and Cure d'Air," is now
its proud title, folks flocking hither, not only to imbibe its
delicious, ice-cold, sparkling waters, but to drink in its highly
nourishing air. The iron-gaseous waters resemble in properties those of
Spa and Vichy. From one to five tumblers are ordered a day, according to
the condition of the drinker, a little stroll between each dose being
advisable. With regard to the air-cure, visitors are reminded that at
Pougues they find the four kinds of walking exercise recommended by a
German specialist, namely, that on quite level ground; secondly, a very
gradual climb; thirdly, a somewhat steeper bit of up-hill; and,
fourthly, the really arduous ascent of Mont Givre. In order to entice
health-seekers, all kinds of gratifications await them on the summit,
restaurant, dairy, reading room, tennis court, and croquet ground, to
say nothing of a panorama almost unrivalled in eastern France. We have,
indeed, climbed the Eiffel Tower, in other words, are on a level with
that final stage from which floats the Tricolour. Looking east we behold
the sombre Morvan and Nevers rising above the Loire, whilst westward,
beyond the plain and the Loire, may be descried the cathedral of
Bourges. How many regions visited and revisited by myself now lie before
my eyes as on a map--the Berri, Georges Sand's country, the little
Celtic kingdom of the Morvan, on the borders of which, for so many
years, that charming writer, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, made his home; the