Morez, and St. Claude, it was my good fortune to see everything under
unique and most favourable auspices, to be no tourist indeed, but a
guest, welcomed at every stage, and pioneered from place to place by
educated ladies and gentlemen delighted to do the honours of their
native place. Thus it came about that I saw, not only places, but
people, and not only one class, but all, peasant and proprietor,
Protestant and Catholic, the _bourgeoisie_ of the towns, the
mountaineers of the highlands, the schoolmaster, the pastor, the cure.
Wherever I went, moreover, I felt that I was breaking new ground, the
most interesting country I visited being wholly unfamiliar to the
general run of tourists, for instance, the charming pastoral scenery of
Seine and Marne, the picturesque valleys of the Doubs and the Loue, and
the environs of Montbeliard and Besancon, the grand mountain fastnesses,
close-shut valleys, or _combes_, the solitary lakes, cascades, and
torrent rivers of the Jura.

Many of the most striking spots described in these pages are not even
mentioned in Murray, whilst the difficulty of communication renders them
comparatively unknown to the French themselves, only a few artists
having as yet found them out. Ornans--Courbet's birth and favourite
abiding place, in the valley of the Loue--is one of these. St.
Hippolyte, near Montbeliard, is another, and a dozen more might be named
equally beautiful, and, as yet, equally unknown. New lines of railway,
however, are to be opened within the next few years in several
directions, and thus the delightful scenery of Franche-Comte will, ere
long, be rendered accessible to all. For the benefit of those travellers
who are undaunted by difficulties, and prefer to go off the beaten track
even at the risk of encountering discomforts, I have reprinted, with
many additions, the following notes of visits and travel in the most
interesting part of Eastern France, which, in part, originally appeared