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A MOTOR-FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE Toulouse, and somewhat ambitiously named by him after the city of Cordova.

At Cadillac the specific physiognomy of the mediæval bastide is overshadowed by the lofty proportions and high-pitched roof of the château which a sixteenth-century Duke of Epernon planted in an angle of the walls. The adjoining parish church—itself of no mean dimensions—was once but the private chapel of these same dukes, who have left such a large architectural impress on their small shabby town; and one grieves to learn that the chief monument of their rule has fallen to base uses, and been stripped of the fine interior decorations which its majestic roof once sheltered.

South-west of Cadillac the road passes through a vast stretch of pine-forest with a dry aromatic undergrowth—an outskirt of the great landes that reach inward from the gulf of Gascony. On and on runs the white shadow-barred highway, between ranges of red boles and sun-flecked heathy clearings—and when, after long hours, one emerges from the unwonted mystery and solitude of this piny desert into the usual [ 102 ]