MOTORS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3393, 8 December 1911, Page 7

MOTORS.

A STRANG E l NCI DENT

There is one canton in Switzerland

where tin- automobile is piohibited. Other places are content to licence, supervise, register, and label the automobile, and generally to make its life a burden to p, but Grisons has the courage of its convictions. It. forbids tin- automobile altogether. Brit it- is: willing to listen to reason, is Grisons. it will not hear unmoved the cry ot human distress. As a result of some recent Hoods nearly two hundred automobiles on their way to Germany found that they were boundod, hemmed in, so to speak, by Grisons on the one hand and the raging 1 waters on the other. The ordinary routes were closed. The hour of Grisons bad arrived. Grisons at last was on the map.

The authorities rose nobly to tho occasion. They met in solemn conclave ami considered the appeal that for this one occasion only the prohibition bo relaxed. The antoists explained that they did not ask to remain in Urisons. They would rather die. All they asked was to be allowed to occupy the territory lor the space of about four minutes while they traversed it. The appeal was granted, but with conditions. The automobiles must not make use of their own uncanny powers of locomotion. They must be drawn by horses or mules or anything else that was safe and respectable. There must be neither nr smells. There must be no horns. They had tho whip hand that time, did tlie people of Grisons, and so the. sorrowful and ignominous procession wended its way across the canton and was seen no more.