(of two hundred and fifty bottles each) annually, of which six hundred are of the first quality, made on the coteaux. Of these, Madame Soubeinan makes two hundred, Monsieur Reboulle, ninety, Monsieur Lambert, médicin de la faculté de Montpelier, sixty, Monsieur Thomas, notaire, fifty, Monsieur Argilliers, fifty, Monsieur Audibert, forty; equal to four hundred and ninety; and there are some small proprietors, who make small quantities. The first quality is sold, brut, for one hundred and twenty livres the piece; but it is then thick, and must have a winter and the fouet, to render it potable and brilliant. The fouet is like a chocolate mill, the handle of iron, the brush of stiff hair. In bottles, this wine costs twenty-four sous, the bottle, &c. included. It is potable the April after it is made, is best that year, and after ten years, begins to have a pitchy taste, resembling it to Malaga. It is not permitted to ferment more than half a day, because it would not be so liquorish. The best color, and its natural one, is the amber. By force of whipping, it is made white, but loses flavor. There are but two or three pieces a year, of red muscat made; there being but one vineyard of the red grape, which belongs to a baker called Pascal. This sells in bottles, at thirty sous, the bottle included. Rondelle, negociant en vin, Porte St. Bernard, fauxbourg St. Germains, Paris, buys three hundred pieces of the first quality every year. The coteaux yield about half a piece to the setterie, the plains a whole piece. The inferior quality is not at all esteemed. It is bought by the merchants of Cette, as is also the wine of Bezieres, and sold by them, for Frontignan of the first quality. They sell thirty thousand pieces a year, under that name. The town of Frontignan marks its casks with a hot iron: an individual of that place, having two casks emptied, was offered forty livres for the empty cask, by a merchant of Cette. The town of Frontignan contains about two thousand inhabitants; it is almost on the level of the ocean. Transportation to Paris is fifteen livres the quintal, and takes fifteen days. The price of packages is about eight livres eight sous the one hundred bottles. A setterie of good vineyard, sells for from three hundred and fifty to five hundred livres, and rents for fifty livres. A laboring man hires at one hundred and fifty livres the year, and is fed and lodged; a woman at half as much. Wheat sells at ten livres the settier, which weighs one hundred pounds, poids de table. They make some Indian corn here, which is eaten by the poor. The olives do not extend northward of this into the country, above twelve or fifteen leagues. In general, the olive country in Languedoc, is about fifteen leagues broad. More of the waste lands be

VOL. II.

L

tween Frontignan and Mirval are capable of culture: but it is a marshy country, very subject to fever and ague, and generally unhealthy. Thence arises, as is said, a want of hands.

Čette. There are in this town, about ten thousand inhabitants. Its principal commerce is wine; it furnishes great quantities of grape pomice for making verdigris. They have a very growing commerce; but it is kept under by the privileges of Marseilles.

May 13. Agde. On the right of the Etang de Thau, are plains of some width, then hills, in olives, vines, mulberry, corn and pasture. On the left, a narrow sand bar separating the Etang from the sea, along which it is proposed to make a road from Cette to Agde. In this case, the post would lead from Montpelier, by Cette and Agde, to Bezieres, being leveller, and an hour, or an hour and a half nearer. Agde contains six or eight thousand inhabitants.

May 14. Bezieres. Rich plains in corn, St. foin and pasture; hills at a little distance to the right, in olives; the soil both of hill and plain is red, going from Agde to Bezieres. But at Bezieres, the country becomes hilly, and is in olives, corn, St. foin, pasture, some vines and mulberries.

May 15. Bezieres. Argilies. Le Saumal. From Argilies to Saumal, are considerable plantations of vines. Those on the red hills, to the right, are said to produce good wine. No wood, no inclosures. There are sheep and good cattle. The Pyrenees are covered with snow. I am told they are so in certain parts, all the year. The canal of Languedoc, along which I now travel, is six toises wide at bottom, and ten toises at the surface of the water, which is one toise deep. The barks which navigate it, are seventy and eighty feet long, and seventeen or eighteen feet wide. They are drawn by one horse, and worked by two hands, one of which is generally a woman. The locks are mostly kept by women, but the necessary operations are much too laborious for them. The encroachments by the men, on the offices proper for the women, is a great derangement in the order of things. Men are shoemakers, tailors, upholsterers, stay-makers, mantua-makers, cooks, housekeepers, house-cleaners, bed-makers, they coeffe the ladies, and bring them to bed: the women, therefore, to live, are obliged to undertake the offices which they abandon. They become porters, carters, reapers, sailors, lock-keepers, smiters on the anvil, cultivators of the earth, &c. Can we wonder, if such of them as have a little beauty, prefer easier courses to get their livelihood, as long as that beauty lasts? Ladies who employ men in the offices which should be reserved for their sex, are they not bawds in effect? For

every man whom they thus employ, some girl, whose place he has thus taken, is driven to whoredom. The passage of the eight locks at Bezieres, that is, from the opening of the first to the last gate, took one hour and thirty-three minutes. The bark in which I go, is about thirty-five feet long, drawn by one horse, and goes from two to three geographical miles an hour. The canal yields abundance of carp and eel. I see also small fish resembling our perch and chub. Some plants of white clover, and some of yellow, on the banks of the canal near Capestan; santolina also, and a great deal of yellow iris. Met a raft of about three hundred and fifty beams, forty feet long, and twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, formed into fourteen rafts, tacked together. The extensive and numerous fields of St. foin, in general bloom, are beautiful.

May 16. Le Saumal. Marseillette. May 17. Marseillette. Carcassonne. From Saumal to Carcassonne, we have always the river Aube close on our left. This river runs in the valley between the Cevennes and Pyrenees, serving as the common receptacle for both their waters. It is from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards wide, always rapid, rocky, and insusceptible of navigation. The canal passes in the side of hills made by that river, overlooks the river itself, and its plains, and has its prospect ultimately terminated, on one side, by mountains of rock overtopped by the Pyrenees, on the other, by small mountains, sometimes of rock, sometimes of soil, overtopped by the Cevennes. Marseillette is on a ridge, which separates the river Aube from the Etang de Marseillette. The canal, in its approach to this village, passes the ridge, and rides along the front, overlooking the Etang, and the plains on its border; and having passed the village, re-crosses the ridge, and resumes its general ground in front of the Aube. The land is in corn, St. foin, pasture, vines, mulberries, willows, and olives.

May 18. Carcassonne. Castelnaudari. Opposite to Carcassonne, the canal receives the river Fresquel, about thirty yards wide, which is its substantial supply of water from hence to Bezieres. From Bezieres to Agde, the river Orbe furnishes it, and the Eraut, from Agde to the Etang de Thau. By means of the ecluse ronde at Agde, the waters of the Eraut can be thrown towards Bezieres, to aid those of the Orbe, as far as the ecluse de Porcaraigne, nine geometrical miles. Where the Fresquel enters the canal, there is, on the opposite side, a waste, to let off the superfluous waters. The horse-way is continued over this waste, by a bridge of stone of eighteen arches. I observe them fishing in the canal, with a skimming net of about fifteen feet diameter, with which they tell me they catch carp. Flax in blossom. Neither strawberries nor peas yet at Car_

cassonne. The windsor bean just come to table. From the ecluse de la Lande, we see the last olive trees near a metairée, or farm house, called la Lande. On a review of what I have seen and heard of this tree, the following seem to be its northern limits. Beginning on the Atlantic, at the Pyrenees, and along them to the meridian of la Lande, or of Carcassonne; up that meridian to Cevennes, as they begin just there, to raise themselves high enough to afford it shelter. Along the Cevennes, to the parallel of forty-five degrees of latitude, and along that parallel (crossing the Rhone near the mouth of the Isere) to the Alps; thence along the Alps and Appenines, to what parallel of latitude I know not. Yet here the tracing of the line becomes the most interesting. For from the Atlantic, so far, we see this production the effect of shelter and latitude combined. But where does it venture to launch forth unprotected by shelter, and by the mere force of latitude alone? Where for instance does its northern limits cross the Adriatic? I learn that the olive tree resists cold to eight degrees of Reaumur below the freezing point, which corresponds to fourteen above zero of Farenheit: and that the orange resists to four degrees below freezing of Reaumur, which is twenty-three degrees above zero of Farenheit.

May 19. Castelnaudari. St. Feriol. Escamaze. Lampy. Some sheep and cattle; no inclosures. St. Feriol, Escamaze, and Lampy are in the montagnes noires. The country almost entirely waste. Some of it in shrubbery. The voute d'Escamaze is of one hundred and thirty-five yards. Round about Castelnaudari, the country is hilly, as it has been constantly from Bezieres; it is very rich. Where it is plain, or nearly plain, the soil is black: in general, however, it is hilly and reddish, and in corn. They cultivate a great deal of Indian corn here, which they call millet; it is planted but not yet up.

May 20. Castelnaudari. Naurouze. Villefranche. Baziege. At Naurouze, is the highest ground which the canal had to pass, between the two seas. It became necessary then to find water still higher to bring it here. The river Fresquel heading by its two principal branches in the montagnes noires, a considerable distance off to the eastward, the springs of the most western one were brought together, and conducted to Naurouze, where its waters are divided, part furnishing the canal towards the ocean, the rest towards the Mediterranean, as far as the ecluse de Fresquel, where, as has been before noted, the Lampy branch, and the Alzau, under the name of the Fresquel, enter.

May 20. They have found that a lock of six pieds is best; however, eight pieds is well enough. Beyond this, it is bad. Monsieur Pin tells me of a lock of thirty pieds, made in

Sweden, of which it is impossible to open the gates. They therefore divided it into four locks. The small gates of the locks of this canal, have six square pieds of surface. They tried the machinery of the jack for opening them. They were more easily opened, but very subject to be deranged, however strongly made. They returned therefore, to the original wooden screw, which is excessively slow and laborious. I calculate that five minutes are lost at every basin by this screw, which, on the whole number of basins, is one eighth of the time necessary to navigate the canal: and of course, if a method of lifting the gate at one stroke could be found, it would reduce the passage from eight to seven days, and the freight equally. I suggested to Monsieur Pin and others, a quadrantal gate, turning on a pivot, and lifted by a lever like a pump handle, aided by a windlass and cord, if necessary. He will try it, and inform me of the success. The price of transportation from Cette to Bourdeaux, through the canal and Garonne is the quintal round by the straits of Gibraltar is —. Two hundred and forty barks, the largest of twentytwo hundred quintals (or say, in general, of one hundred tons) suffice to perform the business of this canal, which is stationary, having neither increased nor diminished for many years. When pressed, they can pass and repass between Toulouse and Bezieres in fourteen days; but sixteen is the common period. The canal is navigated ten and a half months of the year: the other month and a half being necessary to lay it dry, cleanse it, and repair the works. This is done in July and August, when there would, perhaps, be a want of water.

May 21. Baziege. Toulouse. The country continues hilly, but very rich. It is in mulberries, willows, some vines, corn, maize, pasture, beans, flax. A great number of chateaux and good houses, in the neighborhood of the canal. The people partly in farm houses, partly in villages. I suspect that the farm houses are occupied by the farmers, while the laborers (who are mostly by the day) reside in the villages. Neither strawberries nor peas yet at Baziege or Toulouse. Near the latter, are some fields of yellow clover.

At Toulouse the canal ends. It has four communications with the Mediterranean. 1. Through the ponds of Thau, Frontignan, Palavas, Maguelone, and Manjo, the canal de la Radela Aiguesmortes, le canal des Salines de Pecair, and the arm of the Rhone called Bras de fer, which ends at Fourgues, opposite to Arles, and thence down the Rhone. 2. At Cette, by a canal of a few hundred toises, leading out of the Etang de Thau into the sea. The vessels pass the Etang, through a length of nine thousand toises, with sails. 3. At Agde, by th