these
provinces afford a singular spectacle. Calculating on the poverty of
their soil, and their climate by its latitude only, they should have
been the poorest in France. On the contrary, they are the richest, from
one fortuitous circumstance. Spurs or ramifications of high mountains,
making down from the Alps, and, as it were, reticulating these
provinces, give to the vallies the protection of a particular inclosure
to each, and the benefit of a general stagnation of the northern winds
produced by the whole of them, and thus countervail the advantage of
several degrees of latitude. From the first olive fields of Pierrelatte,
to the orangeries of Hieres, has been continued rapture to me. I have
often wished for you. I think you have not made this journey. It is a
pleasure you have to come, and an improvement to be added to the many
you have already made. It will be a great comfort to you, to know, from
your own inspection, the condition of all the provinces of your own
country, and it will be interesting to them at some future day, to be
known to you. This is, perhaps, the only moment of your life in which
you can acquire that knowledge. And to do it most effectually, you must
be absolutely incognito, you must ferret the people out of their hovels
as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their
beds under pretence of resting yourself, but in fact to find if they
are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this
investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to
apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the throwing a
morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables.

You will not wonder at the subjects of my letter: they are the only ones
which have been presented to my mind for some time past; and the waters
must always be what are the fountains from which they flow. According
to this, indeed, I should have intermixed, from beginning to end, warm
expressions of friendship to you. But, according to the ideas of our
country, we do not permit ourselves to speak even truths, when they may
have the air of flattery. I content myself, therefore, with saying once
for all, that I love you, your wife, and children. Tell them so, and
adieu.

Yours affectionately,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER LV.--TO WILLIAM SHORT, April 12, 1787

TO WILLIAM SHORT.

Nice, April 12, 1787,

Dear Sir,

At Marseilles, they told me I should encounter the rice fields