remains here of an amphitheatre of two
hundred feet diameter, and of an aqueduct in brick. The Pont d'Ainay has
nine arches of forty feet from centre to centre. The piers are of six
feet. The almond is in bloom.

DAUPHINE. From _St. Fond_ to _Mornant_. March 15, 16, 17, 18. The Rhone
makes extensive plains, which lie chiefly on the eastern side, and are
often in two stages. Those of Montelimart are three,or four miles wide,
and rather good. Sometimes, as in the neighborhood of Vienne, the
hills come in precipices to the river, resembling then very much our
Susquehanna and its hill, except that the Susquehanna is ten times as
wide as the Rhone. The highlands are often very level. The soil both of
hill and plain, where there is soil, is generally tinged, more or less,
with red. The hills are sometimes mere masses of rock, sometimes a
mixture of loose stone and earth. The plains are always stony, and as
often as otherwise covered perfectly with a coat of round stones, of
the size of the fist, so as to resemble the remains of inundations, from
which all the soil has been carried away. Sometimes they are middling
good, sometimes barren. In the neighborhood of Lyons there is more corn
than wine. Towards Tains more wine than corn. From thence the plains,
where best, are in corn, clover, almonds, mulberries, walnuts: where
there is still some earth, they are in corn, almonds, and oaks. The
hills are in vines. There is a good deal of forest-wood near Lyons,
but not much afterwards. Scarcely any enclosures. There are a few small
sheep before we reach Tains; there the'number increases.

Nature never formed a country of more savage aspect, than that on
both sides the Rhone. A huge torrent rushes like an arrow between high
precipices, often of massive rock, at other times of loose stone, with
but little earth. Yet has the hand of man subdued this savage scene, by
planting corn where there is a little fertility, trees where there is
still less, and vines where there is none. On the whole, it assumes a
romantic, picturesque, and pleasing air. The hills on the opposite
side of the river, being high, steep, and laid up in terraces, are of
a singular appearance. Where the hills are quite in waste, they are
covered with broom, whins, box, and some clusters of small pines. The
high mountains of Dauphine and Languedoc are now covered with snow. The
almond is in general bloom, and the willow putting out its leaf. There
were formerly olive