g, to ease the descent. In others, it passes through a winding
meadow, from fifty to one hundred yards wide, walled, as it were, on
both sides, by hills of rock; and at length issues into plain country.
The waste hills are covered with thyme, box, and chene-vert. Where the
body of the mountains has a surface of soil, the summit has sometimes a
crown of rock, as observed in Champagne. At Nismes, the earth is full of
lime-stone. The horses are shorn. They are now pruning the olive. A very
good tree produces sixty pounds of olives, which yield fifteen pounds of
oil: the best quality selling at twelve sous the pound, retail, and ten
sous, wholesale. The high hills of Languedoc still covered with snow.
The horse-chestnut and mulberry are leafing; apple trees and peas
blossoming. The first butterfly I have seen. After the vernal equinox,
they are often six or eight months without rain. Many separate
farm-houses, numbers of people in rags, and abundance of beggars. The
_mine_ of wheat, weighing thirty pounds, costs four livres and ten
sous. Wheat bread, three sous the pound. _Vin ordinaire_, good, and of
a strong body, two or three sous the bottle. Oranges, one sous
apiece. They are nearly finishing at Nismes a great mill, worked by a
steam-engine, which pumps water from a lower into an upper cistern, from
whence two overshot wheels are supplied, each of which turns two pair
of stones. The upper cistern being once filled with water, it passes
through the wheels into the lower one, from whence it is returned to the
upper by the pumps. A stream of water of one quarter or one half inch
diameter, supplies the waste of evaporation, absorption, fee. This is
furnished from a well by a horse. The arches of the Pont-St.-Esprit
are of eighty-eight feet. Wild figs, very flourishing, grow out of the
joints of the Pont-du-Gard. The fountain of Nismes is so deep, that a
stone was thirteen seconds descending from the surface to the bottom.

March 24. From Nismes to Arles. The plains extending from Nismes to the
Rhone, in the direction of Aries, are broken in one place by a skirt
of low hills. They are red and stony at first, but as you approach the
Rhone, they are of a dark gray mould, with a little sand, and very good.
They are in corn and clover, vines, olives, almonds, mulberries, and
willow. There are some sheep, no wood, no enclosures.

The high hills of Languedoc are covered with snow. At an ancient church,
in the suburbs of Aries, are