ven in the walls, where there is no
soil. They will last the life of a man, or longer. The heat is so great
at Toulon in summer, as to occasion very great cracks in the earth.
Where the caper is in a soil that will admit it, they plough it. They
have pease here through the winter, sheltering them occasionally; and
they have had them ever since the 25th of March, without shelter.

April 6. _Hieres_. This is a plain of two or three miles diameter,
bounded by the sea on one side, and mountains of rock on the other. The
soil is reddish, gravelly, tolerably good, and well watered. It is in
olives, mulberries, vines, figs, corn, and some flax. There are also
some cherry trees. From Hieres to the sea, which is two or three miles,
is a grove of orange trees, olives, and mulberries. The largest orange
tree is of two feet diameter one way, and one foot the other (for the
section of all the larger ones would be an oval, not a round), and about
twenty feet high. Such a tree will yield about six thousand oranges a
year. The garden of M. Fille has fifteen thousand six hundred orange,
trees. Some years they yield forty thousand livres, some only ten
thousand; but generally about twenty-five thousand. The trees are from
eight to ten feet apart. They are blossoming and bearing, all the year,
flowers and fruit in every stage at the same time. But the best fruit
is that which is gathered in April and May. Hieres is a village of about
five thousand inhabitants, at the foot of a mountain, which covers it
from the north, and from which extends a plain of two or three miles to
the sea-shore. It has no port. Here are palm trees twenty or thirty feet
high, but they bear no fruit. There is also a botanical garden kept by
the King. Considerable salt-ponds here. Hieres is six miles from the
public road. It is built on a narrow spur of the mountain. The streets
in every direction are steep, in steps of stairs, and about eight feet
wide. No carriage of any kind can enter it. The wealthier inhabitants
use _chaises a porteurs_. But there are few wealthy, the bulk of the
inhabitants being laborers of the earth. At a league's distance in the
sea is an island, on which is the Chateau de Geans, belonging to the
Marquis de Pontoives: there is a causeway leading to it. The cold of the
last November killed the leaves of a great number of the orange-trees,
and some of the trees themselves.

From Hieres to _Cuers, Pignans, Luc_, is mostly a plain, with mountai