her feature worth mentioning occurs. The coast presents a bare and
uninhabited appearance, arising partly from the almost total want of
trees. Our perquisitions in the town of Cette itself were more
fortunate, though, by-the-by, it exceeds Lyons itself in dirt and ill
smells. It is a place of considerable trade in proportion to its size,
and is employed chiefly as an entrepot for goods, which may be landed
and reshipped without paying duty: and a walk on the quay affords, in
consequence, considerable varieties of the human face divine, neat as
imported. I recognised a group of Catalan sailors by their brown jackets
embroidered with shreds of gaudy cloth, their red night-caps, and the
redicillas in which their hair was bagged. No race of men with whom I am
at all acquainted bear so marked a character of animation and decision
in every movement of ordinary life as these sturdy provincials, or would
be more remarked by a stranger among a mixed concourse of different
nations. The same exuberance of animal motion which degenerates into
restlessness and buffoonery in the Neapolitan, or the native of
Languedoc, assumes a more dignified character in the Catalan, who is
certainly a gentleman of Nature's own making. One of the crew, a tall
athletic fellow, was holding forth to the rest on some trivial matter
with a varied and graceful action, which might have served as a model to
a painter. The rest were at breakfast; but even their mode of pouring
the wine on their tongues at arm's length, from the long spout of a sort
of glass kettle, had somewhat classical in it, and reminded me of the
recumbent figure in the Herculanean painting, who is drinking in the
same manner. Simple as it may appear, this knack is not to be acquired
without a long apprenticeship, and I was ludicrously reminded of my
abortive efforts to master it by the sight of the party on the quay. It
certainly is adapted for making the most of any liquid, and might have
been adopted during such a scarcity of water as the Hanoverian consul
informed us existed in Cette during the former year. Not a drop of rain
fell for ten months, and water at last became dearer than wine.

On crossing the bridge, we observed a man on one of the piers, spearing
aiguilles de mer, a beautiful silvery fish, of which he had taken
several. They were about two feet long, and of the shape of an eel,
excepting in the form of their long picked heads and jaws, which
correspond exactly with their