2o8 Travels in France 



all sorts of birds ; the shot has fallen five or six times in my chaise 

 and about my ears. The National Assembly has declared that 

 every man has a right to kill game on his own land ; and advanc- 

 ing this maxim so absurd as a declaration^ though so wise as a 

 law, without any statute of provision to secure the right of game 

 to the possessor of the soil, according to the tenor of the vote, 

 has, as I am everywhere informed, filled all the fields of France 

 with sportsmen to an utter nuisance. The same effects have 

 flowed from declarations of right relative to tithes, taxes, feudal 

 rights, etc. In the declarations, conditions, and compensations 

 are talked of; but an unruly ungovernable multitude se.ze the 

 benefit of the abolition and laugh at the obligations or recom- 

 pense. Out by daybreak for Salon, in order to view the Crau, 

 one of the most singular districts in France for its soil, or rather 

 want of soil, being apparently a region of sea flints, yet feeding 

 great herds of sheep. View the improvement of Monsieur 

 Pasquali, who is doing great things, but roughly: I wished to 

 see and converse with him. but unfortunatelv he was absent from 

 Salon. At night to St. Canat.^ — 46 miles. 



315/. To Aix. Many houses without glass windows. The 

 women with men's hats, and no wooden shoes. At Aix waited 

 on Monsieur Gibelin, celebrated for his translations of the MTtrks 

 of Dr. Priestley and of the Philosophical Transactions. He 

 received me with that easy and agreeable politeness natural to 

 his character, being apparently a friendly man. He took every 

 method in his power to procure me the information I wanted, 

 and engaged to go with me the next day to Tour D'Aigues to 

 wait on the baron of that name, president of the parliament of 

 Aix, to whom also I had letters; and whose essays, in the 

 Trhnestres of the Paris society of agriculture, are among the most 

 valuable on rural economics in that work. — 12 miles. 



September i. Tour d'Aigues is twenty miles north of Aix, 

 on the other side of the Durance, which we crossed at a ferr>'. 

 The country about the chateau is bold and hilly, and swells in 

 four or five miles into rocky mountains. The president received 

 me in a very friendly manner, with a simplicity of manners 

 that gives a dignity to his character void of affectation; he is 

 very fond of agriculture and planting. The afternoon was passed 

 in viewing his home-farm, and his noble woods, which are un- 

 common in this naked province. The chateau of Tour d'Aigues, 

 before much of it was accidentally consumed by fire, must have 

 been one of the most considerable in France; but at present a 



^ St. Chamas. 



