Notes on a Tour in France, Italy, and Elba. 75 



the principal rocks which I saw between these two cities, are sand- 

 stone, limestone, and gypsum. In the neighborhood of Avallon I 

 picked up, near the road side, several good specimens of ammonite. 

 I reached Chalons at noon, having been imprisoned in the diligence 

 forty eight hours, without regular meals, and without much sleep. 

 Chalons, you know, is the Gabilonum of the Romans — a place 

 of business and bustle, being the great thoroughfare of the mer- 

 chandize going from the south to the north of France, and to the 

 United States. Steamboats ply daily on the Saone, between this 

 city and Lyons. The river is about half as large as the Connecti- 

 cut at Hartford. I took passage in one of these bateaux a vapeur, 

 for Lyons. 



From the water, several ancient towns and cities were pointed out 

 to me, the thrilling tales of the heroic deeds of whose inhabitants I 

 had read in my youthful years, and wept while I read them ; savage 

 however, they may be better called, than heroic. Macon drew my 

 eye, and fixed it. Here the innocent Huguenots were drowned by 

 hundreds, by order of the bigoted governor ; history tells more of 

 this matter than I wish to remember. The entrance to Lyons on 

 the river is exceedingly delightful ; this city rests on a tongue of 

 land, formed by the confluence of the Saone and the Rhone — the 

 Rhodanus of Caesar, and, Paris excepted, acknowledges no superior 

 in France ; its population is one hundred and sixty thousand. A 

 Roman consul founded it forty years before the commencement of 

 our era. Its silk fabrics are known over the whole earth — they are 

 worn by all nations. 



1 took my departure from Lyons in the twilight of the morning, 

 in a steamboat which descends the river to Avignon ; an old city, 

 walled up to heaven, and gloomy, as was the Bastile in 1750, con- 

 taining the tombs of some of the popes, who once resided here, and 

 the grave of Laura, or at least a monument to her memory, standing 

 in a retired garden, and surrounded by the sepulchral cypress and 

 willow. 



The scenery presented to the eye as we moved down the Rhone, 

 could not be too much admired, and yet the country disappointed 

 me. It is less fertile, and more broken, hilly, and mountainous than 

 I anticipated finding it. Over thousands and thousands of acres 

 sterility reigns, and will eternally reign unmolested. Nothing shows 

 itself on the surface but naked, weather-worn rocks, thrown into all 

 imaginable fantastic shapes. But every nook of earth that is tilla- 



