ais 
168 Scenery, §-c. of some parts of Frauce. 
Blois to Tours especially, the ride is one of the pleasantest 
that [know. ‘The road runs upon the levée, an embankment 
made to preserve the low grounds from inundation. On our 
right was a plain covered with corn, and bounded by a hill, 
which presented many a graceful curve and romantic preci- 
pice, and whose declivities were every where decorated with 
white houses, villages, and towns, scattered among the grain 
and vines. On our left was the river with its beautiful 
bridges and meadows, and the further bank, which was pictur- 
esque and wild in some parts, and then again cultivated like 
that on the right, but still with difference enough for agreea- 
ble variety. In the hill near Tours many houses have been 
formed by excavation. ‘Their windows and doors are in the 
perpendicular side of the chalky cliff, the chimneys spring 
out of the green turf above, and over the roofs are gardens 
and fruit trees. 
Tours is a neat, pretty town, inhabited by many English 
emigrants. It has a very fine street, in which the houses are 
nearly alike. The fronts are of hewn stone, and were erect- 
ed by Louis XVI. at the expense of the nation, after a fire 
hat destroyed a great part of the town. At this place we left 
the Loire, and turned southward in our way to Bordeaux. 
There was little between the two places to remark upon. 
Bordeaux is one of the finest towns that I ever saw. I 
know of none whose private houses seem to me as good. 
They are here built of hewn stone, of that calcareous kind 
so abundant in France. At first it is almost as beautiful as 
marble, and even when turned brown by age, it has a grand 
appearance. 
From Bordeaux to Nismes, our road led through one of 
the richest and most fertile countries that I haveseen. Even 
the plain of Lombardy can hardly be more productive. It 
is cultivated more by the women than by men—I should 
think the proportion was certainly two, if not three, or four, 
toone. ‘They get but twelve sous a day, and as our people 
express it, “find themselves.” The languages of Guienne 
and Languedoc are very different from the French: I think 
them much more harmonious. That of Provence, too, has 
much of the softness of the Italian. ‘They were all incom- 
prehensible to me, and someof them are.so to a Frenchman ; 
but generally the inn-keepers and their servants understood 
enough of French to converse with me. 
