RHEIMS. 



125 



The French have made excellent wine from very delicious 

 grapes. The civil courts of justice are still preserved as 

 before, and the same officers employed. The same taxes 

 are also raised, but they are of trifling amount. Most of 

 the emigrants, including Swiss, Germans, Italians, and a 

 few Spaniards, have become dealers, leaving to the 

 Bedouins the cultivation of their land. The hostile 

 Bedouins come down upon the outposts in bands of 

 15,000 or 20,000, but they cannot withstand the attacks 

 of a small body of disciplined troops. 



The very eminent wine house of Messrs. Ruinart and 

 Son, of Rheims, are agents for Herries, Farquhar, and 

 Co.'s notes. Having called upon them to cash one of 

 these, M. Ruinart, junior, conducted me over their wine 

 cellai's, which are very extensive, and all subterranean, 

 consisting of three under ground stores, one beneath 

 another, all mined out of the limestone rock. The wine 

 which has received the last attentions which it requires, 

 and is ready for expediting to the consumer, is packed in 

 large square masses, bottle above bottle, and side by side, 

 with no other precaution to keep them steady than a lath 

 passing along between the necks of one layer and the 

 butts of the next layer above. They generally send the 

 wine to the consumer at the age of three and four years, 

 but after the first winter, it is all put in bottle. The stock, 

 therefore, appears immense, and indeed it is very 

 large, for not only are dilFerent qualities required, but 

 also diff'erent descriptions to suit the varying tastes of 

 their customers in England, America, and Russia, to 

 which countries Messrs. Ruinart make their chief ex- 

 ports. A gentleman, with whom I travelled, told me 

 that he could buy very good sound Champagne at Chalons 

 for two francs a bottle, and was then going to purchase 



