XLIV. TO JAMES MADISON, January 30, 1787 *
TO JAMES MADISON.
Paris, January 30, 1787.
[* The latter part of this letter is in cipher; but appended to the copy preserved, are explanatory notes, which have enabled us to publish it entire, except a few words, to which they afford no key. These are either marked thus * * *, or the words, which the context seemed to require, inserted in italics.]
Dear Sir,
My last to you was of the 16th of December; since which I have received yours of November the 25th and December the 4th, which afforded me, as your letters always do, a treat on matters public, individual and economical. I am impatient to learn your sentiments on the late troubles in the Eastern States. So far as I have yet seen, they do not appear to threaten serious consequences. Those States have suffered by the stoppage of the channels of their commerce, which have not yet found other issues. This must render money scarce, and make the people uneasy. This uneasiness has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable: but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments. A consciousness of those in power, that their administration of the public affairs has been honest, may, perhaps, produce too great a degree of indignation: and those characters wherein fear predominates over hope, may apprehend too much from these instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily, that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience. Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments, wherein the will of every one has a just influence; as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our States, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force; as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it, that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world, as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
If these transactions give me no uneasiness, I feel very differently at another piece of intelligence, to wit, the possibility that the navigation of the Mississippi may be abandoned to Spain. I never had any interest westward of the Allegany; and I never will have any. But I have had great opportunities of knowing the character of the people who inhabit that country; and I will venture to say, that the act which abandons the navigation of the Mississippi, is an act of separation between the eastern and western country. It is a relinquishment of five parts out of eight of the territory of the United States; an abandonment of the fairest subject for the payment of our public debts, and the chaining those debts on our own necks, in perpetuum. I have the utmost confidence in the honest intentions of those who concur in this measure; but I lament their want of acquaintance with the character and physical advantages of the people, who, right or wrong, will suppose their interests sacrificed on this occasion to the contrary interests of that part of the confederacy in possession of present power. If they declare themselves a separate people, we are incapable of a single effort to retain them. Our citizens can never be induced, either as militia or as soldiers, to go there to cut the throats of their own brothers and sons, or rather, to be themselves the subjects, instead of the perpetrators, of the parricide. Nor would that country quit the cost of being retained against the will of its inhabitants, could it be done. But it cannot be done. They are able already to rescue the navigation of the Mississippi out of the hands of Spain, and to add New Orleans to their own, territory. They will be joined by the inhabitants of Louisiana. This will bring on a war between them and Spain; and that will produce the question with us, whether it will not be worth our while to become parties with them in the war, in order to re-unite them with us, and thus correct our error. And were I to permit my forebodings to go one step further, I should predict, that the inhabitants of the United States would force their rulers to take the affirmative of that question. I wish I may be mistaken in all these opinions.
We have for some time expected, that the Chevalier de la Luzerne would obtain a promotion in the diplomatic line, by being appointed to some of the courts where this country keeps an ambassador. But none of the vacancies taking place, which had been counted on, I think the present disposition is to require his return to his station in America. He told me himself, lately, that he should return in the spring. I have never pressed this matter on the court, though I knew it to be desirable and desired on our part; because if the compulsion on him to return had been the work of Congress, he would have returned in such ill temper with them, as to disappoint them in the good they expected from it. He would for ever have laid at their door his failure of promotion. I did not press it for another reason, which is, that I have great reason to believe, that the character of the Count de Moutier, who would go, were the Chevalier to be otherwise provided for, would give the most perfect satisfaction in America.
As you have now returned into Congress, it will become of importance, that you should form a just estimate of certain public characters; on which, therefore, I will give you such notes as my knowledge of them has furnished me with. You will compare them with the materials you are otherwise possessed of, and decide on a view of the whole.
You know the opinion I formerly entertained of my friend, Mr. Adams. * * * and the Governor were the first who shook that opinion. I afterwards saw proofs, which convicted him of a degree of vanity, and of a blindness to it, of which no germ appeared in Congress. A seven months’ intimacy with him here and as many weeks in London, have given me opportunities of studying him closely. He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him. He is as disinterested as the Being who made him: he is profound in his views; and accurate in his judgment, except where knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment. He is so amiable, that I pronounce you will love him, if ever you become acquainted with him. He would be, as he was, a great man in Congress.
Mr. Carmichael is, I think, very little known in America. I never saw him, and while I was in Congress I formed rather a disadvantageous idea of him. His letters received then showed him vain, and more attentive to ceremony and etiquette, than we suppose men of sense should be. I have now a constant correspondence with him, and find him a little hypochondriac and discontented. He possesses a very good understanding, though not of the first order. I have had great opportunities of searching into his character, and have availed myself of them. Many persons of different nations, coming from Madrid to Paris, all speak of him as in high esteem, and I think it certain that he has more of the Count de Florida Blanca’s friendship, than any diplomatic character at that court. As long as this minister is in office, Carmichael can do more than any other person who could be sent there.
You will see Franks, and doubtless he will be asking some appointment. I wish there may be any one for which he is fit. He is light, indiscreet, active, honest, affectionate. Though Bingham is not in diplomatic office, yet as he wishes to be so, I will mention such circumstances of him, as you might otherwise be deceived in. He will make you believe he was on the most intimate footing with the first characters in Europe, and versed in the secrets of every cabinet. Not a word of this is true. He had a rage for being presented to great men, and had no * * * in the methods by which he could effect it. * * * * *
The Marquis de la Fayette is a most valuable auxiliary to me. His zeal is unbounded, and his weight with those in power, great. His education having been merely military, commerce was an unknown field to him. But his good sense enabling him to comprehend perfectly whatever is explained to him, his agency has been very efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but he is in danger. He is a great minister in European affairs, but has very imperfect ideas of our institutions, and no confidence in them. His devotion to the principles of pure despotism, renders him unaffectionate to our governments. But his fear of England makes him value us as a make-weight. He is cool, reserved in political conversations, but free and familiar on other subjects, and a very attentive, agreeable person to do business with. It is impossible to have a, clearer, better organized head; but age has chilled his heart,
Nothing should be spared on our part, to attach this country to us. It is the only one on which we can rely for support, under every event. Its inhabitants love us more, I think, than they do any other nation on earth. This is very much the effect of the good dispositions with which the French officers returned. In a former letter, I mentioned to you the dislocation of my wrist. I can make not the least use of it, except for the single article of writing, though it is going on five months since the accident happened. I have great anxieties, lest I should never recover any considerable use of it. I shall, by the advice of my surgeons, set out in a fortnight for the waters of Aix, in Provence. I chose these out of several they proposed to me, because if they fail to be effectual, my journey will not be useless altogether. It will give me an opportunity of examining the canal of Languedoc, and of acquiring knowledge of that species of navigation, which may be useful hereafter: but, more immediately, it will enable me to make the tour of the ports concerned in commerce with us, to examine, on the spot, the defects of the late regulations, respecting our commerce, to learn the further improvements which may be made in it, and, on my return, to get this business finished. I shall be absent between two and three months, unless anything happens to recall me here sooner, which may always be effected in ten days, in whatever part of my route I may be.
In speaking of characters, I omitted those of Reyneval and Hennin, the two eyes of Count de Vergennes. The former is the most important character, because possessing the most of the confidence of the Count. He is rather cunning than wise, his views of things being neither great nor liberal. He governs himself by principles which he has learned by rote, and is fit only for the details of execution. His heart is susceptible of little passions, but not of good ones. He is brother-in-law to M. Gerard, from whom he received disadvantageous impressions of us, which cannot be effaced. He has much duplicity. Hennin is a philosopher, sincere, friendly, liberal, learned, beloved by every body: the other by nobody. I think it a great misfortune that the United States are in the department of the former. As particulars of this kind may be useful to you, in your present situation, I may hereafter continue the chapter. I know it will be safely lodged in your discretion. Feb. 5. Since writing thus far, Franks has returned from England. I learn that Mr. Adams desires to be recalled, and that Smith should be appointed Chargé des Affaires there. It is not for me to decide whether any diplomatic character should be kept at a court, which keeps none with us. You can judge of Smith’s abilities by his letters. They are not of the first order, but they are good. For his honesty, he is like our friend Monroe; turn his soul wrong side outwards, and there is not a speck on it. He has one foible, an excessive inflammability of temper, but he feels it when it comes on, and has resolution enough to suppress it, and to remain silent till it passes over.
I send you, by Colonel Franks, your pocket telescope, walking stick, and chemical box. The two former could not be combined together. The latter could not be had in the form you referred to. Having a great desire to have a portable copying machine, and being satisfied from some experiment, that the principle of the large machine might be applied in a small one, I planned one when in England, and had it made. It answers perfectly. I have since set a workman to making them here, and they are in such demand that he has his hands full. Being assured that you will be pleased to have one, when you shall have tried its convenience, I send you one by Colonel Franks. The machine costs ninety-six livres, the appendages twenty-four livres, and I send you paper and ink for twelve livres; in all, one hundred and thirty-two livres. There is a printed paper of directions: but you must expect to make many essays before you succeed perfectly. A soft brush, like a shaving-brush, is more convenient than the sponge. You can get as much ink and paper as you please, from London. The paper costs a guinea a ream. I am, Dear Sir, with sincere esteem and affection, your most obedient, humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
XLV. TO JOHN JAY, February 1, 1787
TO JOHN JAY.
Sir,
Paris, February 1, 1787.
My last letters were of the 31st of December and 9th of January; since which last date, I have been honored with yours of December the 13th and 14th. I shall pay immediate attention to your instructions relative to the South Carolina frigate. I had the honor of informing you of an improvement in the art of coining, made here by one Drost, and of sending you, by Colonel Franks, a specimen of his execution in gold and silver. I expected to have sent also a coin of copper. The enclosed note from Drost will explain the reason why this was not sent. It will let you see also, that he may be employed; as I suppose he is not so certain as he was of being engaged here. Mr. Grand, who knows him, gives me reason to believe he may be engaged reasonably. Congress will decide whether it be worth their attention.
In some of my former letters, I suggested an opportunity of obliging the court, by borrowing as much money in Holland as would pay the debt due here, if such a loan could be obtained; as to which, I was altogether ignorant. To save time, I wrote to Mr. Dumas, to know whether he thought it probable a loan could be obtained, enjoining on him the strictest secrecy, and informing him I was making the inquiry merely of my own motion, and without instruction. I enclose you his answer. He thinks purchasers of the debt could be found, with a sacrifice of a small part of the capital, and a postponement be obtained of some of the first reimbursements. The proposition by him, for an immediate adoption of this measure by me, was probably urged, on his mind by a desire to serve our country, more than a strict attention to my duty, and the magnitude of the object. I hope, on the contrary, that if it should be thought worth a trial, it may be put into the hands of Mr. Adams, who knows the ground, and is known there, and whose former successful negotiations in this line would give better founded hopes of success on this occasion.
I formerly mentioned to you the hopes of preferment, entertained by the Chevalier de la Luzerne. They have been baffled by events; none of the vacancies taking place which had been expected. Had I pressed his being ordered back, I have reason to believe the order would have been given. But he would have gone back in ill humor with Congress, he would have laid for ever at their door the failure of a promotion then viewed as certain; and this might have excited dispositions that would have disappointed us of the good we hoped from his return. The line I have observed with him has been, to make him sensible that nothing was more desired by Congress than his return, but that they would not willingly press it, so as to defeat him of a personal advantage. He sees his prospects fail, and will return in the approaching spring unless something unexpected should turn up in his favor. In this case, the Count de Moutier has the promise of succeeding to him, and if I do not mistake his character, he would give great satisfaction. So that I think you may calculate on seeing one or the other, by midsummer.
It had been suspected that France and England might adopt those concerted regulations of commerce for their West Indies, of which your letter expresses some apprehensions. But the expressions in the 4th, 5th, 7th, 11th, 18th, and other articles of their treaty, which communicate to the English the privileges of the most favored European nation only, has lessened, if not removed those fears. They have clearly reserved a right of favoring, specially, any nation not European; and there is no nation out of Europe, who could so probably have been in their eye at that time, as ours. They are wise. They must see it probable, at least, that any concert with England will be but of short duration; and they could hardly propose to sacrifice for that, a connection with us, which may be perpetual.
We have been for some days, in much inquietude for the Count de Vergennes. He is very seriously ill. Nature seems struggling to decide his disease into a gout. A swelled foot, at present gives us a hope-of this issue. His loss would at all times have been great; but it would be immense during the critical poise of European affairs, existing at this moment. I enclose you a letter from one of the foreign officers, complaining of the non-payment of their interest. It is only one out of many I have received. This is accompanied by a second copy of the Moorish declaration sent me by Mr. Barclay. He went to Alicant to settle with Mr. Lambe; but on his arrival there, found he was gone to Minorca. A copy of his letter will inform you of this circumstance, and of some others relative to Algiers, with his opinion on them. Whatever the States may enable Congress to do for obtaining the peace of that country, it is a separate question whether they will redeem our captives, how, and at what price. If they decide to redeem them, I will beg leave to observe, that it is of great importance that the first redemption be made at as low a price as possible, because it will form the future tariff. If these pirates find that they can have a very great price for Americans, they will abandon proportionably their pursuits against other nations, to direct them towards ours. That the choice of Congress may be enlarged, as to the instruments they may use for effecting the redemption, I think it my duty to inform them, that there is here an order of priests called the Mathurins, the object of whose institution is to beg alms for the redemption of captives. They keep members always in Barbary, searching out the captives of their country, and redeem, I believe, on better terms than any other body, public or private. It occurred to me, that their agency might be obtained for the redemption of our prisoners at Algiers. I obtained conferences with the General, and with some members of the order. The General, with all the benevolence and cordiality possible, undertook to act for us if we should, desire it. He told me that their last considerable redemption was of about three hundred prisoners, who cost them somewhat upwards of fifteen hundred livres apiece. But that they should not be able to redeem ours, as cheap as they do their own; and that it must be absolutely unknown that the public concern themselves in the operation, or the price would be greatly enhanced. The difference of religion was not once mentioned, nor did it appear to me to be thought of. It was a silent reclamation and acknowledgment of fraternity, between two religions of the same family, which historical events of ancient date had rendered more hostile to one another, than to their common adversaries. I informed the General, that I should communicate the good dispositions of his order, to those who alone had the authority to decide whatever related to our captives. Mr. Carmichael informs me, that monies have been advanced for the support of our prisoners at Algiers, which ought to be replaced. I infer from the context of his letter, that these advances have been made by the court of Madrid. I submit the information to Congress.
A treaty of commerce is certainly concluded between France and Russia. The particulars of it are yet secret.
I enclose the gazettes of France and Leyden to this date, and have the honor of assuring you of those sentiments of perfect esteem and respect, with which I am, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
XLVI. TO MRS. BINGHAM, February 7, 1787
TO MRS. BINGHAM.
Paris, February 7, 1787.
I know, Madam, that the twelve-month is not yet expired; but it will be, nearly, before this will have the honor of being put into your hands. You are then engaged to tell me, truly and honestly, whether you do not find the tranquil pleasures of America, preferable to the empty bustle of Paris. For to what does that bustle tend? At eleven o’clock, it is day, chez madame, the curtains are drawn. Propped on bolsters and pillows, and her head scratched into a little order, the bulletins of the sick are read, and the billets of the well. She writes to some of her acquaintance, and receives the visits of others. If the morning is not very thronged, she is able to get out and hobble round the cage of the Palais Royal; but she must hobble quickly, for the coiffeurs turn is come; and a tremendous turn it is! Happy, if he does not make her arrive when dinner is half over! The torpitude of digestion a little passed, she flutters half an hour through the streets, by way of paying visits, and then to the spectacles. These finished; another half hour is devoted to dodging in and out of the doors of her very sincere friends, and away to supper. After supper, cards and after cards, bed; to rise at noon the next day, and to tread, like a mill-horse, the same trodden circle over again. Thus the days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning. In America, on the other hand, the society of your husband, the fond cares for the children, the arrangements of the house, the improvements of the grounds, fill every moment with a healthy and an useful activity. Every exertion is encouraging, because to present amusement it joins the promise of some future good. The intervals of leisure are filled by the society of real friends, whose affections are not thinned to cobweb, by being spread over a thousand objects. This is the picture, in the light it is presented to my mind; now let me have it in yours. If we do not concur this year, we shall the next; or if not then, in a year or two more. You see I am determined not to suppose myself mistaken.
To let you see that Paris is not changed in its pursuits, since it was honored with your presence, I send you its monthly history. But this relating only to the embellishments of their persons, I must add, that those of the city go on well also. A new bridge, for example, is begun at the Place Louis Quinze; the old ones are clearing of the rubbish which encumbered them in the form of houses 5 new hospitals erecting; magnificent walls of inclosure, and Custom-houses at their entrances, &c. &c. &c. I know of no interesting change among those whom you honored with your acquaintance, unless Monsieur de Saint James was of that number. His bankruptcy, and taking asylum in the Bastille, have furnished matter of astonishment. His garden, at the Pont de Neuilly, where, on seventeen acres of ground he had laid out fifty thousand louis, will probably sell for somewhat less money. The workmen of Paris are making rapid strides towards English perfection. Would you believe, that in the course of the last two years, they have learned even to surpass their London rivals in some articles? Commission me to have you a phaeton made, and if it is not as much handsomer than a London one, as that is than a fiacre, send it back to me. Shall I fill the box with caps, bonnets, &c.? Not of my own choosing, but I was going to say, of Mademoiselle Bertin’s, forgetting for the moment, that she too is bankrupt. They shall be chosen then by whom you please; or, if you are altogether nonplused by her eclipse, we will call an Assemblées des Notables, to help you out of the difficulty, as is now the fashion. In short, honor me with your, commands of any kind, and they shall be faithfully executed. The packets now established from Havre to New York furnish good opportunities of sending whatever you wish.
I shall end where I began, like a Paris day, reminding you of your engagement to write me a letter of respectable length, an engagement the more precious to me, as it has furnished me the occasion, after presenting my respects to Mr. Bingham, of assuring you of the sincerity of those sentiments of esteem and respect, with which I have the honor to be, Dear Madam, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson,
XLVII. TO GOVERNOR RANDOLPH, February 7, 1787
TO GOVERNOR RANDOLPH.
Paris, February 7, 1787.
I have the honor of enclosing to your Excellency a report of the proceedings on the inauguration of the bust of the Marquis de la Fayette, in this city. This has been attended with a considerable, but a necessary delay. The principle that the King is the sole fountain of honor in this country, opposed a barrier to our desires, which threatened to be insurmountable. No instance of a similar proposition from a foreign power, had occurred in their history. The admitting it in this case, is a singular proof of the King’s friendly dispositions towards the States of America, and of his personal esteem for the character of the Marquis de la Fayette.
I take this, the earliest occasion, of congratulating my country on your excellency’s appointment to the chair of government, and of assuring you, with great sincerity, of those sentiments of perfect esteem and respect, with which I have the honor to be your. Excellency’s most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
XLVIII. TO JOHN JAY, February 8, 1787
TO JOHN JAY.
Paris, February 8, 1787.
Sir,
The packet being to sail the day after to-morrow, I have awaited the last possible moment of writing by her, in hopes I might be able to announce some favorable change in the situation of the Count de Vergennes. But none has occurred, and in the mean time he has become weaker by the continuance of his illness. Though not desperately ill, he is dangerously so. The Comptroller General, M. de Calonne, has been very ill also, but he is getting well. These circumstances have occasioned the postponement of the Assemblée des Notables to the 14th instant, and will probably occasion a further postponement. As I shall set out this day se’nnight for the waters of Aix, you will probably hear the issue of the Count de Vergennes illness through some other channel, before I shall have the honor of addressing you again. I may observe the same as to the final decision for the enfranchisement of Honfleur, which is in a fair way of being speedily concluded. The exertions of Monsieur de Creve-coeur, and particularly his influence with the Duke d’Harcourt, the principal instrument in effecting it, have been of chief consequence in this matter.
I have the honor to be, with the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
XLIX. TO MR. DUMAS, February 9, 1787
TO MR. DUMAS.
Paris, February 9, 1787.
Sir,
My last to you was dated December the 25th; since which I have been honored with your several favors of December the 29th, January the 5th, 9th, and 23rd. I thought that your affairs could not be more interesting than they have been for a considerable time. Yet in the present moment they are become more so, by the apparent withdrawing of so considerable a personage in the drama, as the King of Prussia. To increase this interest, another person, whose importance scarcely admits calculation, is in a situation which fills us with alarm. Nature is struggling to relieve him by a decided gout; she has my sincere prayers to aid her, as I am persuaded she has yours. I have letters and papers from America as late as the 15th of December. The government of Massachusetts had imprisoned three of the leaders of their insurgents. The insurgents, being collected to the number of three or four hundred, had sent in their petition to the government, praying another act of pardon for their leaders and themselves, and on this condition offering to go every man home, and conduct himself dutifully afterwards. This is the latest intelligence.
I thank you for your attention to the question I had taken the liberty of proposing to you. I think with you, that it would be advisable to have our debt transferred to individuals of your country. There could and would be no objection to the guarantee remaining as you propose; and a postponement of the first payments of capital would surely be a convenience to us. For though the resources of the United States are great and growing, and their dispositions good, yet their machine is new, and they have not got it to go well. It is the object of their general wish at present, and they are all in movement, to set it in a good train; but their movements are necessarily slow. They will surely effect it in the end, because all have the same end in view; the difficulty being only to get all the thirteen States to agree on the same means. Divesting myself of every partiality, and speaking from that thorough knowledge which I have of the country, their resources, and their principles, I had rather trust money in their hands, than in that of any government on earth; because, though for a while the payments of the interest might be less regular, yet the final reimbursement of the capital would be more sure.
I set out next week for the south of France, to try whether some mineral waters in that quarter, much recommended, will restore the use of my hand. I shall be absent from Paris two or three months; but I take arrangements for the regular receipt of your favors, as if I were here. It will be better, however, for you to put your letters to Mr. Jay under cover to Mr. Short, who remains here, and will forward them.
I have thought it my duty to submit to Congress the proposition about the French debt, and may expect their answer in four months.
I have the honor to be, with sincere esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
L. TO JOHN JAY, February 14, 1787
TO JOHN JAY.
Paris, February 14, 1787.
Sir,
In the letter of the 8th instant, which I had the honor of writing you, I informed you that the Count de Vergennes was dangerously ill. He died yesterday morning, and the Count de Montmorin is appointed his successor. Your personal knowledge of this gentleman renders it unnecessary for me to say any thing of him.
Mr. Morris, during his office, being authorized to have the medals and swords executed, which had been ordered by Congress, he authorized Colonel Humphreys to take measures here for the execution. Colonel Humphreys did so; and the swords were finished in time for him to carry them. The medals not being finished, he desired me to attend to them. The workman who was to make that of General Greene, brought me yesterday the medal in gold, twenty-three in copper, and the die. Mr. Short, during my absence, will avail himself of the first occasion which shall offer, of forwarding the medals to you. I must beg leave, through you, to ask the pleasure of Congress as to the number they would choose to have struck. Perhaps they might be willing to deposite one of each person in every college of the United States. Perhaps they might choose to give a series of them to each of the crowned heads of Europe, which would be an acceptable present to them. They will be pleased to decide. In the mean time I have sealed up the die, and shall retain it till I am honored with their orders as to this medal, and the others also when they shall be finished.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect,
Sir, your most obedient
and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LI. TO JOHN JAY, February 23, 1787
TO JOHN JAY.
Paris, February 23, 1787.
Sir,
The Assemblée des Notables being an event in the history of this country which excites notice, I have supposed it would not be disagreeable to you to learn its immediate objects, though no way connected with our interests. The Assembly met yesterday: the King, in a short but affectionate speech, informed them of his wish to consult with them on the plans he had digested, and on the general good of his people, and his desire to imitate the head of his family, Henry IV., whose memory is so dear to the nation. The Garde des Sceaux then spoke about twenty minutes, chiefly in compliment to the orders present. The Comptroller General, in a speech of about an hour, opened the budget, and enlarged on the several subjects which will be under their deliberation. He explained the situation of the finances at his accession to office, the expenses which their arrangement had rendered necessary, their present state with the improvements made in them, the several plans which had been proposed for their further improvement, a change in the form of some of their taxes, the removal of the interior Custom-houses to the frontiers, and the institution of Provincial Assemblies. The Assembly was then divided into committees, with a prince of the blood at the head of each. In this form they are to discuss separately the subjects which will be submitted to them. Their decision will be reported by two members to the minister, who, on view of the separate decisions of all the committees, will make such changes in his plans, as will best accommodate them to their views, without too much departing from his own, and will then submit them to the vote (but I believe not to the debate) of the General Assembly, which will be convened for this purpose one day in every week, and will vote individually.
The event ©f the Count de Vergennes’death, of which I had the honor to inform you in a letter of the 14th instant, the appointment of the Count Montmorin, and the propriety of my attending at his first audience, which will be on the 27th, have retarded the journey I had proposed a few days.
I shall hope, on my return, to meet here new powers for the consular convention, as, under those I have, it will be impossible to make the changes in the convention, which may be wished for.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LII. TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE, February 28, 1787
TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.
Paris, February 28, 1787.
Dear Sir,
I am just now in the moment of my departure. Monsieur de Montmorin having given us audience at Paris yesterday, I missed the opportunity of seeing you once more. I am extremely pleased with his modesty, the simplicity of his manners, and his dispositions towards us. I promise myself a great deal of satisfaction in doing business with him. I hope he will not give ear to any unfriendly suggestions. I flatter myself I shall hear from you sometimes. Send your letters to my hotel as usual, and they will be forwarded to me. I wish you success in your meeting. I should form better hopes of it, if it were divided into two Houses instead of seven. Keeping the good model of your neighboring country before your eyes, you may get on, step by step, towards a good constitution. Though that model is not perfect, yet, as it would unite more suffrages than any new one which could be proposed, it is better to make that the object. If every advance is to be purchased by filling the royal coffers with gold, it will be gold well employed. The King, who means so well, should be encouraged to repeat these Assemblies. You see how we republicans are apt to preach, when we get on politics. Adieu, my dear friend.
Yours affectionately,
Th: Jefferson.
LIII. TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE TESSE, March 20, 1787
TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE TESSE.
Nismes, March 20, 1787.
Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarrée, like a lover at his mistress. The stocking-weavers and silk-spinners around it, consider me as a hypochondriac Englishman, about to write with a pistol the last chapter of his history. This is the second time I have been in love since I left Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de Lay-Epinaye in Beaujolois, a delicious morsel of sculpture, by M. A. Slodtz. This, you will say, was in rule, to fall in love with a female beauty: but with a house! It is out of all precedent. No, Madam, it is not without a precedent, in my own history. While in Paris, I was violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm, and used to go to the Tuileries almost daily to look at it. The loueuse des chaises, inattentive to my passion, never had the complaisance to place a chair there, so that, sitting on the parapet, and twisting my neck round to see the object of my admiration, I generally left it with a torticollis.
From Lyons to Nismes I have been nourished with the remains of Roman grandeur. They have always brought you to my mind, because I know your affection for whatever is Roman and noble. At Vienne I thought of you. But I am glad you were not there; for you would have seen me more angry than I hope you will ever see me. The Praetorian palace, as it is called, comparable, for its fine proportions, to the Maison Quarrée, defaced by the barbarians who have converted it to its present purpose, its beautiful fluted Corinthian columns cut out in part to make space for Gothic windows, and hewed down in the residue to the plane of the building, was enough, you must admit, to disturb my composure. At Orange, too, I thought of you. I was sure you had seen with pleasure the sublime triumphal arch of Marius at the entrance of the city. I went then to the Arena. Would you believe, Madam, that in this eighteenth century, in France, under the reign of Louis XVI., they are at this moment pulling down the circular wall of this superb remain to pave a road? And that too from a hill which is itself an entire mass of stone, just as fit, and more accessible? A former intendant, a M. de Basville, has rendered his memory dear to the traveller and amateur, by the pains he took to preserve and restore these monuments of antiquity. The present one (I do not know who he is) is demolishing the object to make a good road to it. I thought of you again, and I was then in great good humor, at the Pont du Gard, a sublime antiquity, and well preserved. But most of all here, where Roman taste, genius, and magnificence excite ideas analogous to yours at every step. I could no longer oppose the inclination to avail myself of your permission to write to you, a permission given with too much complaisance by you, and used by me with too much indiscretion. Madame de Tott did me the same honor.
But she being only the descendant of some of those puny heroes who boiled their own kettles before the walls of Troy, I shall write to her from a Grecian, rather than a Roman canton: when I shall find myself, for example, among her Phocæan relations at Marseilles.
Loving, as you do, Madam, the precious remains of antiquity, loving architecture, gardening, a warm sun, and a clear sky, I wonder you have never thought of moving Chaville to Nismes. This, as you know, has not always been deemed impracticable; and, therefore, the next time a Surintendant des bailments du roi, after the example of M. Colbert, sends persons to Nismes to move the Maison Quarrée to Paris, that they may not come empty-handed, desire them to bring Chaville with them to replace it. A propos of Paris. I have now been three weeks from there, without knowing any thing of what has passed. I suppose I shall meet it all at Aix, where I have directed my letters to be lodged, poste restante. My journey has given me leisure to reflect on this Assemblée des Notables. Under a good and a young King, as the present, I think good may be made of it. I would have the deputies, then, by all means, so conduct themselves as to encourage him to repeat the calls of this Assembly. Their first step should be to get themselves divided into two chambers instead of seven; the Noblesse and the Commons separately. The second, to persuade the King, instead of choosing the deputies of the Commons himself, to summon those chosen by the people for the Provincial administrations. The third, as the Noblesse is too numerous to be all of the Assemblée, to obtain permission for that body to choose its own deputies. Two Houses, so elected, would contain a mass of wisdom, which would make the people happy, and the King great; would place him in history where no other act can possibly place him. They would thus put themselves in the track of the best guide they can follow, they would soon overtake it, become its guide in turn, and lead to the wholesome modifications wanting in that model, and necessary to constitute a rational government. Should they attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they must lose all, and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim. These, Madam, are my opinions; but I wish to know yours, which I am sure will be better.
From a correspondent at Nismes you will not expect news. Were I to attempt to give you news, I should tell you stories one thousand years old. I should detail to you the intrigues of the courts of the Cæsars, how they affect us here, the oppressions of their praetors, prefects, &c. I am immersed in antiquities from morning to night. For me the city of Rome is actually existing in all the splendor of its empire. I am filled with alarms for the event of the irruptions daily making on us by the Goths, the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals, lest they should re-conquer us to our original barbarism. If I am sometimes induced to look forward to the eighteenth century, it is only when recalled to it by the recollection of your goodness and friendship, and by those sentiments of sincere esteem and respect, with which I have the honor to be,
Madam, your most obedient
and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LIV. TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE, April 11, 1787
TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.
Nice, April 11, 1787.
Your head, my dear friend, is full of Notable things; and being better employed, therefore, I do not expect letters from you. I am constantly roving about to see what I have never seen before, and shall never see again. In the great cities, I go to see what travellers think alone worthy of being seen; but I make a job of it, and generally gulp it all down in a day. On the other hand, I am never satiated with rambling through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cultivators with a degree of curiosity, which makes some take me to be a fool, and others to be much wiser than I am. I have been pleased to find among the people a less degree of physical misery than I had expected. They are generally well clothed, and have a plenty of food, not animal indeed, but vegetable, which is as wholesome. Perhaps they are over-worked, the excess of the rent required by the landlord obliging them to too many hours of labor in order to produce that, and wherewith to feed and clothe themselves. The soil of Champagne and Burgundy I have found more universally good than I had expected, and as I could not help making a comparison with England, I found that comparison more unfavorable to the latter than is generally admitted. The soil, the climate, and the productions are superior to those of England, and the husbandry as good, except in one point; that of manure. In England, long leases for twenty-one years, or three lives, to wit, that of the farmer, his wife, and son, renewed by the son as soon as he comes to the possession, for his own life, his wife’s, and eldest child’s, and so on, render the farms there almost hereditary, make it worth the farmer’s while to manure the lands highly, and give the landlord an opportunity of occasionally making his rent keep pace with the improved state of the lands. Here the leases are either during pleasure, or for three, six, or nine years, which does not give the farmer time to repay himself for the expensive operation of well manuring, and therefore, he manures ill, or not at all. I suppose, that could the practice of leasing for three lives be introduced in the whole kingdom, it would, within the term of your life, increase agricultural productions fifty per cent.; or were any one proprietor to do it with his own lands, it would increase his rents fifty per cent, in the course of twenty-five years. But I am told the laws do not permit it. The laws then, in this particular, are unwise and unjust, and ought to give that permission. In the southern provinces, where the soil is poor, the climate hot and dry, and there are few animals, they would learn the art, found so precious in England, of making vegetable manure, and thus improving the provinces in the article in which nature has been least kind to them. Indeed, these provinces afford a singular spectacle. Calculating on the poverty of their soil, and their climate by its latitude only, they should have been the poorest in France. On the contrary, they are the richest, from one fortuitous circumstance. Spurs or ramifications of high mountains, making down from the Alps, and, as it were, reticulating these provinces, give to the vallies the protection of a particular inclosure to each, and the benefit of a general stagnation of the northern winds produced by the whole of them, and thus countervail the advantage of several degrees of latitude. From the first olive fields of Pierrelatte, to the orangeries of Hieres, has been continued rapture to me. I have often wished for you. I think you have not made this journey. It is a pleasure you have to come, and an improvement to be added to the many you have already made. It will be a great comfort to you, to know, from your own inspection, the condition of all the provinces of your own country, and it will be interesting to them at some future day, to be known to you. This is, perhaps, the only moment of your life in which you can acquire that knowledge. And to do it most effectually, you must be absolutely incognito, you must ferret the people out of their hovels as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their beds under pretence of resting yourself, but in fact to find if they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables.
You will not wonder at the subjects of my letter: they are the only ones which have been presented to my mind for some time past; and the waters must always be what are the fountains from which they flow. According to this, indeed, I should have intermixed, from beginning to end, warm expressions of friendship to you. But, according to the ideas of our country, we do not permit ourselves to speak even truths, when they may have the air of flattery. I content myself, therefore, with saying once for all, that I love you, your wife, and children. Tell them so, and adieu.
Yours affectionately,
Th: Jefferson.
LV. TO WILLIAM SHORT, April 12, 1787
TO WILLIAM SHORT.
Nice, April 12, 1787,
Dear Sir,
At Marseilles, they told me I should encounter the rice fields of Piedmont soon after crossing the Alps. Here they tell me there are none nearer than Vercelli and Novara, which is carrying me almost to Milan. I fear that this circumstance will occasion me a greater delay than I had calculated on. However, I am embarked in the project, and shall go through with it. To-morrow, I set out on my passage over the Alps, being to pursue it ninety-three miles to Coni, on mules, as the snows are not yet enough melted to admit carriages to pass. I leave mine here, therefore, proposing to return by water from Genoa. I think it will be three weeks before I get back to Nice. I find this climate quite as delightful as it has been represented. Hieres is the only place in France, which may be compared with it. The climates are equal. In favor of this place, are the circumstances of gay and dissipated society, a handsome city, good accommodations, and some commerce. In favor of Hieres, are environs of delicious and extensive plains, a society more contracted, and therefore more capable of esteem, and the neighborhood of Toulon, Marseilles, and other places, to which excursions may be made. Placing Marseilles in comparison with Hieres, it has extensive society, a good theatre, freedom from military control, and the most animated commerce. But its winter climate is far inferior. I am now in the act of putting my baggage into portable form for my bat-mule; after praying you, therefore, to let my daughter know I am well, and that I shall not be heard of again in three weeks, I take my leave of you for that time, with assurances of the sincere esteem with which I am, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LVI. TO JOHN JAY, May 4, 1787
TO JOHN JAY.
Marseilles, May 4, 1787.
Sir,
I had the honor of receiving at Aix, your letter of February the 9th, and immediately wrote to the Count de Montmorin, explaining the delay of the answer of Congress to the King’s letter, and desired Mr. Short to deliver that answer, with my letter, to Monsieur de Montmorin, which he informs me he has accordingly done.
My absence prevented my noting to you, in the first moment, the revolution which has taken place at Paris, in the department of finance, by the substitution of Monsieur de Fourqueux in the place of Monsieur de Calonne; so that you will have heard of it through other channels, before this will have the honor of reaching you.
Having staid at Aix long enough to prove the inefficacy of the waters, I came on to this place, for the purpose of informing myself here, as I mean to do at the other seaport towns, of whatever may be interesting to our commerce. So far as carried on in our own bottoms, I find it almost nothing; and so it must probably remain, till something can be done with the Algerines. Though severely afflicted with the plague, they have come out within these few days, and showed themselves in force along the coast of Genoa, cannonading a little town and taking several vessels.
Among other objects of inquiry, this was the place to learn something more certain on the subject of rice, as it is a great emporium for that of the Levant, and of Italy. I wished particularly to know, whether it was the use of a different machine for cleaning, which brought European rice to market less broken than ours, as had been represented to me, by those who deal in that article in Paris. I found several persons who had passed through the rice country of Italy, but not one who could explain to me the nature of the machine. But I was given to believe, that I might see it myself immediately on entering Piedmont. As this would require but about three weeks, I determined to go, and ascertain this point; as the chance only of placing our rice above all rivalship in quality, as it is in color, by the introduction of a better machine, if a better existed, seemed to justify the application of that much time to it. I found the rice country to be in truth Lombardy, one hundred miles further than had been represented, and that though called Piedmont rice, not a grain is made in the country of Piedmont. I passed through the rice-fields of the Vercellese and Milanese, about sixty miles, and returned from thence last night, having found that the machine is absolutely the same as ours, and of course, that we need not listen more to that suggestion. It is a difference in the species of grain; of which the government of Turin is so sensible, that, as I was informed, they prohibit the exportation of rough rice, on pain of death. I have taken measures, however, which I think will not fail, for obtaining a quantity of it, and I bought on the spot a small parcel, which I have with me. As further details on this subject to Congress would be misplaced, I propose, on my return to Paris, to communicate them, and send the rice to the society at Charleston for promoting agriculture, supposing that they will be best able to try the experiment of cultivating the rice of this quality, and to communicate the species to the two States of South Carolina and Georgia, if they find it answers. I thought the staple of these two States was entitled to this attention, and that it must be desirable to them, to be able to furnish rice of the two qualities demanded in Europe, especially, as the greater consumption is in the forms for which the Lombardy quality is preferred. The mass of our countrymen being interested in agriculture, I hope I do not err in supposing, that in a time of profound peace, as the present, to enable them to adapt their productions to the market, to point out markets for them, and endeavor to obtain favorable terms of reception, is within the line of my duty.
My journey into this part of the country has procured me information, which I will take the liberty of communicating to Congress. In October last, I received a letter, dated Montpelier, October the 2nd, 1786, announcing to me that the writer was a foreigner, who had a matter of very great consequence to communicate to me, and desired I would indicate the channel through which it might pass safely. I did so.
I received soon after, a letter in the following words, omitting only the formal parts. [A translation of it is here given.]
‘I am a native of Brazil. You are not ignorant of the frightful slavery under which my country groans. This continually becomes more insupportable, since the epoch of your glorious independence; for the cruel Portuguese omit nothing which can render our condition more wretched, from an apprehension that we may follow your example. The conviction, that these usurpers against the laws of nature and humanity only meditate new oppressions, has decided us to follow the guiding light which you have held out to us, to break our chains, to revive our almost expiring liberty, which is nearly overwhelmed by that force, which is the sole foundation of the authority that Europeans exercise over America. But it is necessary that some power should extend assistance to the Brazilians, since Spain would certainly unite herself with Portugal; and in spite of our advantages for defence, we could not make it effectual, or, at least, it would be imprudent to hazard the attempt, without some assurance of success. In this state of affairs, Sir, we can, with propriety, look only to the United States, not only because we are following her example, but, moreover, because nature, in making us inhabitants of the same continent, has in some sort united us in the bonds of a common patriotism. On our part, we are prepared to furnish the necessary supplies of money, and at all times to acknowledge the debt of gratitude due to our benefactors. I have thus, Sir, laid before you a summary of my views. It is in discharge of this commission that I have come to France, since I could not effect it in America without exciting suspicion. It now remains for you to decide whether those views can be accomplished. Should you desire to consult your nation on them, it is in my power to give you all the information you may require.’
As by this time, I had been advised to try the waters of Aix, I wrote to the gentleman my design, and that I would go off my road as far as Nismes, under the pretext of seeing the antiquities of that place, if he would meet me there. He met me, and the following is the sum of the information I received from him. ‘Brazil contains as many inhabitants as Portugal. They are, 1. Portuguese. 2. Native whites. 3. Black and mulatto slaves. 4. Indians, civilized and savage. 1. The Portuguese are few in number, mostly married there, have lost sight of their native country, as well as the prospect of returning to it, and are disposed to become independent. 2. The native whites form the body of their nation. 3. The slaves are as numerous as the free. 4. The civilized Indians have no energy, and the savage would not meddle. There are twenty thousand regular troops. Originally these were Portuguese. But as they died off, they were replaced by natives, so that these compose at present the mass of the troops, and may be counted on by their native country. The officers are partly Portuguese, partly Brazilians: their bravery is not doubted, and they understand the parade, but not the science of their profession. They have no bias for Portugal, but no energy either for any thing. The priests are partly Portuguese, partly Brazilians, and will not interest themselves much. The Noblesse are scarcely known as such. They will, in no manner, be distinguished from the people. The men of letters are those most desirous of a revolution. The people are not much under the influence of their priests, most of them read and write, possess arms, and are in the habit of using them for hunting. The slaves will take the side of their masters. In short, as to the question of revolution, there is but one mind in that Country. But there appears no person capable of conducting a revolution, or willing to venture himself at its head, without the aid of some powerful nation, as the people of their own might fail them. There is no printing press in Brazil. They consider the North American revolution as a precedent for theirs. They look to the United States as most likely to give them honest support, and, from a variety of considerations, have the strongest prejudices in our favor. This informant is a native and inhabitant of Rio Janeiro, the present metropolis, which contains fifty thousand inhabitants, knows well St. Salvador, the former one, and the mines d’or, which are in the centre of the country. These are all for a revolution; and, constituting the body of the nation, the other parts will follow them, The King’s fifth of the mines, yields annually thirteen millions of crusadoes or half dollars. He has the sole right of searching for diamonds and other precious stones, which yield him about half as much. His income from those two resources alone, then, is about ten millions of dollars annually; but the remaining part of the produce of the mines, being twenty-six millions, might be counted on for effecting a revolution. Besides the arms in the hands of the people, there are public magazines. They have abundance of horses, but only a part of their country would admit the service of horses. They would want cannon, ammunition, ships, sailors, soldiers, and officers, for which they are disposed to look to the United States, it being always understood, that every service and furniture will be well paid. Corn costs about twenty livres the one hundred pounds. They have flesh in the greatest abundance, insomuch, that in some parts, they kill beeves for the skin only. The whale fishery is carried on by Brazilians altogether, and not by Portuguese; but in very small vessels, so that the fishermen know nothing of managing a large ship. They would want of us; at all times, shipping, corn, and salt fish. The latter is a great article, and they are at present supplied with it from Portugal. Portugal being without either army or navy, could not attempt an invasion under a twelvemonth. Considering of what it would be composed, it would not be much to be feared, and if it failed, they would probably never attempt a second. Indeed, this source of their wealth being intercepted, they are scarcely capable of a first effort. The thinking part of the nation are so sensible of this, that they consider an early separation inevitable. There is an implacable hatred between the Brazilians and Portuguese; to reconcile which, a former minister adopted the policy of letting the Brazilians into a participation of public offices; but subsequent administrations have reverted to the ancient policy of keeping the administrations in the hands of native Portuguese. There is a mixture of natives, of the old appointments, still remaining in office. If Spain should invade them on their southern extremities, these are so distant from the body of their settlements, that they could not penetrate thence; and Spanish enterprise is not formidable. The mines d’or are among mountains, inaccessible to any army; and Rio Janeiro is considered the strongest port in the world after Gibraltar. In case of a successful revolution, a republican government in a single body would probably be established.’
I took care to impress on him, through the whole of our conversation, that I had neither instructions nor authority to say a word to any body on this subject, and that I could only give him my own ideas, as a single individual: which were, that we were not in a condition at present to meddle nationally in any war; that we wished particularly to cultivate the friendship of Portugal, with whom we have an advantageous commerce. That yet, a successful revolution in Brazil could not be uninteresting to us. That prospects of lucre might possibly draw numbers of individuals to their aid, and purer motives our officers, among whom are many excellent. That our citizens being free to leave their own country individually, without the consent of their governments, are equally free to go to any other.
A little before I received the first letter of the Brazilian, a gentleman informed me there was a Mexican in Paris, who wished to have some conversation with me. He accordingly called on me. The substance of the information I drew from him, was as follows. He is himself a native of Mexico, where his relations are, principally. He left it about seventeen years of age, and seems now to be about thirty-three or thirty-four. He classes and characterizes the inhabitants of that country, as follows. 1. The natives of Old Spain, possessed of most of the offices of government, and firmly attached to it. 2. The clergy, equally attached to the government. 3. The natives of Mexico, generally disposed to revolt, but without instruction, without energy, and much under the dominion of their priests. 4. The slaves, mulatto and black; the former enterprising and intelligent, the latter brave, and of very important weight, into whatever scale they throw themselves; but he thinks they will side with their masters. 5. The conquered Indians, cowardly, not likely to take any side, nor important which they take. 6. The free Indians, brave and formidable, should they interfere, but not likely to do so, as being at a great distance. I asked him the numbers of these several classes, but he could not give them. The first, he thought very inconsiderable; that the second formed the body of the freemen; the third equal to the two first; the fourth, to all the preceding: and as to the fifth, he could form no idea of their proportion. Indeed, it appeared to me, that his conjectures as to the others were on loose grounds. He said he knew from good information, there were three hundred thousand inhabitants in the city of Mexico. I was still more cautious with him than with the Brazilian, mentioning it as my private opinion (unauthorized to say a word on the subject, otherwise), that a successful revolution was still at a distance with them; that I feared they must begin by enlightening and emancipating the minds of their people; that as to us, if Spain should give us advantageous terms of commerce, and remove other difficulties, it was not probable that we should relinquish certain and present advantages, though smaller, for uncertain and future ones, however great. I was led into this caution by observing, that this gentleman was intimate at the Spanish ambassador’s, and that he was then at Paris, employed by Spain to settle her boundaries with France, on the Pyrenees. He had much the air of candor, but that can be borrowed; so that I was not able to decide about him in my own mind.
Led by a unity of subject, and a desire to give Congress as general a view of the disposition of our southern countrymen, as my information enables me, I will add an article which, old and insulated, I did not think important enough to mention at the time I received it. You will remember, Sir, that during the late war, the British papers often gave details of a rebellion in Peru. The character of those papers discredited the information. But the truth was, that the insurrections were so general, that the event was long on the poise. Had Commodore Johnson, then expected on that coast, touched and landed there two thousand men, the dominion of Spain in that country would have been at an end. They only wanted a point of union, which this body would have constituted. Not having this, they acted without concert, and were are length subdued separately. This conflagration was quenched in blood; two hundred thousand souls, on both sides, having perished; but the remaining matter is very capable of combustion. I have this information from a person who was on the spot at the time, and whose good faith, understanding, and means of information leave no doubt of the facts. He observed, however, that the numbers above supposed to have perished were on such conjectures only as he could collect.
I trouble Congress with these details, because, however distant we may be, both in condition and dispositions, from taking an active part in any commotions in that country, nature has placed it too near us to make its movements altogether indifferent to our interests, or to our curiosity.
I hear of another Arrêt of this court, increasing the duties on foreign stock-fish, and the premium on their own imported into their islands; but not having yet seen it, I can say nothing certain on it. I hope the effect of this policy will be defeated by the practice which, I am told, takes place on the Banks of Newfoundland, of putting our fish into the French fishing-boats, and the parties sharing the premium, instead of ours paying the duty.
I am in hopes Mr. Short will be able to send you the medals of General Gates by this packet. I await a general instruction as to these medals. The academies of Europe will be much pleased to receive each a set.
I propose to set out the day after to-morrow for Bordeaux (by the canal of Languedoc), Mantes, L’Orient, and Paris.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LVII. TO M. GUIDE, May 6, 1787
TO M. GUIDE.
Marseilles, May 6, 1787.
Sir,
A desire of seeing a commerce commenced between the dominions of his Majesty, the King of Sardinia, and the United States of America, and a direct exchange of their respective productions, without passing through a third nation, led me into the conversation which I had the honor of having with you on that subject, and afterwards with Monsieur Tallon at Turin, to whom I promised that I would explain to you, in writing, the substance of what passed between us. The articles of your produce wanted with us are brandies, wines, oil, fruits, and manufactured silks: those with which we can furnish you are indigo, potash, tobacco, flour, salt-fish, furs and peltries, ships and materials for building them. The supply of tobacco, particularly, being in the hands of government solely, appeared to me to offer an article for beginning immediately the experiment of direct commerce. That of the first quality can be had at first hand only from James river in Virginia; those of the second and third from the same place, and from Baltimore in Maryland. The first quality is delivered in the ports of France at thirty-eight livres the quintal, the second at thirty-six livres, the third at thirty-four livres, weight and money of France, by individuals generally. I send you the copy of a large contract, wherein the three qualities are averaged at thirty-six livres. They may be delivered at Nice for those prices. Indeed, it is my opinion, that by making shipments of your own produce to those places, and buying the tobaccos on the spot, they may be had more advantageously. In this case, it would be expedient that merchants of Nice, Turin, and America, should form a joint concern for conducting the business in the two countries. Monsieur Tallon desired me to point out proper persons in America who might be addressed for this purpose. The house of the most extensive reputation, concerned in the tobacco trade, and on the firmest funds, is that of Messrs. Ross and Pleasants at Richmond, in Virginia. If it should be concluded on your part to make any attempt of this kind, and to address yourselves to these gentlemen, or any others, it would be best to write them your ideas, and receive theirs, before you make either purchases or shipments. A more hasty conduct might occasion loss, and retard, instead of encouraging, the establishment of this commerce. I would undertake to write, at the same time, to these or any other merchants whom you should prefer, in order to dispose them favorably, and as disinterestedly as possible, for the encouragement of this essay. I must observe to you, that our vessels are fearful of coming into the Mediterranean on account of the Algerines: and that if you should freight vessels, those of the French will be most advantageous for you, because received into our ports without paying any duties on some of those articles, and lighter than others on all of them. English vessels, on the other hand, are distinguished by paying heavier duties than those of any other nation. Should you desire any further information, or to pass letters with certainty to any mercantile house in America, do me the favor to address yourselves to me at Paris, and I shall do whatever depends on me for this object.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of high esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
MEMORANDA TAKEN ON A JOURNEY FROM PARIS IN 1787
Memoranda taken on a Journey from Paris into the Southern Parts of France, and Northern of Italy, in the year 1787.
CHAMPAGNE. March 3. Sens to Vermanton. The face of the country is in large hills, not too steep for the plough, somewhat resembling the Elk hill and Beaver-dam hills of Virginia. The soil is generally a rich mulatto loam, with a mixture of coarse sand, and some loose stone. The plains of the Yonne are of the same color. The plains are in corn, the hills in vineyard, but the wine not good. There are a few apple-trees, but none of any other kind, and no enclosures. No cattle, sheep, or swine; fine mules.
Few chateaux; no farm-houses, all the people being gathered in villages. Are they thus collected by that dogma of their religion, which makes them believe, that to keep the Creator in good humor with his own works, they must mumble a mass every day? Certain it is, that they are less happy and less virtuous in villages, than they would be insulated with their families on the grounds they cultivate. The people are illy clothed. Perhaps they have put on their worst clothes at this moment, as it is raining. But I observe women and children carrying heavy burthens, and laboring with the hoe. This is an unequivocal indication of extreme poverty. Men, in a civilized country, never expose their wives and children to labor above their force and sex, as long as their own labor can protect them from it. I see few beggars. Probably this is the effect of a police.
BURGUNDY. March 4. Lucy-le-Bois. Cussy-les-Forges. Rouvray. Maison-neuve. Vitieaux. La Chaleure. Pont de Panis. Dijon. The hills are higher, and more abrupt. The soil a good red loam and sand, mixed with more or less grit, small stone, and sometimes rock. All in corn. Some forest wood here and there, broom, whins, and holly, and a few enclosures of quick-hedge. Now and then a flock of sheep.
The people are well clothed, but it is Sunday. They have the appearance of being well fed. The Chateau de Sevigny, near Cussy-les-Forges, is a charming situation. Between Maison-neuve and Vitteaux the road leads through an avenue of trees, eight American miles long, in a right line. It is impossible to paint the ennui of this avenue. On the summits of the hills, which border the valley in which Vitteaux is, there is a parapet of rock, twenty, thirty, or forty feet perpendicular, which crowns the hills. The tops are nearly level, and appear to be covered with earth. Very singular. Great masses of rock in the hills between La Chaleure and Pont de Panis, and a conical hill in the approach to the last place.
Dijon. The tavern price of a bottle of the best wine (e. g. of Vaune) is four livres. The best round potatoes here, I ever saw. They have begun a canal thirty feet wide, which is to lead into the Saone at ---------. It is fed by springs. They are not allowed to take any water out of the riviere d’Ouche, which runs through this place, on account of the mills on that river. They talk of making a canal to the Seine, the nearest navigable part of which, at present, is fifteen leagues from hence. They have very light wagons here for the transportation of their wine. They are long and narrow; the fore-wheels as high as the hind. Two pieces of wine are drawn by one horse in one of these wagons. The road in this part of the country is divided into portions of forty or fifty feet by stones, numbered, which mark the task of the laborers.
March 7 and 8. From La Baraque to Chagny. On the left are plains, which extend to the Saone; on the right the ridge of mountains, called the Cote. The plains are of a reddish-brown, rich loam, mixed with much small stone. The Cote has for its basis a solid rock, on which is about a foot of soil and small stone, in equal quantities, the soil red, and of middling quality. The plains are in corn; the Cote in vines. The former have no enclosures, the latter is in small ones, of dry stone wall. There is a good deal of forest. Some small herds of small cattle and sheep. Fine mules, which come from Provence, and cost twenty louis. They break them at two years old, and they last to thirty.
The corn-lands here rent for about fifteen livres the arpent. They are now planting, pruning, and sticking their vines. When a new vineyard is made, they plant the vines in gutters about four feet apart. As the vines advance, they lay them down. They put out new shoots, and fill all the intermediate space, till all trace of order is lost. They have ultimately about one foot square to each vine. They begin to yield good profit at five or six years old, and last one hundred, or one hundred and fifty years. A vigneron at Volnay carried me into his vineyard, which was of about ten arpents. He told me, that some years it produced him sixty pieces of wine, and some not more than three pieces. The latter is the most advantageous produce, because the wine is better in quality, and higher in price, in proportion as less is made; and the expenses, at the same time, diminish in the same proportion. Whereas, when much is made, the expenses are increased, while the quality and price become less. In very plentiful years, they often give one half the wine for casks to contain the other half. The cask for two hundred and fifty bottles costs six livres in scarce years, and ten in plentiful. The feuillette is of one hundred and twenty-five bottles, the piece of two hundred and fifty, and the queue or botte of five hundred. An arpent rents at from twenty to sixty livres. A farmer of ten arpents has about three laborers engaged by the year. He pays four louis to a man, and half as much to a woman, and feeds them. He kills one hog, and salts it, which is all the meat used in the family during the year. Their ordinary food is bread and vegetables. At Pomard and Volnay, I observed them eating good wheat bread; at Meursault, rye. I asked the reason of the difference. They told me, that the white wines fail in quality much oftener than the red, and remain on hand. The farmer, therefore, cannot afford to feed his laborers so well. At Meursault only white wines are made, because there is too much stone for the red. On such slight circumstances depends the condition of man! The wines which have given such celebrity to Burgundy grow only on the Cote, an extent of about five leagues long, and half a league wide. They begin at Chambertin, and go through Vougeau, Romanie, Veaune, Nuits, Beaune, Pomard, Volnay, Meursault, and end at Monrachet. Those of the two last are white; the others red. Chambertin, Vougeau, and Beaune are the strongest, and will bear transportation and keeping. They sell, therefore, on the spot for twelve hundred livres the queue, which is forty-eight sous the bottle. Volnay is the best of the other reds, equal in flavor to Chambertin, &c., but being lighter, will not keep, and therefore sells for not more than three hundred livres the queue, which is twelve sous the bottle. It ripens sooner than they do, and consequently is better for those who wish to broach at a year old. In like manner of the white wines, and for the same reason, Monrachet sells for twelve hundred livres the queue (forty-eight sous the bottle), and Meursault of the best quality, viz. the Goutte d’or, at only one hundred and fifty livres (six sous the bottle). It is remarkable, that the best of each kind, that is, of the red and white, is made at the extremities of the line, to wit, at Chambertin and Monrachet. It is pretended, that the adjoining vineyards produce the same qualities, but that, belonging to obscure individuals, they have not obtained a name, and therefore sell as other wines. The aspect of the Cote is a little south of east. The western side is also covered with vines, and is apparently of the same soil; yet the wines are only of the coarsest kinds. Such, too, are those which are produced in the plains; but there the soil is richer, and less strong. Vougeau is the property of the monks of Citeaux, and produces about two hundred pieces. Monrachet contains about fifty arpents, and produces, one year with another, about one hundred and twenty pieces. It belongs to two proprietors only, Monsieur de Clarmont, who leases to some wine-merchants, and the Marquis de Sarsnet, of Dijon, whose part is farmed to a Monsieur de la Tour, whose family, for many generations, have had the farm. The best wines are carried to Paris by land. The transportation costs thirty-six livres the piece. The more indifferent go by water. Bottles cost four and a half sous each.
March 9. Chalons. Sennecey. Tournus. St. Albin. Macon. On the left are the fine plains of the Saone; on the right high lands, rather waving than hilly, sometimes sloping gently to the plains, sometimes dropping down in precipices, and occasionally broken into beautiful vallies[sp.] by the streams which run into the Saone. The plains are a dark rich loam, in pasture and corn; the heights more or less red or reddish, always gritty, of middling quality only, their sides in vines, and their summits in corn. The vineyards are enclosed with dry stone-walls, and there are some quick-hedges in the corn-grounds. The cattle are few and indifferent. There are some good oxen, however. They draw by the head. Few sheep, and small. A good deal of wood-lands.
I passed three times the canal called Le Charollois, which they are opening from Chalons on the Saone to Dijon on the Loire. It passes near Chagny, and will be twenty-three leagues long. They have worked on it three years, and will finish it in four more. It will reanimate the languishing commerce of Champagne and Burgundy, by furnishing a water transportation for their wines to Nantes, which also will receive new consequence by becoming the emporium of that commerce. At some distance on the right are high mountains, which probably form the separation between the waters of the Saone and Loire. Met a malefactor in the hands of one of the Marichausee; perhaps a dove in the talons of the hawk. The people begin now to be in separate establishments, and not in villages. Houses are mostly covered with tile.
BEAUJOLOIS.[Sp.] Maison Blanche. St. George. Chateau de Laye-Epinaye. The face of the country is like that from Chalons to Macon. The plains are a dark rich loam, the hills a red loam of middling quality, mixed generally with more or less coarse sand and grit, and a great deal of small stone. Very little forest. The vineyards are mostly enclosed with dry stone-wall. A few small cattle and sheep. Here, as in Burgundy, the cattle are all white. This is the richest country I ever beheld. It is about ten or twelve leagues in length, and three, four, or five in breadth; at least that part of it, which is under the eye of a traveller. It extends from the top of a ridge of mountains, running parallel with the Saone, and sloping down to the plains of that river, scarce any where too steep for the plough. The whole is thick set with farm-houses, chateaux, and the bastides of the inhabitants of Lyons. The people live separately, and not in villages. The hill-sides are in vine and corn: the plains in corn and pasture. The lands are farmed either for money, or on half-stocks. The rents of the corn-lands, farmed for money, are about ten or twelve livres the arpent. A farmer takes perhaps about one hundred and fifty arpents, for three, six, or nine years. The first year they are in corn; the second in other small grain, with which he sows red clover. The third is for the clover. The spontaneous pasturage is of greensward, which they call fromenteau. When lands are rented on half-stocks, the cattle, sheep, &c. are furnished by the landlord. They are valued, and must be left of equal value. The increase of these, as well as the produce of the farm is divided equally. These leases are only from year to year. They have a method of mixing beautifully the culture of vines, trees, and corn. Rows of fruit-trees are planted about twenty feet apart. Between the trees, in the row, they plant vines four feet apart, and espalier them. The intervals are sowed alternately in corn, so as to be one year in corn, the next in pasture, the third in corn, the fourth in pasture, &c. One hundred toises of vines in length, yield generally about four pieces of wine. In Dauphine, I am told, they plant vines only at the roots of the trees, and let them cover the whole trees. But this spoils both the wine and the fruit. Their wine, when distilled, yields but one-third its quantity in brandy. The wages of a laboring man here are five louis; of a woman, one half. The women do not work with the hoe: they only weed the vines, the corn, &c, and spin. They speak a patois very difficult to understand. I passed some time at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye. Monsieur de Laye has a seignory of about fifteen thousand arpents, in pasture, corn, vines, and wood. He has over this, as is usual, a certain jurisdiction, both criminal and civil. But this extends only to the first crude examination, which is before his judges. The subject is referred, for final examination and decision, to the regular judicatures of the country. The Seigneur is keeper of the peace on his domains. He is therefore subject to the expenses of maintaining it. A criminal prosecuted to sentence and execution costs M. de Laye about five thousand livres. This is so burthensome to the Seigneurs, that they are slack in criminal prosecutions. A good effect from a bad cause. Through all Champagne, Burgundy, and the Beaujolois, the husbandry seems good, except that they manure too little. This proceeds from the shortness of their leases. The people of Burgundy and Beaujolois are well clothed, and have the appearance of being well fed. But they experience all the oppressions which result from the nature of the general government, and from that of their particular tenures, and of the seignorial government to which they are subject. What a cruel reflection, that a rich country cannot long be a free one. M. de Laye has a Diana and Endymion, a very superior morsel of sculpture by Michael Angelo Slodtz, done in 1740. The wild gooseberry is in leaf; the wild pear and sweet-briar in bud.
Lyons. There are some feeble remains here of an amphitheatre of two hundred feet diameter, and of an aqueduct in brick. The Pont d’Ainay has nine arches of forty feet from centre to centre. The piers are of six feet. The almond is in bloom.
DAUPHINE. From St. Fond to Mornant. March 15, 16, 17, 18. The Rhone makes extensive plains, which lie chiefly on the eastern side, and are often in two stages. Those of Montelimart are three,or four miles wide, and rather good. Sometimes, as in the neighborhood of Vienne, the hills come in precipices to the river, resembling then very much our Susquehanna and its hill, except that the Susquehanna is ten times as wide as the Rhone. The highlands are often very level. The soil both of hill and plain, where there is soil, is generally tinged, more or less, with red. The hills are sometimes mere masses of rock, sometimes a mixture of loose stone and earth. The plains are always stony, and as often as otherwise covered perfectly with a coat of round stones, of the size of the fist, so as to resemble the remains of inundations, from which all the soil has been carried away. Sometimes they are middling good, sometimes barren. In the neighborhood of Lyons there is more corn than wine. Towards Tains more wine than corn. From thence the plains, where best, are in corn, clover, almonds, mulberries, walnuts: where there is still some earth, they are in corn, almonds, and oaks. The hills are in vines. There is a good deal of forest-wood near Lyons, but not much afterwards. Scarcely any enclosures. There are a few small sheep before we reach Tains; there the’number increases.
Nature never formed a country of more savage aspect, than that on both sides the Rhone. A huge torrent rushes like an arrow between high precipices, often of massive rock, at other times of loose stone, with but little earth. Yet has the hand of man subdued this savage scene, by planting corn where there is a little fertility, trees where there is still less, and vines where there is none. On the whole, it assumes a romantic, picturesque, and pleasing air. The hills on the opposite side of the river, being high, steep, and laid up in terraces, are of a singular appearance. Where the hills are quite in waste, they are covered with broom, whins, box, and some clusters of small pines. The high mountains of Dauphine and Languedoc are now covered with snow. The almond is in general bloom, and the willow putting out its leaf. There were formerly olives at Tain; but a great cold, some years ago, killed them, and they have not been replanted. I am told at Montelimart, that an almond tree yields about three livres profit a year. Supposing them three toises apart, there will be one hundred to the arpent, which gives three hundred livres a year, besides the corn growing on the same ground. A league below Vienne, on the opposite side of the river, is Cote Rotie. It is a string of broken hills, extending a league on the river, from the village of Ampuis to the town of Condrieu. The soil is white, tinged a little, sometimes, with yellow, sometimes with red, stony, poor, and laid up in terraces. Those parts of the hills only, which look to the sun at mid-day, or the earlier hours of the afternoon, produce wines of the first quality. Seven hundred vines, three feet apart, yield a feuillette, which is about two and a half pièces, to the arpent. The best red wine is produced at the upper end, in the neighborhood of Ampuis; the best white, next to Condrieu. They sell of the first quality and last vintage, at one hundred and fifty livres the pièce, equal to twelve sous the bottle. Transportation to Paris is sixty livres, and the bottle four sous; so it may be delivered at Paris in bottles, at twenty sous. When old, it costs ten or eleven louis the pièce. There is a quality which keeps well, bears transportation, and cannot be drunk under four years. Another must be drunk at a year old. They are equal in flavor and price.
The wine called Hermitage, is made on the hills impending over the village of Tain; on one of which is the hermitage which gives name to the hills for about two miles, and to the wine made on them. There are but three of those hills which produce wine of the first quality, and of these, the middle regions only. They are about three hundred feet perpendicular height, three quarters of a mile in length, and have a southern aspect. The soil is scarcely tinged red, consists of small rotten stone, and is, where the best wine is made, without any perceptible mixture of earth. It is in sloping terraces. They use a little dung. An homme de vignes, which consists of seven hundred plants, three feet apart, yields generally about three quarters of a pièce, which is nearly four pièces to the arpent. When new, the pièce is sold at about two hundred and twenty-five livres; when old, at three hundred. It cannot be drunk under four years, and improves fastest in a hot situation. There is so little white made in proportion to the red, that it is difficult to buy it separate. They make the white sell the red. If bought separately, it is from fifteen to sixteen louis the pièce, new, and three livres the bottle, old. To give quality to the red, they mix one eighth of white grapes. Portage to Paris is seventy-two livres the pièce, weighing six hundred pounds. There are but about one thousand pièces of both red and white, of the first quality, made annually. Vineyards are never rented here, nor are laborers in the vineyard hired by the year. They leave buds proportioned to the strength of the vine, sometimes as much as fifteen inches. The last hermit died in 1751.
In the neighborhood of Montelimart, and below that, they plant vines in rows, six, eight, or ten feet apart, and two feet asunder in the row, filling the intervals with corn. Sometimes the vines are in double rows, two feet apart. I saw single asses in ploughs proportioned to their strength. There are few chateaux in this province. The people, too, are mostly gathered into villages. There are, however, some scattering farm-houses. These are made either of mud, or of round stone and mud. They make enclosures also, in both those ways. Day-laborers receive, sixteen or eighteen sous the day, and feed themselves. Those by the year receive, men three louis, women half that, and are fed. They rarely eat meat; a single hog, salted, being the year’s stock for a family. But they have plenty of cheese, eggs, potatoes, and other vegetables, and walnut oil with their salad. It is a trade here, to gather dung along the road for their vines. This proves they have few cattle. I have seen neither hares nor partridges since I left Paris, nor wild fowl on any of the rivers. The roads from Lyons to St. Rambert are neither paved nor gravelled. After that, they are coated with broken flint. The ferry-boats on the Rhone and the Isere, are moved by the stream, and very rapidly. On each side of the river is a moveable stage, one end of which is on an axle and two wheels, which, according to the tide, can be advanced or withdrawn, so as to apply to the gunwale of the boat. The Praetorian Palace at Vienne, is forty-four feet wide, of the Corinthian order, four columns in front, and four in flank. It was begun in the year 400, and finished by Charlemagne.
The sepulchral Pyramid, a little way out of the town, has an order for its basement, the pedestal of which, from point to point of its cap, is twenty-four feet, one inch. At each angle, is a column, engaged one fourth in the wall. The circumference of the three fourths disengaged, is four feet four inches; consequently, the diameter is twenty-three inches. The base of the column indicates it to be Ionic, but the capitals are not formed. The cornice, too, is a bastard Ionic, without modillions or dentils. Between the columns, on each side, is an arch of eight feet, four inches, opening with a pilaster on each side of it. On the top of the basement is a zocle, in the plane of the frieze below. On that is the pyramid, its base in the plane of the collarins of the pilaster below. The pyramid is a little truncated on its top. This monument is inedited.
March 18. Principality of Orange. The plains on the Rhone here, are two or three leagues wide, reddish, good, in corn, clover, almonds, olives. No forests. Here begins the country of olives, there being very few till we enter this principality. They are the only tree which I see planted among vines. Thyme grows wild here on the hills. Asses, very small, sell here for two or three louis. The high hills in Dauphine are covered with snow. The remains of the Roman aqueduct are of brick: a fine pièce of Mosaic, still on its bed, forming the floor of a cellar. Twenty feet of it still visible. They are taking down the circular wall of the Amphitheatre to pave a road.
March 19 to 23. LANGUEDOC. Pont-St.-Esprit. Bagnols. Connaux. Valignitres. Remoulins. St. Gervasy. Vismes. Pont d’Aries. To Remoulins, there is a mixture of hill and dale. Thence to Nismes, hills on the right, on the left, plains extending to the Rhone and the sea. The hills are rocky. Where there is soil, it is reddish and poor. The -plains generally reddish and good, but stony. When you approach the Rhone, going to Arles, the soil becomes a dark gray loam with some sand, and very good. The culture is corn, clover, saintfoin, olives, vines, mulberries, willow, and some almonds. There is no forest. The hills are enclosed in dry stone-wall. Many sheep.
From the summit of the first hill, after leaving Pont-St.-Esprit, there is a beautiful view of the bridge at about two miles’ distance, and a fine landscape of the country both ways. From thence, an excellent road, judiciously conducted, through very romantic scenes. In one part, descending the face of a hill, it is laid out in serpentine, and not zigzag, to ease the descent. In others, it passes through a winding meadow, from fifty to one hundred yards wide, walled, as it were, on both sides, by hills of rock; and at length issues into plain country. The waste hills are covered with thyme, box, and chene-vert. Where the body of the mountains has a surface of soil, the summit has sometimes a crown of rock, as observed in Champagne. At Nismes, the earth is full of lime-stone. The horses are shorn. They are now pruning the olive. A very good tree produces sixty pounds of olives, which yield fifteen pounds of oil: the best quality selling at twelve sous the pound, retail, and ten sous, wholesale. The high hills of Languedoc still covered with snow. The horse-chestnut and mulberry are leafing; apple trees and peas blossoming. The first butterfly I have seen. After the vernal equinox, they are often six or eight months without rain. Many separate farm-houses, numbers of people in rags, and abundance of beggars. The mine of wheat, weighing thirty pounds, costs four livres and ten sous. Wheat bread, three sous the pound. Vin ordinaire, good, and of a strong body, two or three sous the bottle. Oranges, one sous apiece. They are nearly finishing at Nismes a great mill, worked by a steam-engine, which pumps water from a lower into an upper cistern, from whence two overshot wheels are supplied, each of which turns two pair of stones. The upper cistern being once filled with water, it passes through the wheels into the lower one, from whence it is returned to the upper by the pumps. A stream of water of one quarter or one half inch diameter, supplies the waste of evaporation, absorption, fee. This is furnished from a well by a horse. The arches of the Pont-St.-Esprit are of eighty-eight feet. Wild figs, very flourishing, grow out of the joints of the Pont-du-Gard. The fountain of Nismes is so deep, that a stone was thirteen seconds descending from the surface to the bottom.
March 24. From Nismes to Arles. The plains extending from Nismes to the Rhone, in the direction of Aries, are broken in one place by a skirt of low hills. They are red and stony at first, but as you approach the Rhone, they are of a dark gray mould, with a little sand, and very good. They are in corn and clover, vines, olives, almonds, mulberries, and willow. There are some sheep, no wood, no enclosures.
The high hills of Languedoc are covered with snow. At an ancient church, in the suburbs of Aries, are some hundreds of ancient stone coffins, along the road-side. The ground is thence called Les Champs Elysees. In a vault in a church, are some curiously wrought, and in a back yard are many ancient statues, inscriptions, &c. Within the town are a part of two Corinthian columns, and of the pediment with which they were crowned, very rich, having belonged to the ancient capitol of the place.
But the principal monument here, is an amphitheatre, the external portico of which is tolerably complete. How many porticoes there were, cannot be seen; but at one of the principal gates there are still five, measuring, from out to in, seventy-eight feet, ten inches, the vault diminishing inwards. There are sixty-four arches, each of which is, from centre to centre, twenty feet, six inches. Of course, the diameter is of four hundred and thirty-eight feet; or of four hundred and fifty feet, if we suppose the four principal arches a little larger than the rest. The ground floor is supported on innumerable vaults. The first story, externally, has a tall pedestal, like a pilaster, between every two arches; the upper story, a column, the base of which would indicate it Corinthian. Every column is truncated as low as the impost of the arch, but the arches are all entire. The whole of the upper entablature is gone, and of the Attic, if there was one. Not a single seat of the internal is visible. The whole of the inside, and nearly the whole of the outside, is masked by buildings. It is supposed there are one thousand inhabitants within the amphitheatre. The walls are more entire and firm than those of the ampitheatre at Nismes. I suspect its plan and distribution to have been very different from that.
Terrasson. The plains of the Rhone from Arles to this place, are a league or two wide; the mould is of a dark gray, good, in corn and lucerne. Neither wood, nor enclosures. Many sheep.
St. Remy. From Terrasson to St. Remy, is a plain of a league or two wide, bordered by broken hills of massive rock. It is gray and stony, mostly in olives. Some almonds, mulberries, willows, vines, corn, and lucerne. Many sheep. No forest, nor enclosures.
A laboring man’s wages here, are one hundred and fifty livres, a woman’s half, and fed. Two hundred and eighty pounds of wheat sell for forty-two livres. They make no butter here. It costs, when brought, fifteen sous the pound. Oil is ten sous the pound. Tolerably good olive trees yield, one with another, about twenty pounds of oil. An olive tree must be twenty years old before it has paid its own expenses. It lasts for ever. In 1765, it was so cold, that the Rhone was frozen over at Aries for two months. In 1767, there was a cold spell of a week, which killed all the olive trees. From being fine weather, in one hour there was ice hard enough to bear a horse. It killed people on the road. The old roots of the olive trees put out again. Olive grounds sell for twenty-four livres a tree, and lease at twenty-four sous the tree. The trees are fifteen pieds apart. But lucerne is a more profitable culture. An arpent yields one hundred quintals of hay a year, worth three livres the quintal. It is cut four or five times a year. It is sowed in the broadcast, and lasts five or six years. An arpent of ground for corn rents at from thirty to thirty-six livres. Their leases are for six or nine years. They plant willow for fire-wood, and for hoops to their casks. It seldom rains here in summer. There are some chateaux, many separate farm-houses, good, and ornamented in the small way, so as to show that the tenant’s whole time is not occupied in procuring physical necessaries.
March 25. Orgon. Pontroyal. St. Cannat. From Orgon to Pontroyal, after quitting the plains of the Rhone, the country seems still to be a plain, cut into compartments by chains of mountains of massive rock, running through it in various directions. From Pontroyal to St. Cannat, the land lies rather in basins. The soil is very various, gray and clay, gray and stony, red and stony; sometimes good, sometimes middling, often barren. We find some golden willows. Towards Pontroyal, the hills begin to be in vines and afterwards in some pasture of greensward and clover. About Orgon are some enclosures of quick-set, others of conical yews planted close. Towards St. Cannat, they begin to be of stone.
The high mountains are covered with snow. Some separate farm-houses of mud. Near Pontroyal is a canal for watering the country; one branch goes to Terrasson, the other to Arles.
March 25, 26, 27, 28. Aix. The country is waving, in vines, pasture of greensward and clover, much enclosed with stone, and abounding with sheep.
On approaching Aix, the valley which opens from thence towards the mouth of the Rhone and the sea, is rich and beautiful; a perfect grove of olive trees, mixed among which are corn, lucerne, and vines. The waste grounds throw out thyme and lavender. Wheat bread is three sous the pound. Cow’s milk sixteen sous the quart, sheep’s milk six sous, butter of sheep’s milk twenty sous the pound. Oil, of the best quality, is twelve sous the pound, and sixteen sous if it be virgin oil. This is what runs from the olive when put into the press, spontaneously; afterwards they are forced by the press and by hot water. Dung costs ten sous the one hundred pounds. Their fire-wood is chene-vert and willow. The latter is lopped every three years. An ass sells for from one to three louis; the best mules for thirty louis. The best asses will carry two hundred pounds; the best horses three hundred pounds; the best mules six hundred pounds. The temperature of the mineral waters of Aix is 90° of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, at the spout. A mule eats half as much as a horse. The allowance to an ass for the day, is a handful of bran mixed with straw. The price of mutton and beef, about six and a half sous the pound. The beef comes from Auvergne, and is poor and bad. The mutton is small, but of excellent flavor. The wages of a laboring man are one hundred and fifty livres the year, a woman’s sixty to sixty-six livres, and fed. Their bread is half wheat, half rye, made once in three or four weeks, to prevent too great a consumption. In the morning they eat bread with an anchovy, or an onion. Their dinner in the middle of the day is bread, soup, and vegetables. Their supper the same. With their vegetables, they have always oil and vinegar. The oil costs about eight sous the pound. They drink what is called piquette. This is made after the grapes are pressed, by pouring hot water on the pumice. On Sunday they have meat and wine. Their wood for building comes mostly from the Alps, down the Durance and Rhone. A stick of pine, fifty feet long, girting six feet and three inches at one end, and three feet three inches at the other, costs, delivered here, from fifty-four to sixty livres. Sixty pounds of wheat cost seven livres. One of their little asses will travel with his burthen about five or six leagues a day, and day by day; a mule from six to eight leagues.*
* It is twenty American miles from Aix to Marseilles, and they call it five leagues. Their league, then, is of four American miles.
March 29. Marseilles. The country is hilly, intersected by chains of hills and mountains of massive rock. The soil is reddish, stony, and indifferent where best. Wherever there is any soil, it is covered with olives. Among these are corn, vines, some lucerne, mulberry, some almonds, and willow. Neither enclosures, nor forest. A very few sheep.
On the road I saw one of those little whirlwinds which we have in Virginia, also some gullied hill-sides. The people are in separate establishments. Ten morning observations of the thermometer, from the 20th to the 31st of March inclusive, made at Nismes, St. Remy, Aix, and Marseilles, give me an average of 52 1/2°, and 46° and 61°, for the greatest and least morning heats. Nine afternoon observations, yield an average of 62 2/3°, and 57° and 66°, the greatest and least. The longest day here, from sunrise to sunset, is fifteen hours and fourteen minutes; the shortest is eight hours and forty-six minutes; the latitude being ---------.
There are no tides in the Mediterranean. It is observed to me, that the olive tree grows nowhere more than thirty leagues distant from that sea. I suppose, however, that both Spain and Portugal furnish proofs to the contrary, and doubt its truth as to Asia, Africa, and America. They are six or eight months at a time, here, without rain. The most delicate figs known in Europe, are those growing about this place, called figues Marseilloises, or les veritables Marseilloises, to distinguish them from others of inferior quality growing here. These keep any length of time. All others exude a sugar in the spring of the year, and become sour. The only process for preserving them, is drying them in the sun, without putting any thing to them whatever. They sell at fifteen sous the pound, while there are others as cheap as five sous the pound. I meet here a small dried grape from Smyrna, without a seed. There are few of the plants growing in this neighborhood. The best grape for drying, known here, is called des Panses. They are very large, with a thick skin and much juice. They are best against a wall of southern aspect, as their abundance of juice requires a great deal of sun to dry it. Pretty good fig trees are about the size of the apricot tree, and yield about twenty pounds of figs when dry, each. But the largest will yield the value of a louis. They are sometimes fifteen inches in diameter. It is said that the Marseilles fig degenerates when transported into any other part of the country. The leaves of the mulberry tree will sell for about three livres, the purchaser gathering them. The caper is a creeping plant. It is killed to the roots every winter. In the spring it puts out branches, which creep to the distance of three feet from the centre. The fruit forms on the stem, as that extends itself, and must be gathered every day, as it forms. This is the work of women. The pistache grows in this neighborhood also, but not very good. They eat them in their milky state. Monsieur de Bergasse has a wine-cellar two hundred and forty pieds long, in which are one hundred and twenty tons, of from fifty to one hundred pièces each. These tons are twelve pieds diameter, the staves four inches thick, the heading two and a half pouces thick. The temperature of his cellar is of 9 1/2° of Reaumur. The best method of packing wine, when bottled, is to lay the bottles on their side, and cover them with sand. The 2d of April, the young figs are formed; the 4th we have Windsor beans. They have had asparagus ever since the middle of March. The 5th, I see strawberries and the Guelder rose in blossom. To preserve the raisin, it is first dipped into ley, and then dried in the sun. The aloe grows in the open ground. I measure a mule, not the largest, five feet and two inches high. Marseilles is in an amphitheatre, at the mouth of the Veaune, surrounded by high mountains of naked rock, distant two or three leagues. The country within that amphitheatre is a mixture of small hills, vallies, and plains. The latter are naturally rich. The hills and vallies are forced into production. Looking from the Chateau de Notre Dame de la Garde, it would seem as if there was a bastide for every arpent. The plain-lands sell for one hundred louis the carterelle, which is less than an acre. The ground of the arsenal in Marseilles sold for from fifteen to forty louis the square verge, being nearly the square yard English. In the fields open to the sea, they are obliged to plant rows of canes, every here and there, to break the force of the wind. Saw at the Chateau Borelli pumps worked by the wind.
April 6. From Marseilles to Aubagne. A valley on the Veaune, bordered on each side by high mountains of massive rock, on which are only some small pines. The interjacent valley is of small hills, vallies, and plains, reddish, gravelly, and originally poor, but fertilized by art, and covered with corn, vines, olives, figs, almonds, mulberries, lucerne, and clover. The river is twelve or fifteen feet wide, one or two feet deep, and rapid.
From Aubagne to Cuges, Beausset, Toulon. The road, quitting the Veaune and its wealthy valley, a little after Aubagne, enters those mountains of rock, and is engaged with them about a dozen miles. Then it passes six or eight miles through a country still very hilly and stony, but laid up in terraces, covered with olives, vines, and corn. It then follows for two or three miles a hollow between two of those high mountains, which has been, found or made by a small stream. The mountains then reclining a little from their perpendicular, and presenting a coat of soil, reddish, and tolerably good, have given place to the little village of Olioules, in the gardens of which are oranges in the open ground. It continues hilly till we enter the plain of Toulon. On different parts of this road there are figs in the open fields. At Cuges is a plain of about three fourths of a mile diameter, surrounded by high mountains of rock. In this the caper is principally cultivated. The soil is mulatto, gravelly, and of middling quality, or rather indifferent. The plants are set in quincunx, about eight feet apart. They have been covered during winter by a hill of earth a foot high. They are now enclosing, pruning, and ploughing them.
Toulon. From Olioules to Toulon the figs are in the open fields. Some of them have stems of fifteen inches diameter. They generally fork near the ground, but sometimes have a single stem of five feet long. They are as large as apricot trees. The olive trees of this day’s journey are about the size of large apple trees. The people are in separate establishments. Toulon is in a valley at the mouth of the Goutier, a little river of the size of the Veaune; surrounded by high mountains of naked rock, leaving some space between them and the sea. This space is hilly, reddish, gravelly, and of middling quality, in olives, vines, corn, almonds, figs, and capers. The capers are planted eight feet apart. A bush yields, one year with another, two pounds, worth twelve sous the pound. Every plant, then, yields twenty-four sous, equal to one shilling sterling. An acre, containing six hundred and seventy-six plants, would yield thirty-three pounds sixteen shillings sterling. The fruit is gathered by women, who can gather about twelve pounds a day. They begin to gather about the last of June, and end about the middle of October. Each plant must be picked every day. These plants grow equally well in the best or worst soil, or even in the walls, where there is no soil. They will last the life of a man, or longer. The heat is so great at Toulon in summer, as to occasion very great cracks in the earth. Where the caper is in a soil that will admit it, they plough it. They have pease here through the winter, sheltering them occasionally; and they have had them ever since the 25th of March, without shelter.
April 6. Hieres. This is a plain of two or three miles diameter, bounded by the sea on one side, and mountains of rock on the other. The soil is reddish, gravelly, tolerably good, and well watered. It is in olives, mulberries, vines, figs, corn, and some flax. There are also some cherry trees. From Hieres to the sea, which is two or three miles, is a grove of orange trees, olives, and mulberries. The largest orange tree is of two feet diameter one way, and one foot the other (for the section of all the larger ones would be an oval, not a round), and about twenty feet high. Such a tree will yield about six thousand oranges a year. The garden of M. Fille has fifteen thousand six hundred orange, trees. Some years they yield forty thousand livres, some only ten thousand; but generally about twenty-five thousand. The trees are from eight to ten feet apart. They are blossoming and bearing, all the year, flowers and fruit in every stage at the same time. But the best fruit is that which is gathered in April and May. Hieres is a village of about five thousand inhabitants, at the foot of a mountain, which covers it from the north, and from which extends a plain of two or three miles to the sea-shore. It has no port. Here are palm trees twenty or thirty feet high, but they bear no fruit. There is also a botanical garden kept by the King. Considerable salt-ponds here. Hieres is six miles from the public road. It is built on a narrow spur of the mountain. The streets in every direction are steep, in steps of stairs, and about eight feet wide. No carriage of any kind can enter it. The wealthier inhabitants use chaises à porteurs. But there are few wealthy, the bulk of the inhabitants being laborers of the earth. At a league’s distance in the sea is an island, on which is the Chateau de Géans, belonging to the Marquis de Pontoives: there is a causeway leading to it. The cold of the last November killed the leaves of a great number of the orange-trees, and some of the trees themselves.
From Hieres to Cuers, Pignans, Luc, is mostly a plain, with mountains on each hand at a mile or two distance. The soil is generally reddish, and the latter part very red and good. The growth is olives, figs, vines, mulberries, corn, clover, and lucerne. The olive trees are from three to four feet in diameter. There are hedges of pomegranates, sweet-briar, and broom. A great deal of thyme growing wild. There are some enclosures of stone; some sheep and goats.
April 9. From Luc to Vidavban, Muy, Frejus, the road leads through vallies, and crosses occasionally the mountains which separate them. The vallies are tolerably good, always red and stony, gravelly or gritty. Their produce as before. The mountains are barren.
Lesterelle, Napoule. Eighteen miles of ascent and descent of a very high mountain. Its growth, where capable of any, two-leaved pine, very small, and some chêne vert.
Antibes, Nice. From Napoule the road is generally near the sea, passing over little hills or strings of vallies, the soil stony, and much below mediocrity in its quality. Here and there is a good plain.
There is snow on the high mountains. The first frogs I have heard are of this day (the 9th). At Antibes are oranges in the open ground, but in small enclosures; palm trees also. From thence to the Var are the largest fig trees and olive trees I have seen. The fig trees are eighteen inches in diameter, and six feet stem; the olives sometimes six feet in diameter, and as large heads as the largest low-ground apple trees. This tree was but a shrub where I first fell in with it, and has become larger and larger to this place. The people are mostly in villages. The several provinces, and even cantons, are distinguished by the form of the women’s hats, so that one may know of what canton a woman is by her hat.
Nice. The pine-bur is used here for kindling fires. The people are in separate establishments. With respect to the orange, there seems to be no climate on this side of the Alps sufficiently mild in itself to preserve it without shelter. At Olioules they are between two high mountains; at Hieres covered on the north by a very high mountain; at Antibes and Nice covered by mountains, and also within small, high enclosures. Quære. To trace the true line from east to west, which forms the northern and natural limit of that fruit? Saw an elder tree (sambucus) near Nice, fifteen inches in diameter, and eight feet stem. The wine made in this neighborhood is good, though not of the first quality. There are one thousand mules, loaded with merchandise, which pass every week between Nice and Turin, counting those coming as well as going.
April 13. Scarena. Sospello. There are no orange trees after we leave the environs of Nice. We lose the olive after rising a little above the village of Scarena, on Mount Braus, and find it again on the other side, a little before we get down to Sospello. But wherever there is soil enough it is terraced, and in corn. The waste parts are either in two-leaved pine and thyme, or of absolutely naked rock. Sospello is on a little torrent, called Bevera, which runs into the river Roia, at the mouth of which is Ventimiglia. The olive trees on the mountain are now loaded with fruit; while some at Sospello are in blossom. Fire-wood here and at Scarena costs fifteen sous the quintal.
April 14. Ciandola. Tende. In crossing Mount Brois we lose the olive tree after getting to a certain height, and find it again on the other side at the village of Breglio. Here we come to the river Roia, which, after receiving the branch on which is Sospello, leads to the sea at Ventimiglia. The Roia is about twelve yards wide, and abounds with speckled trout. Were a road made from Breglio, along the side of the Roia to Ventimiglia, it might turn the commerce of Turin to this last place instead of Nice; because it would avoid the mountains of Braus and Brois, leaving only that of Tende; that is to say, it would avoid more than half the difficulties of the passage. Further on, we come to the Chateau di Saorgio, where a scene is presented the most singular and picturesque I ever saw. The castle and village seem hanging to a cloud in front. On the right is a mountain cloven through, to let pass a gurgling stream; on the left, a river, over which is thrown a magnificent bridge. The whole forms a basin, the sides of which are shagged with rocks, olive trees, vines, herds, &c. Near here I saw a tub-wheel without a ream; the trunk descended from the top of the water-fall to the wheel in a direct line, but with the usual inclination. The produce along this passage is most generally olives, except on the heights as before observed; also corn, vines, mulberries, figs, cherries, and walnuts. They have cows, goats, and sheep. In passing on towards Tende, olives fail us ultimately at the village of Fontan, and there the chestnut trees begin in good quantity. Ciandola consists of only two houses, both taverns. Tende is a very inconsiderable village, in which they have not yet the luxury of glass windows: nor in any of the villages on this passage have they yet the fashion of powdering the hair. Common stone and limestone are so abundant, that the apartments of every story are vaulted with stone to save wood.
April 15. Limone. Coni. I see abundance of lime-stone as far as the earth is uncovered with snow; i.e. within half or three quarters of an hour’s walk of the top. The snows descend much lower on the eastern than western side. Wherever there is soil, there is corn quite to the commencement of the snows, and I suppose under them also. The waste parts are in two-leaved pine, lavender, and thyme. From the foot of the mountain to Coni the road follows a branch of the Po, the plains of which begin narrow, and widen at length into a general plain country, bounded on one side by the Alps. They are good, dark-colored, sometimes tinged with red, and in pasture, corn, mulberries, and some almonds. The hill-sides bordering these plains are reddish, and where they admit of it are in corn; but this is seldom. They are mostly in chestnut, and often absolutely barren. The whole of the plains are plentifully watered from the river, as is much of the hill-side. A great deal of golden willow all along the rivers on the whole of this passage through the Alps. The southern parts of France, but still more the passage through the Alps, enable one to form a scale of the tenderer plants, arranging them according to their several powers of resisting cold. Ascending three different mountains, Braus, Brois, and Tende, they disappear one after another: and descending on the other side, they show themselves again one after another. This is their order, from the tenderest to the hardiest. Caper, orange, palm, aloe, olive, pomegranate, walnut, fig, almond. But this must be understood of the plant; for as to the fruit, the order is somewhat different. The caper, for example, is the tenderest plant, yet being so easily protected, it is the most certain in its fruit. The almond, the hardiest plant, loses its fruit the oftenest on account of its forwardness. The palm, hardier than the caper and the orange, never produces perfect fruit in these parts. Coni is a considerable town, and pretty well built. It is walled.
April 16. Centale. Savigliano. Racconigi. Poirino. Turin. The Alps, as far as they are in view from north to south, show the gradation of climate by the line which terminates the snows lying on them. This line begins at their foot northwardly, and rises as they pass on to the south, so as to be half way up their sides on the most southern undulations of the mountain now in view. From the mountains to Turin we see no tree tenderer than the walnut. Of these, as well as of almonds and mulberries, there are a few: somewhat more of vines, but most generally willows and poplars. Corn is sowed with all these. They mix with them also clover and small grass. The country is a general plain; the soil dark, and sometimes, though rarely, reddish. It is rich, and much infested with wild onions. At Racconigi I see the tops and shocks of maize, which prove it is cultivated here: but it can be in small quantities only, because I observe very little ground but what has already something else in it. Here and there are small patches prepared, I suppose, for maize. They have a method of planting the vine, which I have not seen before. At intervals of about eight feet they plant from two to six plants of vine in a cluster At each cluster they fix a forked staff, the plane of the prongs of the fork at a right angle with the row of vines. Athwart these prongs they lash another staff, like a handspike, about eight feet long, horizontally, seven or eight feet from the ground. Of course, it crosses the rows at right angles. The vines are brought from the foot of the fork up to this cross-piece, turned over it, and conducted along over the next, the next, and so on, as far as they will extend, the whole forming an arbor eight feet wide and high and of the whole length of the row, little interrupted by the stems of the vines, which being close around the fork, pass up through hoops, so as to occupy a space only of small diameter. All the buildings in this country are of brick, sometimes covered with plaister, sometimes not. There is a very large and handsome bridge, of seven arches, over the torrent of Sangone. We cross the Po in swinging batteaux. Two are placed side by side, and kept together by a plank-floor, common to both, and lying on the gunwales. The carriage drives on this, without taking out any of the horses. About one hundred and fifty yards up the river is a fixed stake, and a rope tied to it, the other end of which is made fast to one side of the batteaux, so as to throw them oblique to the current. The stream then acting on them, as on an inclined plane, forces them across the current in the portion of a circle, of which the rope is the radius. To support the rope in its whole length, there are two intermediate canoes, about fifty yards apart, in the heads of which are short masts. To the top of these the rope is lashed, the canoes being free otherwise to concur with the general vibration in their smaller arcs of circles. The Po is there about fifty yards wide, and about one hundred in the neighborhood of Turin.
April 17, 18. Turin. The first nightingale I have heard this year is to-day (18th). There is a red wine of Nebiule made in this neighborhood, which is very singular. It is about as sweet as the silky Madeira, as astringent on the palate as Bordeaux, and as brisk as Champagne. It is a pleasing wine. At Moncaglieri, about six miles from Turin, on the right side of the Po, begins a ridge of mountains, which, following the Po by Turin, after some distance, spreads wide, and forms the duchy of Montferrat. The soil is mostly red, and in vines, affording a wine called Montferrat, which is thick and strong.
April 19. Settimo. Chivasso. Ciliano. S. Germano. Vercelli. The country continues plain and rich, the soil black. The culture, corn, pasture, maize, vines, mulberries, walnuts, some willow, and poplar. The maize bears a very small proportion to the small grain. The earth is formed into ridges from three to four feet wide, and the maize sowed in the broad-cast, on the higher parts of the ridge, so as to cover a third or half of the whole surface. It is sowed late in May. This country is plentifully and beautifully watered at present. Much of it is by torrents, which are dry in summer. These torrents make a great deal of waste ground, covering it with sand and stones. These wastes are sometimes planted in trees, sometimes quite unemployed. They make hedges of willows, by setting the plants from one to three feet apart. When they are grown to the height of eight or ten feet, they bend them down, and interlace them one with another. I do not see any of these, however, which are become old. Probably, therefore, they soon die. The women here smite on the anvil, and work with the maul and spade. The people of this country are ill dressed in comparison with those of France, and there are more spots of uncultivated ground. The plough here is made with a single handle, which is a beam twelve feet long, six inches in diameter below, and tapered to about two inches at the upper end. They use goads for the oxen, not whips. The first swallows I have seen are to-day. There is a wine called Gatina, made in the neighborhood of Vercelli, both red and white. The latter resembles Calcavallo. There is also a red wine of Salusola, which is esteemed. It is very light. In the neighborhood of Vercelli begin the rice-fields. The water with which they are watered is very dear. They do not permit rice to be sown within two miles of the cities, on account of the insalubrity. Notwithstanding this, when the water is drawn off the fields, in August, the whole country is subject to agues and fevers. They estimate, that the same measure of ground yields three times as much rice as wheat, and with half the labor. They are now sowing. As soon as sowed, they let on the water two or three inches deep. After six weeks, or two months, they draw it off to weed; then let it on again, and it remains till August, when it is drawn off, about three or four weeks before the grain is ripe. In September they cut it. It is first threshed; then beaten in the mortar to separate the husk; then, by different siftings, it is separated into three qualities. Twelve rupes, equal to three hundred pounds of twelve ounces each, sell for sixteen livres, money of Piedmont, where the livre is exactly the shilling of England. Twelve rupes of maize sell for nine livres. The machine for separating the husk is thus made. In the axis of a water-wheel are a number of arms inserted, which, as they revolve, catches each the cog of a pestle, lifts it to a certain height, and lets it fall again. These pestles are five and a quarter inches square, ten feet long, and at their lower end formed into a truncated cone of three inches diameter, where cut off. The conical part is covered with iron. The pestles are ten and a half inches apart in the clear. They pass through two horizontal beams, which string them, as it were, together, and while the mortises in the beams are so loose, as to let the pestles work vertically, it restrains them to that motion. There is a mortar of wood, twelve or fifteen inches deep, under each pestle, covered with a board, the hole of which is only large enough to let the pestle pass freely. There are two arms in the axis for every pestle, so that the pestle gives two strokes for every revolution of the wheel. Poggio, a muleteer, who passes every week between Vercelli and Genoa, will smuggle a sack of rough rice for me to, Genoa; it being death to export it in that form. They have good cattle, and in good number, mostly cream-colored; and some middle-sized sheep. The streams furnish speckled trout.
April 20. Novara. Buffalora. Sedriano. Milan. From Vercelli to Novara the fields are all in rice, and now mostly under water. The dams separating the several water-plats or ponds, are set in willow. At Novara there are some figs in the gardens in situations well protected. From Novara to the Ticino it is mostly stony and waste, grown up in broom. From Ticino to Milan it is all in corn. Among the corn are willows, principally, a good many mulberries, some walnuts, and here and there an almond. The country still a plain, the soil black and rich, except between Novara and the Ticino, as before mentioned. There is very fine pasture round Vercelli and Novara to the distance of two miles, within which rice is not permitted. We cross the Sisto on the same kind of vibrating or pendulum boat as on the Po. The river is eighty or ninety yards wide; the rope fastened to an island two hundred yards above, and supported by five intermediate canoes. It is about one and a half inches in diameter. On these rivers they use a short oar of twelve feet long, the flat end of which is hooped with iron, shooting out a prong at each corner, so that it may be used occasionally as a setting-pole. There is snow on the Apennines, near Genoa. They have still another method here of planting the vine. Along rows of trees, they lash poles from tree to tree. Between the trees, are set vines, which, passing over the pole, are carried on to the pole of the, next tree, whose vines are in like manner brought to this, and twined together; thus forming the intervals between the rows of trees, alternately, into arbors and open space. They have another method also of making quick-set hedges. Willows are planted from one to two feet apart, and interlaced, so that every one is crossed by three or four others.
April 21, 22. Milan. Figs and pomegranates grow here, unsheltered, as I am told. I saw none, and therefore suppose them rare. They had formerly olives; but a great cold, in 1709, killed them, and they have not been replanted. Among a great many houses painted al fresco, the Casa Roma and Casa Candiani, by Appiani, and Casa Belgioiosa, by Martin, are superior. In the second, is a small cabinet, the ceiling of which is in small hexagons, within which are cameos and heads painted alternately, no two the same. The salon of the Casa-Belgioiosa is superior to any thing 1 have ever seen. The mixture called scagliuola, of which they make their walls and floors, is so like the finest marble, as to be scarcely distinguishable from it. The nights of the 20th and 21st instant, the rice ponds froze half an inch thick. Droughts of two or three months are not uncommon here, in summer. About five years ago, there was such a hail as to kill cats. The Count del Verme tells me of a pendulum odometer for the wheel of a carriage. Leases here are mostly for nine years. Wheat costs a louis d’or the one hundred and forty pounds. A laboring man receives sixty livres, and is fed and lodged. The trade of this country is principally rice, raw silk, and cheese.
April 23. Casino, five miles from Milan. I examined another rice-beater of six pestles. They are eight feet nine inches long. Their ends, instead of being a truncated cone, have nine teeth of iron, bound closely together. Each tooth is a double pyramid, joined at the base. When put together, they stand with the upper ends placed in contact, so as to form them into one great cone, and the lower ends diverging. The upper are socketed into the end of the pestle, and the lower, when a little blunted by use, are not unlike the jaw-teeth of the mammoth, with their studs. They say here, that pestles armed with these teeth, clean the rice faster, and break it less. The mortar, too, is of stone, which is supposed as good as wood, and more durable. One half of these pestles are always up. They rise about twenty-one inches; and each makes thirty-eight strokes in a minute; one hundred pounds of rough rice is put into the six mortars, and beaten somewhat less than a quarter of an hour. It is then taken out, put into a sifter of four feet diameter, suspended horizontally; sifted there; shifted into another of the same size; sifted there; returned to the mortars; beaten a little more than a quarter of an hour; sifted again; and it is finished. The six pestles will clear four thousand pounds in twenty-four hours. The pound here is twenty-eight ounces: the ounce equal to that of Paris. The best rice requires half an hour’s boiling; a more indifferent kind, somewhat less. To sow the rice, they first plough the ground, then level it with a drag-harrow, and let on the water; when the earth has become soft, they smooth it with a shovel under the water, and then sow the rice in the water.
Rozzano. Parmesan cheese. It is supposed this was formerly made at Parma, and took its name thence; but none is made there now. It is made through all the country extending from Milan, for one hundred and fifty miles. The most is made about Lodi. The making of butter being connected with that of making cheese, both must be described together. There are, in the stables I saw, eighty-five cows, fed on hay and grass, not on grain. They are milked twice in twenty-four hours, ten cows yielding at the two milkings a brenta of milk, which is twenty-four of our gallons. The night’s milk is scummed in the morning at daybreak, when the cows are milked again, and the new milk mixed with the old. In three hours, the whole mass is scummed a second time, the milk remaining in a kettle for cheese, and the cream being put into a cylindrical churn, shaped like a grind-stone, eighteen inches radius, and fourteen inches thick. In this churn, there are three staves pointing inwardly, endwise, to break the current of the milk. Through its centre passes an iron axis, with a handle at each end. It is turned, about an hour and an half, by two men, till the butter is produced. Then they pour off the butter-milk, and put in some water which they agitate backwards and forwards about a minute, and pour it off. They take out the butter, press it with their hands into loaves, and stamp it. It has no other washing. Sixteen American gallons of milk yield fifteen pounds of butter, which sell at twenty-four sous the pound.
The milk, which, after being scummed as before, had been put into a copper kettle, receives its due quantity of rennet, and is gently warmed, if the season requires it. In about four hours, it becomes a slip. Then the whey begins to separate. A little, of it is taken out. The curd is then thoroughly broken by a machine like a chocolate-mill. A quarter of an ounce of saffron is put to seven brentas of milk, to give color to the cheese. The kettle is then moved over the hearth, and heated by a quick fire till the curd is hard enough, being broken into small lumps by continued stirring. It is moved off the fire, most of the whey taken out, the curd compressed into a globe by the hand, a linen cloth slipped under it, and it is drawn out in that. A loose hoop is then laid on a bench, and the curd, as wrapped in the linen, is put into the hoop: it is a little pressed by the hand, the hoop drawn tight, and made fast. A board, two inches thick, is laid on it, and a stone on that, of about twenty pounds weight. In an hour, the whey is run off, and the cheese finished. They sprinkle a little salt on it every other day in summer, and every day in winter, for six weeks. Seven brentas of milk make a cheese of fifty pounds, which requires six months to ripen, and is then dried to forty-five pounds. It sells on the spot for eighty-eight livres, the one hundred pounds. There are now one hundred and fifty cheeses in this dairy. They are nineteen inches diameter, and six inches thick. They make a cheese a day, in summer, and two in three days, or one in two days, in winter.
The whey is put back into the kettle, the butter-milk poured into it, and of this, they make a poor cheese for the country people. The whey of this is given to the hogs. Eight men suffice to keep the cows, and to do all the business of this dairy. Mascarponi, a kind of curd, is made by pouring some butter-milk into cream, which is thereby curdled, and is then pressed in a linen cloth.
The ice-houses at Rozzano are dug about fifteen feet deep, and twenty feet diameter, and poles are driven down all round. A conical thatched roof is then put over them, fifteen feet high, and pieces of wood are laid at bottom, to keep the ice out of the water which drips from it, and goes off by a sink. Straw is laid on this wood, and then the house filled with ice, always putting straw between the ice and the walls, and covering ultimately with straw. About a third is lost by melting. Snow gives the most delicate flavor to creams; but ice is the most powerful congealer, and lasts longest. A tuft of trees surrounds these ice-houses.
Round Milan, to the distance of five miles, are corn, pasture, gardens, mulberries, willows, and vines. For, in this state, rice ponds are not permitted within five miles of the cities.
Binasco. Pavia. Near Casino the rice-ponds begin, and continue to within five miles of Pavia, the whole ground being in rice, pasture, and willows. The pasture is in the rice grounds which are resting. In the neighborhood of Pavia, again, are corn, pasture, &c. as round Milan. They gave me green pease at Pavia.
April 24. Voghera. Tortona. Novi. From Pavia to Novi corn, pasture, vines, mulberries, willows; but no rice. The country continues plain, except that the Apennines are approaching on the left. The soil, always good, is dark till we approach Novi, and then red. We cross the Po where it is three hundred yards wide, in a pendulum boat. The rope is fastened on one side of the river, three hundred yards above, and supported by eight intermediate canoes, with little masts in them to give a greater elevation to the rope. We pass in eleven minutes. Women, girls, and boys are working with the hoe, and breaking the clods with mauls.
April 25. Voltaggio. Campo-Marone. Genoa. At Novi, the Apennines begin to rise. Their growth of timber is oak, tall, small, and knotty, and chestnut. We soon lose the walnut, ascending, and find it again, about one fourth of the way down, on the south side. About halfway down, we find figs and vines, which continue fine and in great abundance. The Apennines are mostly covered with soil, and are in corn, pasture, mulberries and figs, in the parts before indicated. About half way from their foot to Genoa, at Campo-Marone, we find again the olive tree. Hence the produce becomes mixed, of all the kinds before mentioned. The method of sowing the Indian corn at Campo-Marone, is as follows. With a hoe shaped like the blade of a trowel, two feet long, and six inches broad at its upper end, pointed below, and a little curved, they make a trench. In that, they drop the grains six inches apart. Then two feet from that, they make another trench, throwing the earth they take out of that on the grain of the last one, with a singular slight and quickness; and so through the whole piece. The last trench is filled with the earth adjoining.
April 26. Genoa. Strawberries at Genoa. Scaffold poles for the upper parts of a wall, as for the third story, rest on the window sills of the story below. Slate is used here for paving, for steps, for stairs (the rise as well as tread), and for fixed Venetian blinds. At the Palazzo Marcello Durazzo, benches with straight legs, and bottoms of cane. At the Palazzo del Prencipe Lomellino, at Sestri, a phaeton with a canopy. At the former, tables folding into one plane. At Nervi they have pease, strawberries, &c. all the year round. The gardens of the Count Durazzo at Nervi, exhibit as rich a mixture of the utile dulci, as I ever saw. All the environs in Genoa are in olives, figs, oranges, mulberries, corn, and garden-stuff. Aloes in many places, but they never flower.
April 28. Noli. The Apennine and Alps appear to me to be one and the same continued ridge of mountains, separating every where the waters of the Adriatic Gulf from those of the Mediterranean. Where it forms an elbow, touching the Mediterranean, as a smaller circle touches a larger, within which it is inscribed, in the manner of a tangent, the name changes from Alps to Apennine. It is the beginning of the Apennine which constitutes the state of Genoa, the mountains there generally falling down in barren, naked precipices into the sea. Wherever there is soil on the lower parts, it is principally in olives and figs, in vines also, mulberries, and corn. Where there are hollows well protected, there are oranges. This is the case at Golfo della Spezia, Sestri, Bugiasco, Nervi, Genoa, Pegli, Savona, Finale, Oneglia (where there are abundance), St. Rerno, Ventimiglia, Mentone, and Monaco. Noli, into which I was obliged to put, by a change of wind, is forty miles from Genoa. There are twelve hundred inhabitants in the village, and many separate houses round about. One of the precipices hanging over the sea, is covered with aloes. But neither here, nor any where else I have been, could I procure satisfactory information that they ever flower. The current of testimony is to the contrary. Noli furnishes many fishermen. Paths penetrate up into the mountains in several directions, about three fourths of a mile; but these are practicable only for asses and mules. I saw no cattle nor sheep in the settlement. The wine they make, is white and indifferent. A curious cruet for oil and vinegar in one piece, I saw here. A bishop resides here, whose revenue is two thousand livres, equal to sixty-six guineas. I heard a nightingale here.
April 29. Albenga. In walking along the shore from Louano to this place, I saw no appearance of shells. The tops of the mountains are covered with snow, while there are olive trees, &c. on the lower parts. I do not remember to have seen assigned any where, the cause of the apparent color of the sea. Its water is generally clear and colorless, if taken up and viewed in a glass. That of the Mediterranean is remarkably so. Yet in the mass, it assumes, by reflection, the color of the sky or atmosphere, black, green, blue, according to the state of the weather. If any person wished to retire from his acquaintance, to live absolutely unknown, and yet in the midst of physical enjoyments, it should be in some of the little villages of this coast, where air, water, and earth concur to offer what each has, most precious. Here are nightingales, beccaficas, ortolans, pheasants, partridges, quails, a superb climate, and the power of changing it from summer to winter at any moment, by ascending the mountains. The earth furnishes wine, oil, figs, oranges, and every production of the garden, in every season. The sea yields lobsters, crabs, oysters, tunny, sardines, anchovies, &c. Ortolans sell, at this time, at thirty sous, equal to one shilling sterling, the dozen. At this season, they must be fattened. Through the whole of my route from Marseilles, I observe they plant a great deal of cane or reed, which is convenient while growing, as a cover from the cold and boisterous winds, and when cut, it serves for espaliers to vines, pease, &c. Through Piedmont, Lombardy, the Milanese, and Genoese, the garden bean is a great article of culture; almost as much so as corn. At Albenga, is a rich plain opening from between two ridges of mountains, triangularly, to the sea, and of several miles extent. Its growth is olives, figs, mulberries, vines, corn, and beans. There is some pasture. A bishop resides here, whose revenue is forty thousand livres. This place is said to be rendered unhealthy in summer, by the river which passes through the valley.
April 30. Oneglia. The wind continuing contrary, I took mules at Albenga for Oneglia. Along this tract are many of the tree called caroubier, being a species of locust. It is the ceratonia siliqua of Linnaeus. Its pods furnish food for horses, and also for the poor, in time of scarcity. It abounds in Naples and Spain. Oneglia and Port Maurice, which are within a mile of each other, are considerable places, and in a rich country. At St. Remo, are abundance of oranges and lemons, and some palm trees.
May 1. Ventimiglia. Mentone. Monaco. Nice. At Bordighera, between Ventimiglia and Mentone, are extensive plantations of palms, on the hill as well as in the plain. They bring fruit, but it does not ripen. Something is made of the midrib which is in great demand at Rome, on the Palm Sunday, and which renders this tree profitable here. From Mentone to Monaco, there is more good land, and extensive groves of oranges and lemons. Orange water sells here at forty sous, equal to sixteen pence sterling, the American quart. The distances on this coast are, from La Spezia, at the eastern end of the territories of Genoa, to Genoa, fifty-five miles, geometrical; to Savona, thirty; Albenga, thirty; Oneglia, twenty; Ventimiglia, twenty-five; Monaco, ten; Nice, ten; in the whole, one hundred and eighty miles. A superb road might be made along the margin of the sea from La Spezai, where the champaign country of Italy opens, to Nice, where the Alps go off northwardly, and the post roads of France begin; and it might even follow the margin of the sea quite to Cette. By this road, travellers would enter Italy without crossing the Alps, and all the little insulated villages of the Genoese would communicate together, and in time, form one continued village along that road.
May 3. Luc, Brignoles. Tourves. Pourcieux. La Galiniere. Long, small mountains, very rocky, the soil reddish, from bad to middling; in olives, grapes, mulberries, vines, and corn. Brignolles is an extensive plain, between two ridges of mountains, and along a water-course which continues to Tourves. Thence to Pourcieux we cross a mountain, low and easy. The country is rocky and poor. To La Galiniere are waving grounds, bounded by mountains of rock at a little distance. There are some enclosures of dry wall from Luc to La Galiniere; also, sheep and hogs. There is snow on the high mountains. I see no plums in the vicinities of Brignoles; which makes me conjecture that the celebrated plum of that name is not derived from this place.
May 8. Orgon. Avignon. Vaucluse. Orgon is on the Durance. From thence, its plain opens till it becomes common with that of the Rhone; so that from Orgon to Avignon is entirely a plain of rich dark loam, which is in willows, mulberries, vines, corn, and pasture. A very few figs. I see no olives in this plain. Probably the cold winds have too much power here. From the Bac de Nova (where we cross the Durance) to Avignon, is about nine American miles; and from the same Bac to Vaucluse, eleven miles. In the valley of Vaucluse, and on the hills impending over it, are olive trees. The stream issuing from the fountain of Vaucluse is about twenty yards wide, four or five feet deep, and of such rapidity that it could not be stemmed by a canoe. They are now mowing hay, and gathering mulberry leaves. The high mountains just back of Vaucluse, are covered with snow. Fine trout in the stream of Vaucluse, and the valley abounds peculiarly with nightingales. The vin blanc de M. de Rochequde of Avignon, resembles dry Lisbon. He sells it, at six years old, for twenty-two sous the bottle, the price of the bottle, &c. included.
Avignon. Remoulins. Some good plains, but generally hills, stony and poor. In olives, mulberries, vines, and corn. Where it is waste the growth is chéne-vert, box, furze, thyme, and rosemary.
May 10. Lismes. Lunel. Hills on the right, plains on the left. The soil reddish, a little stony, and of middling quality. The produce, olives, mulberries, vines, corn, saintfoin. No wood and few enclosures. Lunel is famous for its vin de muscat blanc, thence called Lunel, or vin muscat de Lunel. It is made from the raisin muscat, without fermenting the grain in the hopper. When fermented, it makes a red muscat, taking the tinge from the dissolution of the skin of the grape, which injures the quality. When a red muscat is required, they prefer coloring it with a little Alicant wine. But the white is best. The pièce of two hundred and forty bottles, after being properly drawn off from its lees, and ready for bottling, costs from one hundred and twenty to two hundred livres, the first, quality and last vintage. It cannot be bought old, the demand being sufficient to take it all the first year. There are not more than from fifty to one hundred pièces a year, made of this first quality. A setterie yields about one pièce, and my informer supposes there are about two setteries in an arpent. Portage to Paris, by land, is fifteen livres the quintal. The best récoltes are those of M. Bouquet and M. Tremoulet. The vines are in rows four feet apart, every way.
May 11. Montpelier. Snow on the Cevennes, still visible from here. With respect to the muscat grape, of which the wine is made, there are two kinds, the red and the white. The first has a red skin, but a white juice. If it be fermented in the cuve, the coloring matter which resides in the skin, is imparted to the wine. If not fermented in the cuve, the wine is white. Of the white grape, only a white wine can be made. The species of saintfoin cultivated here by the name of sparsette, is the hedysarum onobrychis. They cultivate a great deal of madder (garance) rubia tinctorum here, which is said to be immensely profitable. Monsieur de Gouan tells me, that the pine, of which they use the burs for fuel, is the pinus sativus, being two-leaved. They use-for an edging to the borders of their gardens, the santolina, which they call garderobe. I find the yellow clover here, in a garden, and the large pigeon succeeding well, confined in a house.
May 12. Frontignan. Some tolerably good plains in olives, vines, corn, saintfoin, and lucerne. A great proportion of the hills are waste. There are some enclosures of stone, and some sheep. The first four years of madder are unproductive; the fifth and sixth yield the whole value of the land. Then it must be renewed. The sparsette is the common or true saintfoin. It lasts about five years: in the best land it is cut twice, in May and September, and yields three thousand pounds of dry hay to the setterie, the first cutting, and five hundred pounds, the second. The setterie is of seventy-five dextres en tout sens, supposed about two arpents. Lucerne is the best of all forage; it is sowed herein the broad-cast, and lasts about twelve or fourteen years. It is cut four times a year, and yields six thousand pounds of dry hay, at the four cuttings, to the setterie. The territory in which the vin muscat de Frontignan is made, is about a league of three thousand toises long, and one fourth of a league broad. The soil is reddish and stony, often as much stone as soil. On the left, it is a plain, on the right hills. There are made about one thousand pièces (of two hundred and fifty bottles each) annually, of which six hundred are of the first quality, made on the coteaux. Of these, Madame Soubeinan makes two hundred, Monsieur Reboulle ninety, Monsieur Lambert, medecin de la faculte de Montpelier, sixty, Monsieur Thomas, notaire, fifty, Monsieur Argilliers fifty, Monsieur Audibert forty; equal to four hundred and ninety; and there are some small proprietors who make small quantities. The first quality is sold, brut, for one hundred and twenty livres the pièce; but it is then thick, and must have a winter and the fouet, to render it potable and brilliant. The fouet is like a chocolate-mill, the handle of iron, the brush of stiff hair. In bottles, this wine costs twenty-four sous, the bottle, &c. included. It is potable the April after it is made, is best that year, and after ten years begins to have a pitchy taste, resembling it to Malaga. It is not permitted to ferment more than half a day, because it would not be so liquorish. The best color, and its natural one, is the amber. By force of whipping, it is made white, but loses flavor. There are but two or three pièces a year of red Muscat made; there being but one vineyard of the red grape, which belongs to a baker called Pascal. This sells in bottles at thirty sous, the bottle included. Rondelle, négociant en vin, Porte St. Bernard, fauxbourg St. Germain, Paris, buys three hundred pieces of the first quality every year. The coteaux yield about half a piece to the setterie, the plains a whole piece. The inferior quality is not at all esteemed. It is bought by the merchants of Cette, as is also the wine of Beziers, and sold by them for Frontignan of the first quality. They sell thirty thousand pièces a year under that name. The town of Frontignan marks its casks with a hot iron: an individual of that place, having two casks emptied, was offered forty livres for the empty cask by a merchant of Cette. The town of Frontignan contains about two thousand inhabitants; it is almost on the level of the ocean. Transportation to Paris is fifteen livres the quintal, and takes fifteen days. The price of packages is about eight livres eight sous the one hundred bottles. A setterie of good vineyard sells for from three hundred and fifty to five hundred livres, and rents for fifty livres. A laboring man hires at one hundred and fifty livres the year, and is fed and lodged; a woman at half as much. Wheat sells at ten livres the settier, which weighs one hundred pounds, poids de table. They make some Indian corn here, which is eaten by the poor. The olives do not extend northward of this into the country above twelve or fifteen leagues. In general, the olive country in Languedoc is about fifteen leagues broad. More of the waste lands between Frontignan and Mirval are capable of culture; but it is a marshy country, very subject to fever and ague, and generally unhealthy. Thence arises, as is said, a want of hands.
Cette. There are in this town about ten thousand inhabitants. Its principal commerce is wine; it furnishes great quantities of grape-pumice for making verdigrise. They have a very growing commerce; but it is kept under by the privileges of Marseilles.
May 13. Agde. On the right of the Etang de Thau are plains of some width, then hills, in olives, vines, mulberry, corn, and pasture. On the left a narrow sand-bar, separating the Etang from the sea, along which it is proposed to make a road from Cette to Agde. In this case, the post would lead from Montpelier by Cette and Agde to Beziers, being leveller, and an hour or an hour and a half nearer. Agde contains six or eight thousand inhabitants.
May 14. Beziers. Rich plains in corn, saintfoin, and pasture; hills at a little distance to the right in olives; the soil both of hill and plain is red going from Agde to Beziers. But at Beziers the country becomes hilly, and is in olives, corn, saintfoin, pasture, some vines, and mulberries.
May 15. Beziers. Argilies. Le Saumal. From Argilies to Saumal are considerable plantations of vines. Those on the red hills, to the right, are said to produce good wine. No wood, no enclosures. There are sheep and good cattle. The Pyrenees are covered with snow. I am told they are so in certain parts all the year. The canal of Languedoc, along which I now travel, is six toises wide at bottom, and ten toises at the surface of the water, which is one toise deep. The barks which navigate it are seventy and eighty feet long, and seventeen or eighteen feet wide. They are drawn by one horse, and worked by two hands, one of which is generally a woman. The locks are mostly kept by women, but the necessary operations are much too laborious for them. The encroachments by the men, on the offices proper for the women, is a great derangement in the order of things. Men are shoemakers, tailors, upholsterers, staymakers, mantua-makers, cooks, housekeepers, house-cleaners, bed-makers, they coiffe the ladies, and bring them to bed: the women, therefore, to live, are obliged to undertake the offices which they abandon. They become porters, carters, reapers, sailors, lock-keepers, smiters on the anvil, cultivators of the earth, &c. Can we wonder, if such of them as have a little beauty, prefer easier courses to get their livelihood, as long as that beauty lasts? Ladies who employ men in the offices which should be reserved for their sex, are they not bawds in effect? For every man whom they thus emply, some girl, whose place he has thus taken, is driven to whoredom. The passage of the eight locks at Beziers, that is, from the opening of the first to the last gate took one hour and thirty-three minutes. The bark in which I go is about thirty-five feet long, drawn by one horse, and goes from two to three geographical miles an hour. The canal yields abundance of carp and eel. I see also small fish, resembling our perch and chub. Some plants of white clover, and some of yellow, on the banks of the canal near Capestan; santolina also, and a great deal of yellow iris. Met a raft of about three hundred and fifty beams, forty feet long, and twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, formed into fourteen rafts, tacked together. The extensive and numerous fields of saintfoin, in general bloom, are beautiful.
May 16. Le Saumal. Marseillette. May 17. Marseilleite. Carcassonne. From Saumal to Carcassonne we have always the river Aube close on our left. This river runs in the valley between the Cevennes and Pyrenees, serving as the common receptacle for both their waters. It is from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards wide, always rapid, rocky, and insusceptible of navigation. The canal passes in the side of hills made by that river, overlooks the river itself, and its plains, and has its prospect ultimately terminated on one side by mountains of rock, overtopped by the Pyrenees, on the other by small mountains, sometimes of rock, sometimes of soil, overtopped by the Cevennes. Marseillette is on a ridge, which separates the river Aube from the Etang de Marseillette. The canal, in its approach to this village, passes the ridge, and rides along the front, overlooking the Etang, and the plains on its border; and having passed the village, re-crosses the ridge, and resumes its general ground in front of the Aube. The land is in corn, saintfoin, pasture, vines, mulberries, willows, and olives.
May 18. Carcassonne. Castelnaudari. Opposite to Carcassonne the canal receives the river Fresquel, about thirty yards wide, which is its substantial supply of water from hence to Beziers. From Beziers to Agde the river Orb furnishes it, and the Eraut, from Agde to the Etang de Thau. By means of the écluse ronde at Agde, the waters of the Eraut can be thrown towards Beziers, to aid those of the Orb, as far as the écluse de Porcaraigne, nine geometrical miles. Where the Fresquel enters the canal, there is, on the opposite side, a waste, to let off the superfluous waters. The horse-way is continued over this waste, by a bridge of stone of eighteen arches. I observe them fishing in the canal, with a skimming net of about fifteen feet diameter, with which they tell me they catch carp. Flax in blossom. Neither strawberries nor peas yet at Carcassonne. The Windsor-bean just come to table. From the écluse de la Lande we see the last olive trees near a metairée, or farm-house-, called La Lande. On a review of what I have seen and heard of this tree, the following seem to be its northern limits. Beginning on the Atlantic, at the Pyrenees, and along them to the meridian of La Lande, or of Carcassonne; up that meridian to the Cevennes, as they begin just there to raise themselves high enough to afford it shelter. Along the Cevennes, to the parallel of forty-five degrees of latitude, and along that parallel (crossing the Rhone near the mouth of the Isere) to the Alps; thence along the Alps and Apennines, to what parallel of latitude I know not. Yet here the tracing of the line becomes the most interesting. For from the Atlantic, so far we see this production the effect of shelter and latitude combined. But where does it venture to launch forth unprotected by shelter, and by the mere force of latitude alone? Where, for instance, does its northern limit cross the Adriatic? I learn, that the olive tree resists cold to eight degrees of Reaumur below the freezing-point, which corresponds to fourteen above zero of Fahrenheit: and that the orange resists to four degrees below freezing of Reaumur, which is twenty-three degrees above zero of Fahrenheit.
May 19. Castelnaudari. St. Feriol. Escamaze. Lampy. Some sheep and cattle; no enclosures. St. Feriol, Escamaze, and Lampy are in the montagnes noires. The country almost entirely waste. Some of it in shrubbery. The voute d’Escamaze is of one hundred and thirty-five yards. Round about Castelnaudari the country is hilly, as it has been constantly from Beziers; it is very rich. Where it is plain, or nearly plain, the soil is black: in general, however, it is hilly and reddish, and in corn. They cultivate a great deal of Indian corn here, which they call millet; it is planted, but not yet up.
May 20. Castelnaudari. Naurouze. Villefranche. Baziege. At Naurouze is the highest ground which the canal had to pass between the two seas. It became necessary, then, to find water still higher to bring it here. The river Fresquel heading by its two principal branches in the montagnes noires, a considerable distance off to the eastward, the springs of the most western one were brought together, and conducted to Naurouze, where its waters are divided, part furnishing the canal towards the ocean, the rest towards the Mediterranean, as far as the écluse de Fresquel, where, as has been before noted, the Lampy branch and the Alzau, under the name of the Fresquel, enter.
May 20. They have found that a lock of six pieds is best; however, eight pieds is well enough. Beyond this, it is bad. Monsieur Pin tells me of a lock of thirty pieds made in Sweden, of which it is impossible to open the gates. They therefore divided it into four locks. The small gates of the locks of this canal have six square pieds of surface. They tried the machinery of the jack for opening them. They were more easily opened, but very subject to be deranged, however strongly made. They returned, therefore, to the original wooden screw, which is excessively slow and laborious. I calculate that five minutes are lost at every basin by this screw, which, on the whole number of basins, is one eighth of the time necessary to navigate the canal: and of course, if a method of lifting the gate at one stroke could be found, it would reduce the passage from eight to seven days, and the freight equally. I suggested to Monsieur Pin and others a quadrantal gate, turning on a pivot, and lifted by a lever like a pump-handle, aided by a windlass and cord, if necessary. He will try it, and inform me of the success. The price of transportation from Cette to Bordeaux, through the canal and Garonne is ------ the quintal: round by the straits of Gibraltar is ------. Two hundred and forty barks, the largest of twenty-two hundred quintals (or say, in general, of one hundred tons), suffice to perform the business of this canal, which is stationary, having neither increased nor diminished for many years. When pressed, they can pass and repass between Toulouse and Beziers in fourteen days; but sixteen is the common period. The canal is navigated ten and a half months of the year: the other month and a half being necessary to lay it dry, cleanse it, and repair the works. This is done in July and August, when there would perhaps be a want of water.
May 21. Baziège. Toulouse. The country continues hilly, but very rich. It is in mulberries, willows, some vines, corn, maize, pasture, beans, flax. A great number of chateaux and good houses in the neighborhood of the canal. The people partly in farm-houses, partly in villages. I suspect that the farm-houses are occupied by the farmers, while the laborers (who are mostly by the day) reside in the villages. Neither strawberries nor pease yet at Baziege or Toulouse. Near the latter are some fields of yellow clover.
At Toulouse the canal ends. It has four communications with the Mediterranean. 1. Through the ponds of Thau, Frontignan, Palavas, Maguelone, and Manjo, the canal de la Radela Aigues-mortes, le canal des Salines de Pecair, and the arm of the Rhone called Bras de Fer, which ends at Fourgues, opposite to Arles, and thence down the Rhone. 2. At Cette, by a canal of a few hundred toises, leading out of the Etang de Thau into the sea. The vessels pass the Etang, though a length of nine thousand toises, with sails. 3. At Agde, by the river Eraut, twenty-five hundred toises. It has but five or six pieds of water at its mouth. It is joined to the canal at the upper part of this communication, by a branch of a canal two hundred and seventy toises long. 4. At Narbonne, by a canal they are now opening, which leads from the great canal near the aqueduct of the river Cesse, twenty-six hundred toises, into the Aude. This new canal will have five lock-basins, of about twelve pieds fall each. Then you are to cross the Aude very obliquely, and descend a branch of it six thousand toises, through four lock-basins to Narbonne, and from Narbonne down the same branch, twelve hundred toises into the Etang de Sigen, across that Etang four thousand toises, issuing at an inlet, called Grau de la Nouvelle, into the Gulf of Lyons. But only vessels of thirty or forty tons can enter this inlet. Of these four communications, that of Cette only leads to a deep sea-port, because the exit is there by a canal, and not a river. Those by the Rhone, Eraut, and Aude, are blocked up by bars at the mouths of those rivers. It is remarkable, that all the rivers running into the Mediterranean are obstructed at their entrance by bars and shallows, which often change their position. This is the case with the Nile, Tiber, the Po, the Lez, le Lyoron, the Orbe, the Gly, the Tech, the Tet, he. Indeed, the formation of these bars seems not confined to the mouths of the rivers, though it takes place at them more certainly. Along almost the whole of the coast, from Marseilles towards the Pyrenees, banks of sand are thrown up parallel with the coast, which have insulated portions of the sea, that is, formed them into etangs, ponds, or sounds, through which here and there narrow and shallow inlets only are preserved by the currents of the rivers. These sounds fill up in time, with the mud and sand deposited in them by the rivers. Thus the Etang de Vendres, navigated formerly by vessels of sixty tons, is now nearly filled up by the mud and sand of the Aude. The Vistre and Vidourle, which formerly emptied themselves into the Gulf of Lyons, are now received by the Etangs de Manjo and Aiguesmortes, that is to say, the part of the Gulf of Lyons, which formerly received, and still receives those rivers, is now cut off from the sea by a bar of sand, which has been thrown up in it, and has formed it into sounds. Other proofs that the land gains there on the sea, are, that the towns of St. Giles and Notre Dame d’Asposts, formerly seaports, are no far from the sea, and that Aiguesmortes, where are still to be seen the iron rings to which vessels were formerly moored, and where St. Louis embarked for Palestine, has now in its vicinities only ponds, which cannot be navigated, and communicates with the sea by an inlet, called Grau du Roy, through which only fishing-barks can pass. It is pretty well established, that all the Delta of Egypt has been formed by the depositions of the Nile, and the alluvions of the sea, and it is probable that that operation is still going on. Has this peculiarity of the Mediterranean any connection with the scantiness of its tides, which, even at the equinoxes, are of two or three feet only? The communication from the western end of the canal to the ocean, is by the river Garonne. This is navigated by flat boats of eight hundred quintals, when the water is well; but when it is scanty, these boats carry only two hundred quintals, till they get to the mouth of the Tarn. It has been proposed to open a canal that far from Toulouse, along the right side of the river.
May 22. Toulouse. 23. Agen. 24. Castres. Bordeaux. The Garonne, and rivers emptying into it, make extensive and rich plains, which are in mulberries, willows, corn, maize, pasture, beans, and flax. The hills are in corn, maize, beans, and a considerable proportion of vines. There seems to be as much maize as corn in this country. Of the latter, there is more rye than wheat. The maize is now up, and about three inches high. It is sowed in rows two feet or two and a half feet apart, and is pretty thick in the row. Doubtless they mean to thin it. There is a great deal of a forage they call farouche. It is a species of red trefoil, with few leaves, a very coarse stalk, and a cylindrical blossom of two inches in length, and three quarters of an inch in diameter, consisting of floscules, exactly as does that of the red clover. It seems to be a coarse food, but very plentiful. They say it is for their oxen. These are very fine, large, and cream-colored. The services of the farm and of transportation are performed chiefly by them. There are a few horses and asses, but no mules. Even in the city of Bordeaux we see scarcely any beasts of draught but oxen. When we cross the Garonne at Langon, we find the plains entirely of sand and gravel, and they continue so to Bordeaux. Where they are capable of any thing, they are in vines, which are in rows, four, five, or six feet apart, and sometimes more. Near Langon is Sauterne, where the best white wines of Bordeaux are made. The waste lands are in fern, furze, shrubbery, and dwarf trees. The farmers live on their farms. At Agen, Castres, Bordeaux, strawberries and pease are now brought to table; so that the country on the canal of Languedoc seems to have later seasons than that east and west of it. What can be the cause? To the eastward, the protection of the Cevennes makes the warm season advance sooner. Does the neighborhood of the Mediterranean co-operate? And does that of the ocean mollify and advance the season to the westward? There are ortolans at Agen, but none at Bordeaux. The buildings on the canal and the Garonne are mostly of brick, the size of the bricks the same with that of the ancient Roman brick, as seen in the remains of their buildings in this country. In those of a circus at Bordeaux, considerable portions of which are standing, I measured the bricks, and found them nineteen or twenty inches long, eleven or twelve inches wide, and from one and a half to two inches thick; their texture as fine, compact, and solid as that of porcelain. The bricks now made, though of the same dimensions, are not so fine. They are burnt in a kind of furnace, and make excellent work. The elm tree shows itself at Bordeaux peculiarly proper for being spread flat for arbors. Many are done in this way on the Quay des Charterons. Strawberries, pease, and cherries at Bordeaux.
May 24, 25, 26, 27, 28. Bordeaux. The cantons in which the most celebrated wines of Bordeaux are made, are Medoc down the river, Grave adjoining the city, and the parishes next above; all on the same side of the river. In the first, is made red wine principally, in the two last, white. In Medoc they plant the vines in cross-rows of three and a half pieds. They keep them so low, that poles extended along the rows one way, horizontally, about fifteen or eighteen inches above the ground, serve to tie the vines to, and leave the cross row open to the plough. In Grave they set the plants in quincunx, i.e. in equilateral triangles of three and a half pieds every side; and they stick a pole of six or eight feet high to every vine, separately. The vine-stock is sometimes three or four feet high. They find these two methods equal in culture, duration, quantity, and quality. The former, however, admits the alternative of tending by hand or with the plough. The grafting of the vine, though a critical operation, is practised with success. When the graft has taken, they bend it into the earth, and let it take root above the scar. They begin to yield an indifferent wine at three years old, but not a good one till twenty-five years, nor after eighty, when they begin to yield less, and worse, and must be renewed. They give three or four workings in the year, each worth seventy or seventy-five livres the journal, which is of eight hundred and forty square ioises, and contains about three thousand plants. They dung a little in Medoc and Grave, because of the poverty of the soil; but very little; as more would affect the wine. The journal yields, communions annis, about three pièces (of two hundred and forty, or two hundred and fifty bottles each). The vineyards of first quality are all worked by their proprietors. Those of the second, rent for three hundred livres the journal: those of third, at two hundred livres. They employ a kind of overseer at four or five hundred livres the year, finding him lodging and drink: but he feeds himself. He superintends and directs, though he is expected to work but little. If the proprietor has a garden, the overseer tends that. They never hire laborers by the year. The day wages for a man are thirty sous, a woman’s fifteen sous, feeding themselves. The women make the bundles of sarment, weed, pull off the snails, tie the vines, and gather the grapes. During the vintage they are paid high, and fed well.
Of Red wines, there are four vineyards of the first quality; viz. 1. Chateau Margau, belonging to the Marquis d’Agincourt, who makes about one hundred and fifty tons, of one thousand bottles each. He has engaged to Jernon, a merchant. 2. La Tour de Segur, en Saint Lambert, belonging to Monsieur Miresmenil, who makes one hundred and twenty-five tons. 3. Hautbrion, belonging two-thirds to M. le Comte de Femelle, who has engaged to Barton, a merchant: the other third to the Comte de Toulouse, at Toulouse. The whole is seventy-five tons. 4. Chateau de la Fite, belonging to the President Pichard, at Bordeaux, who makes one hundred and seventy-five tons. The wines of the three first, are not in perfection till four years old: those of de la Fite, being somewhat lighter, are good at three years; that is, the crop of 1786 is good in the spring of 1789. These growths, of the year 1783, sell now at two thousand livres the ton; those of 1784, on account of the superior quality of that vintage, sell at twenty-four hundred livres; those of 1785, at eighteen hundred livres; those of 1786, at eighteen hundred livres, though they had sold at first for only fifteen hundred livres. Red wines of the second quality, are Rozan, Dabbadie or Lionville, la Rose, Qui-rouen, Durfort; in all eight hundred tons, which sell at one thousand livres, new. The third class, are Galons, Mouton, Gassie, Arboete, Pontette, de Ferme, Candale; in all two thousand tons, at eight or nine hundred livres. After these, they are reckoned common wines, and sell from five hundred livres, down to one hundred and twenty livres, the ton. All red wines decline after a certain age, losing color, flavor, and body. Those of Bordeaux begin to decline at about seven years old.
Of White wines, those made in the canton of Grave, are most esteemed at Bordeaux. The best crops are, 1. Pontac, which formerly belonged to M. de Pontac, but now to M. de Lamont. He makes forty tons, which sell at four hundred livres, new. 2. St. Brise, belonging to M. de Pontac; thirty tons, at three hundred and fifty livres. 3. De Carbonius, belonging to the Benedictine monks, who make fifty tons, and never selling till three or four years old, get eight hundred livres the ton. Those made in the three parishes next above Grave, and more esteemed at Paris, are, 1. Sauterne. The best crop belongs to M. Diquem at Bordeaux, or to M. de Salus, his son-in-law; one hundred and fifty tons, at three hundred livres, new, and six hundred livres, old. The next best crop is M. de Fillotte’s, one hundred tons, sold at the same price. 2. Prignac. The best is the President du Roy’s, at Bordeaux. He makes one hundred and seventy-five tons, which sell at three hundred livres, new, and six hundred livres, old. Those of 1784, for their extraordinary quality, sell at eight hundred livres. 3. Barsac. The best belongs to the President Pichard, who makes one hundred and fifty tons, at two hundred and eighteen livres, new, and six hundred livres, old. Sauterne is the pleasantest; next Prignac, and lastly Barsac: but Barsac is the strongest; next Prignac, and lastly Sauterne; and all stronger than Grave. There are other good crops made in the same parishes of Sauterne, Prignac, and Barsac; but none as good as these. There is a virgin wine, which, though made of a red grape, is of a light rose color, because, being made without pressure, the coloring matter of the skin does not mix with the juice. There are other white wines, from the preceding prices down to seventy-five livres. In general, the white wines keep longest. They will be in perfection till fifteen or twenty years of age. The best vintage now to be bought, is of 1784; both of red and white. There has been no other good year since 1779. The celebrated vineyards before mentioned, are plains, as is generally the canton of Medoc, and that of the Grave. The soil of Hautbrion, particularly, which I examined, is a sand, in which is near as much round gravel or small stone, and very little loam: and this is the general soil of Medoc. That of Pontac, which I examined also, is a little different. It is clayey, with a fourth or fifth of fine rotten stone; and at two feet depth, it becomes all a rotten stone. M. de Lamont tells me, he has a kind of grape without seeds, which I did not formerly suppose to exist; but I saw at Marseilles dried raisins from Smyrna without seeds. I see in his farm at Pontac, some plants of white clover, and a good deal of yellow: also some small peach trees in the open ground. The principal English wine merchants at Bordeaux, are Jernon, Barton, Johnston, Foster, Skinner, Copinger, and M’Cartey: the chief French wine merchants, are Feger, Nerac, Bruneaux Jauge, and Du Verget. Desgrands, a wine-broker, tells me they never mix the wines of first quality: but that they mix the inferior ones to improve them. The smallest wines make the best brandy. They yield about a fifth or sixth.
May 28, 29. From Bordeaux to Blaye, the country near the river is hilly, chiefly in vines, some corn, some pasture: further out, are plains, boggy and waste. The soil, in both cases, clay and grit. Some sheep on the waste. To Etauliers, we have sometimes boggy plains, sometimes waving grounds and sandy, always poor, generally waste, in fern and furze, with some corn however, interspersed. To Mirambeau and St. Genis, it is hilly, poor, and mostly waste. There are some corn and maize however, and better trees than usual. Towards Pons, it becomes a little red, mostly rotten stone. There are vines, corn, and maize, which is up. At Pons we approach the Charente; the country becomes better, a blackish mould mixed with a rotten chalky stone: a great many vines, corn, maize, and farouche. From Lajart to Saintes and Rochefort, the soil is reddish, its foundation a chalky rock, at about a foot depth; in vines, corn, maize, clover, lucerne, and pasture. There are more and better trees than I have seen in all my journey; a great many apple and cherry trees: fine cattle and many sheep.
May 30. From Rochefort to La Rochelle, it is sometimes hilly and red, with a chalky foundation, middling good; in corn, pasture, and some waste: sometimes it is reclaimed marsh, in clover and corn, except the parts accessible to the tide, which are in wild grass. About Rochelle, it is a low plain. Towards Usseau, and halfway to Marans, level highlands, red, mixed with an equal quantity of broken chalk; mostly in vines, some corn, and pasture: then to Marans and halfway to St. Hermine, it is reclaimed marsh, dark, tolerably good, and all in pasture: there we rise to plains a little higher, red, with a chalky foundation, boundless to the eye, and altogether in corn and maize.
May 31. At St. Hermine, the country becomes very hilly, a red clay mixed with chalky stone, generally waste, in furze and broom, with some patches of corn and maize; and so it continues to Chantonay, and St. Fulgent. Through the whole of this road from Bordeaux, are frequent hedge rows, and small patches of forest wood, not good, yet better than I had seen in the preceding part of my journey. Towards Montaigu, the soil mends a little; the cultivated parts in corn and pasture, the uncultivated in broom. It is in very small enclosures of ditch and quickset. On approaching the Loire to Nantes, the country is leveller: the soil from Rochelle to this place may be said to have been sometimes red, but oftener gray, and always on a chalky foundation. The last census, of about 1770, made one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants at Nantes. They conjecture there are now one hundred and fifty thousand, which equals it to Bordeaux.
June 1,2. The country from Nantes to L’Orient is very hilly and poor, the soil gray; nearly half is waste, in furze and broom, among which is some poor grass. The cultivated parts are in corn, some maize, a good many apple trees; no vines. All is in small enclosures of quick hedge and ditch. There are patches and hedge-rows of forest-wood, not quite deserving the name of timber. The people are mostly in villages; they eat rye-bread, and are ragged. The villages announce a general poverty, as does every other appearance. Women smite on the anvil, and work with the hoe, and cows are yoked to labor. There are great numbers of cattle, insomuch that butter is their staple. Neither asses nor mules: yet it is said that the fine mules I have met with on my journey, are raised in Poictou. There are but few chateaux here. I observe mill-ponds, and hoes with long handles. Have they not, in common with us, derived these from England, of which Bretagne is probably a colony? L’Orient is supposed to contain twenty-five thousand inhabitants. They tell me here, that to make a reasonable profit on potash and pearlash, as bought in America, the former should sell at thirty livres, the latter thirty-six livres, the quintal. Of turpentine they make no use in their vessels. Bayonne furnishes pitch enough; but tar is in demand, and ours sells well. The tower of L’Orient is sixty-five pieds above the level of the sea, one hundred and twenty pieds high, twenty-five pieds in diameter; the stairs four feet radius, and cost thirty thousand livres, besides the materials of the old tower.
June 3, 4, 5. The country and productions from L’Orient to Rennes, and from Rennes to Nantes, are precisely similar to those from Nantes to L’Orient. About Rennes, it is somewhat leveller, perhaps less poor, and almost entirely in pasture. The soil always gray. Some small, separate houses, which seem to be the residence of laborers, or very small farmers; the walls frequently of mud, and the roofs generally covered with slate. Great plantations of walnut, and frequently of pine. Some apple trees and sweet-briar still in bloom, and broom generally so. I have heard no nightingale since the last day of May. There are gates in this country made in such a manner, that the top rail of the gate overshoots backwards the hind post, so as to counterpoise the gate, and prevent its swagging.
Nantes. Vessels of eight feet draught only can come to Nantes. Those which are larger, lie at Painboeuf, ten leagues below Nantes, and five leagues above the mouth of the river. There is a continued navigation from Nantes to Paris, through the Loire, the canal de Briare and the Seine. Carolina rice is preferred to that of Lombardy for the Guinea trade, because it requires less water to boil it.
June 6, 7, 8. Nantes. Ancenis. Angers. Tours. Ascending the Loire from Nantes, the road, as far as Angers, leads over the hills, which are gray, oftener below than above mediocrity, and in corn, pasture, vines, some maize, flax, and hemp. There are no waste lands. About the limits of Bretagne and Anjou, which are between Loriottiere and St. George, the lands change for the better. Here and there, we get views of the plains on the Loire, of some extent, and good appearance, in corn and pasture. After passing Angers, the road is raised out of the reach of inundations, so as at the same time to ward them off from the interior plains. It passes generally along the river side; but sometimes leads through the plains, which, after we pass Angers, become extensive and good, in corn, pasture, some maize, hemp, flax, pease, and beans; many willows, also poplars and walnuts. The flax is near ripe. Sweet-briar in general bloom. Some broom here still, on which the cattle and sheep browse in winter and spring, when they have no other green food; and the hogs eat the blossoms and pods, in spring and summer. This blossom, though disagreeable when smelt in a small quantity, is of delicious fragrance when there is a whole field of it. There are some considerable vineyards in the river plains, just before we reach Les Trois Volets (which is at the one hundred and thirty-sixth milestone), and after that, where the hills on the left come into view, they are mostly in vines. Their soil is clayey and stony, a little reddish, and of southern aspect. The hills on the other side of the river, looking to the north, are not in vines. There is very good wine made on these hills; not equal indeed to the Bordeaux of best quality, but to that of good quality, and like it. It is a great article of exportation from Anjou and Touraine, and probably is sold abroad, under the name of Bordeaux. They are now mowing the first crop of hay. All along both hills of the Loire, is a mass of white stone, not durable, growing black with time, and so soft, that the people cut their houses out of the solid, with all the partitions, chimnies, doors, &c. The hill sides resemble cony burrows, full of inhabitants. The borders of the Loire are almost a continued village. There are many chateaux: many cattle, sheep, and horses; some asses.
Tours is at the one hundred and nineteenth mile-stone. Being desirous of inquiring here into a fact stated by Voltaire, in his Questions Encylopédiques, article Coquilles, relative to the growth of shells unconnected with animal bodies at the Chateau of Monsieur de la Sauvagiere, near Tours, I called on Monsieur Gentil, premier sécrétaire de l’ntendance, to whom the Intendant had written on my behalf, at the request of the Marquis de Chastellux.
I stated to him the fact as advanced by Voltaire, and found he was, of all men, the best to whom I could have addressed myself. He told me he had been in correspondence with Voltaire on that very subject, and was perfectly acquainted with Monsieur de la Sauvagiere, and the Faluniere where the fact is said to have taken place. It is at the Chateau de Grillemont, six leagues from Tours, on the road to Bordeaux, belonging now to Monsieur d’Orcai. He says, that De la Sauvagiere was a man of truth, and might be relied on for whatever facts he stated as of his own observation; but that he was overcharged with imagination, which, in matters of opinion and theory, often led him beyond his facts; that this feature in his character had appeared principally in what he wrote on the antiquities of Touraine; but that as to the fact in question, he believed him. That he himself, indeed, had not watched the same identical shells, as Sauvagiere had done, growing from small to great; but that he had often seen such masses of those shells of all sizes, from a point to a full size, as to carry conviction to his mind that they were in the act of growing; that he had once made a collection of shells for the Emperor’s cabinet, reserving duplicates of them for himself; and that these afforded proofs of the same fact; that he afterwards gave those duplicates to a Monsieur du Verget, a physician of Tours, of great science and candor, who was collecting on a larger scale, and who was perfectly in sentiment with Monsieur de la Sauvagiere, and not only the Faluniere, but many other places about Tours, would convince any unbiassed observer, that shells are a fruit of the earth, spontaneously produced; and he gave me a copy of De la Sauvagiere’s Recueil de Dissertations, presented him by the author, wherein is one Sur la vegetation spontanée des coquilles du Chateau des Places. So far, I repeat from him. What are we to conclude? That we have not materials enough yet, to form any conclusion. The fact stated by Sauvagiere is not against any law of nature, and is therefore possible; but it is so little analogous to her habitual processes, that, if true, it would be extraordinary: that to command our belief, therefore, there should be such a suite of observations, as that their untruth would be more extraordinary than the existence of the fact they affirm. The bark of trees, the skin of fruits and animals, the feathers of birds, receive their growth and nutriment from the internal circulation of a juice through the vessels of the individual they cover. We conclude from analogy, then, that the shells of the testaceous tribe receive also their growth from a like internal circulation. If it be urged, that this does not exclude the possibility of a like shell being produced by the passage of a fluid through the pores of the circumjacent body, whether of earth, stone, or water; I answer, that it is not within the usual economy of nature, to use two processes for one species of production. While I withhold my assent, however, from this hypothesis, I must deny it to every other I have ever seen, by which their authors pretend to account for the origin of shells in high places. Some of these are against the laws of nature, and therefore impossible; and others are built on positions more difficult to assent to, than that of De la Sauvagiere. They all suppose these shells to have covered submarine animals, and have then to answer the question, How came they fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea? And they answer it, by demanding what cannot be conceded. One, therefore, who had rather have no opinion than a false one, will suppose this question one of those beyond the investigation of human sagacity; or wait till further and fuller observations enable him to decide it.
Chanteloup. I heard a nightingale to-day at Chanteloup. The gardener says it is the male, who alone sings, while the female sits; and that when the young are hatched, he also ceases. In the boudoir at Chanteloup, is an ingenious contrivance to hide the projecting steps of a staircase. Three steps were of necessity to project into the boudoir: they are therefore made triangular steps; and instead of being rested on the floor, as usual, they are made fast at their broad end to the stair door, swinging out and in, with that. When it shuts, it runs them under the other steps; when open it brings them out to their proper place. In the kitchen garden, are three pumps, worked by one horse. The pumps are placed in an equilateral triangle, each side of which is of about thirty-five feet. In the centre is a post, ten or twelve feet high, and one foot in diameter. In the top of this, enters the bent end of a lever, of about twelve or fifteen feet long, with a swingle-tree at the other end. About three feet from the bent end, it receives, on a pin, three horizontal bars of iron, which at their other end lay hold of one corner of a quadrantal crank (like a bell crank) moving in a vertical plane, to the other corner of which is hooked the vertical handle of the pump. The crank turns on its point as a centre, by a pin or pivot passing through it. The horse moving the lever horizontally in a circle, every point of the lever describes a horizontal circle. That which receives the three bars, describes a circle of six feet in diameter. It gives a stroke then of six feet to the handle of each pump, at each revolution.
Blois. Orleans. June 9, 10. At Blois, the road leaves the river, and traverses the hills, which are mostly reddish, sometimes gray, good enough, in vines, corn, saintfoin. From Orleans to the river Juines, at Etampes, it is a continued plain of corn, and saintfoin, tolerably good, sometimes gray, sometimes red. From Etampes to Etrechy, the country is mountainous and rocky, resembling that of Fontainebleau. Quere. If it may not be the same vein?
LVIII. TO WILLIAM CARMICHAEL, June 14, 1787
TO WILLIAM CARMICHAEL.
Paris, June 14, 1787.
Dear Sir,
Having got back to Paris three days ago, I resume immediately the correspondence with which you have been pleased to honor me. I wish I could have begun it with more agreeable information than that furnished me by Mr. Grand, that the funds of the United States here are exhausted, and himself considerably in advance; and by the board of treasury at New York, that they have no immediate prospect of furnishing us supplies. We are thus left to shift for ourselves, without previous warning. As soon as they shall replenish Mr. Grand’s hands, I will give you notice, that you may recommence your usual drafts on him; unless the board should provide a separate fund for you, dependant on yourself alone, which I have strongly and repeatedly pressed on them, in order to remove the indecency of suffering your drafts to pass through any intermediate hand for payment.
My letters from America came down to the 24th of April. The disturbances in the Eastern States were entirely settled. I do not learn that the government had made any examples. Mr. Hancock’s health being re-established, the want of which had occasioned him to resign the government of Massachusetts, he has been re-elected to the exclusion of Governor Bowdoin. New York still refuses to pass the impost in any form, and were she to pass it, Pennsylvania will not uncouple it from the supplementary funds. These two States and Virginia, are the only ones, my letters say, which have paid any thing into the Continental treasury, for a twelvemonth past. I send you a copy of a circular letter from Congress to the several States, insisting on their removing all obstructions to the recovery of British debts. This was hurried, that it might be delivered to the Assembly of New York before they rose. It was delivered, but they did nothing in consequence of it. The convention to be assembled at Philadelphia will be an able one. Ten States were known to have appointed delegates. Maryland was about to appoint; Connecticut was doubtful; and Rhode Island had refused. We are sure, however, of eleven States. South Carolina has prohibited the importation of slaves for three years; which is a step towards a perpetual prohibition. Between six and seven hundred thousand acres of land are actually surveyed into townships, and the sales are to begin immediately. They are not to be sold for less than a dollar the acre, in public certificates. I wrote you from Bordeaux on the subject of Colonel Smith. I was sorry I missed him there, for other reasons as well as from a curiosity to know his errand. The Notables have laid the foundation of much good here: you have seen it detailed in the public papers. The Prince of Wales is likely to recover from his illness, which was very threatening. It is feared, that three powers have combined to lift the Prince of Orange out of his difficulties. Have you yet the cipher of which I formerly wrote to you, or any copy of it?
I am, with sincere esteem, Dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LIX. TO J. BANNISTER, JUNIOR, June 19, 1787
TO J. BANNISTER, JUNIOR.
Paris, June 19, 1787.
Dear Sir,
I have received your favor of April the 23d, from New York, and am sorry to find you have had a relapse. Time and temperance, however, will cure you; to which add exercise. I hope you have long ago had a happy meeting with your friends, with whom a few hours would be to me an ineffable feast. The face of Europe appears a little turbid, but all will subside. The Empress has endeavored to bully the Turk, who laughed at her, and she is going back. The Emperor’s reformations have occasioned the appearance of insurrection in Flanders, and he, according to character, will probably tread back his steps. A change of system here with respect to the Dutch, is suspected; because the Kings of Prussia and England openly espouse the cause of the Stadtholder, and that of the Patriots is likely to fall. The American acquaintances whom you left here, not being stationary, you will hardly expect news of them. Mrs. Barrett, lately dead, was, I think, known to you. I had a letter from Ledyard lately, dated at St. Petersburg. He had but two shirts, and yet more shirts than shillings. Still he was determined to obtain the palm of being the first circumambulator of the earth. He says, that having no money, they kick him from place to place, and thus he expects to be kicked round the globe. Are you become a great walker? You know I preach up that kind of exercise. Shall I send you a conte-pas? It will cost you a dozen louis, but be a great stimulus to walking, as it will record your steps. I finished my tour a week or ten days ago. I went as far as Turin, Milan, Genoa; and never passed three months and a half more delightfully. I returned through the canal of Languedoc, by Bordeaux, Nantes, L’Orient, and Rennes; then returned to Nantes, and came up the Loire to Orleans. I was alone through the whole, and think one travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
Present me in the most friendly terms to Mrs. Bannister and to your father, and be assured of the sincere esteem of, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LX. TO JAMES MADISON, June 20, 1787*
TO JAMES MADISON.
Paris, June 20, 1787.
[* Much of this letter is in cipher: but the notes annexed to it, have enabled the Editor to decipher and publish it.]
Dear Sir,
I wrote you last on the 30th of January, with a Postscript of February the 5th. Having set out the last day of that month to try the waters of Aix, and been journeying since, till the 10th instant, I have been unable to continue my correspondence with you. In the mean time, I have received your several favors of February the 15th, March the 18th and 19th, and April the 23d. The last arrived here about the 25th of May, while those of March the 18th and 19th, though written, five weeks earlier, arrived three weeks later. I mention this, to show you how uncertain is the conveyance through England.
The idea of separating the executive business of the confederacy from Congress, as the judiciary is already, in some degree, is just and necessary. I had frequently pressed on the members individually, while in Congress, the doing this by a resolution of Congress for appointing an executive committee, to act during the sessions of Congress, as the committee of the States was to act during their vacations. But the referring to this committee all executive business, as it should present itself, would require a more persevering self-denial than I suppose Congress to possess. It will be much better to make that separation by a federal act. The negative proposed to be given them on all the acts of the several legislatures, is now, for the first time, suggested to my mind. Prima facie, I do not like it. It fails in an essential character; that the hole and the patch should be commensurate. But this proposes to mend a small hole, by covering the whole garment. Not more than one out of one hundred State acts, concern the confederacy. This proposition, then, in order to give them one degree of power, which they ought to have, gives them ninety-nine more, which they ought not to have, upon a presumption that they will not exercise the ninety-nine. But upon every act there will be a preliminary question, Does this act concern the confederacy? And was there ever a proposition so plain, as to pass Congress without a debate? Their decisions are almost always wise; they are like pure metal. But you know of how much dross this is the result. Would not an appeal from the State judicature to a federal court, in all cases where the act of Confederation controlled the question, be as effectual a remedy, and exactly commensurate to the defect. A British creditor, for example, sues for his debt in Virginia; the defendant pleads an act of the State, excluding him from their courts; the plaintiff urges the confederation, and the treaty made under that, as controlling the State law; the judges are weak enough to decide according to the views of their legislature. An appeal to a federal court gets all to rights. It will be said, that this court may encroach on the jurisdiction of the State courts. It may. But there will be a power, to wit, Congress, to watch and restrain them. But place the same authority in Congress itself, and there will be no power above them to perform the same office. They will restrain within due bounds a jurisdiction exercised by others, much more rigorously than if exercised by themselves.
I am uneasy at seeing that the sale of our western lands is not yet commenced. That valuable fund for the immediate extinction of our debt will, I fear, be suffered to slip through our fingers. Every day exposes it to events, which no human foresight can guard against. When we consider the temper of the people of that country, derived from the circumstances which surround them, we must suppose their separation possible, at every moment. If they can be retained till their governments become settled and wise, they will remain with us always, and be a precious part of our strength and our virtue. But this affair of the Mississippi, by showing that Congress is capable of hesitating on a question, which proposes a clear sacrifice of the western to the maritime States, will with difficulty be obliterated. The proposition of my going to Madrid, to try to recover there the ground which has been lost at New York, by the concession of the vote of seven States, I should think desperate. With respect to myself, weighing the pleasure of the journey and bare possibility of success in one scale, and the strong probability of failure and the public disappointment directed on me, in the other, the latter preponderates. Add to this, that jealousy might be excited in the breast of a person, who could find occasions of making me uneasy.
The late changes in the ministry here, excite considerable hopes. I think we gain in them all. I am particularly happy at the reentry of Malesherbes into the Council. His knowledge and integrity render his value inappreciable, and the greater to me, because, while he had no views of office, we had established together the most unreserved intimacy. So far, too, I am pleased with Montmorin. His honesty proceeds from the heart as well as the head, and therefore may be more surely counted on. The King loves business, economy, order, and justice, and wishes sincerely the good of his people; but he is irascible, rude, very limited in his understanding, and religious bordering on bigotry. He has no mistress, loves his queen, and is too much governed by her. She is capricious, like her brother, and governed by him; devoted to pleasure and expense; and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues. Unhappily the King shows a propensity for the pleasures of the table. That for drink has increased lately, or at least it has become more known.
For European news in general, I will refer you to my letter to Mr. Jay. Is it not possible, that the occurrences in Holland may excite a desire in many of leaving that country, and transferring their effects out of it, and thus make an opening for shifting into their hands the debts due to this country, to its officers, and Farmers? It would be surely eligible. I believe Dumas, if put on the watch, might alone suffice; but he surely might, if Mr. Adams should go when the moment offers. Dumas has been in the habit of sending his letters open to me, to be forwarded to Mr. Jay. During my absence, they passed through Mr. Short’s hands, who made extracts from them, by which I see he has been recommending himself and me for the money-negotiations in Holland. It might be thought, perhaps, that I have encouraged him in this. Be assured, my Dear Sir, that no such idea ever entered my head. On the contrary, it is a business which would be the most disagreeable to me of all others, and for which I am the most unfit person living. I do not understand bargaining, nor possess the dexterity requisite for the purpose. On the other hand, Mr. Adams, whom I expressly and sincerely recommend, stands already on ground for that business, which I could not gain in years. Pray set me to rights in the minds of those, who may have supposed me privy to this proposition. En passant, I will observe with respect to Mr. Dumas, that the death of the Count de Vergennes places Congress more at their ease, how to dispose of him. Our credit has been ill treated here in public debate, and our debt here deemed apocryphal. We should try to transfer this debt elsewhere, and leave nothing capable of exciting ill thoughts between us. I shall mention in my letter to Mr. Jay, a disagreeable affair which Mr. Barclay has been thrown into, at Bordeaux. An honester man cannot be found, nor a slower, nor more decisive one. His affairs, too, are so embarrassed and desperate, that the public reputation is, every moment, in danger of being compromitted with him. He is perfectly amiable and honest, with all his embarrassments.
By the next packet, I shall be able to send you some books, as also your watch and pedometer. The two last are not yet done. To search for books, and forward them to Havre, will require more time than I had between my return and the departure of this packet. Having been a witness, heretofore, to the divisions in Congress on the subject of their foreign ministers, it would be a weakness in me to suppose none with respect to myself, or to count with any confidence on the renewal of my commission, which expires on the 10th day of March next; and the more so, as instead of requiring the disapprobation of seven States, as formerly, that of one suffices for a recall, when Congress consists of only seven States, two, when of eight, &c. which I suppose to be habitually their numbers at present. Whenever I leave this place, it will be necessary to begin my arrangements six months before my departure; and these, once fairly begun and under way, and my mind set homewards, a change of purpose could hardly take place. If it should be the desire of Congress that I should continue still longer, I could wish to know it, at farthest, by the packet which will sail from New York in September. Because, were I to put off longer the quitting my house, selling my furniture, he, I should not have time left to wind up my affairs; and having once quitted, and sold off my furniture, I could not think of establishing myself here again. I take the liberty of mentioning this matter to you, not with a desire to change the purpose of Congress, but to know it in time. I have never fixed in my mind, the epoch of my return, so far as shall depend on myself, but I never supposed it very distant. Probably I shall not risk a second vote on this subject. Such trifling things may draw on me the displeasure of one or two States, and thus submit me to the disgrace of a recall.
I thank you for the paccan nuts, which accompanied your letter of March. Could you procure me a copy of the bill for proportioning crimes and punishments, in the form in which it was ultimately rejected by the House of Delegates? Young Mr. Bannister desired me to send him regularly the Mercure de France. I will ask leave to do this through you, and that you will adopt such method of forwarding them to him, as will save him from being submitted to postage, which they would not be worth. As a compensation for your trouble, you will be free to keep them till you shall have read them. I am, with sentiments of the most sincere esteem, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LXI. TO JOHN JAY, June 21,1787
TO JOHN JAY.
Paris, June 21,1787.
Sir,
I had the honor of addressing you in a letter of May the 4th, from Marseilles, which was to have gone by the last packet. Bat it arrived a few hours too late for that conveyance, and has been committed to a private one, passing through England, with a promise that it should go through no post-office.
I was desirous, while at the sea-ports, to obtain a list of the American vessels which have come to them since the peace, in order to estimate their comparative importance to us, as well as the general amount of our commerce with this country, so far as carried on in our own bottoms. At Marseilles, I found there had been thirty-two, since that period; at Cette, not a single one; at Bayonne, one of our free ports, only one. This last fact I learned from other information, not having visited that place; as it would have been a deviation from my route, too considerable for the importance of the object. At Bordeaux, Nantes, and L’Orient, I could not obtain lists in the moment; but am in hopes I shall be able to get them ere long. Though more important to us, they will probably be more imperfect than that of Marseilles. At Nantes, I began with Monsieur Dobrée an arrangement of his claims. I visited the military stores, which have been detained there so long, opened some boxes of each kind, and found the state of their contents much better than had been represented. An exact list of the articles is to be sent me.
The importations into L’Orient of other fish-oils, besides those of the whale, brought to my notice there a defect in the letter of Monsieur de Calonne, of October the 22nd, which letter was formerly communicated to you. In that, whale oil only was named. The other fish-oils, therefore, have continued to pay the old duties. In a conference with Monsieur de Villedeuil, the present Comptroller General, since my return, I proposed the extending the exemption to all fish-oils, according to the letter of the Hanseatic treaty, which had formed the basis of the regulations respecting us. I think this will be agreed to. The delays of office first, then the illness of Monsieur de Colonne, and lastly, his removal and the throng of business occasioned by the Assemblée des Notables, have prevented the reducing the substance of the letter into the form of an Arrêt, as yet though I have continued soliciting it as much as circumstances would bear. I am now promised that it shall be done immediately, and it shall be so far retrospective to the date of the letter, as that all duties paid since that, shall be refunded.
The new accessions of the ministry are valued here. Good is hoped from the Archbishop of Toulouse, who succeeds the Count de Vergennes as Chef du Conseil de finance. Monsieur de Villedeuil, the Comptroller General, has been approved by the public, in the offices he has heretofore exercised. The Duke de Nivernois, called to the Council, is reckoned a good and able man; and Monsieur de Malesherbes, called also to the Council, is unquestionably the first character in the kingdom, for integrity, patriotism, knowledge, and experience in business. There is a fear that the Marechal de Castries is disposed to retire.
The face of things in Europe is a little turbid, at present; but probably all will subside. The Empress of Russia, it is supposed, will not push her pretensions against the Turks to actual war. Weighing the fondness of the Emperor for innovation, against his want of perseverance, it is difficult to calculate what he will do with his discontented subjects in Brabant and Flanders. If those provinces alone were concerned, he would probably give back; but this would induce an opposition to his plan, in all his other dominions. Perhaps he may be able to find a compromise. The cause of the Patriots in Holland is a little clouded at present.
England and Prussia seem disposed to interpose effectually. The former has actually ordered a fleet of six sail of the line, northwardly, under Gore; and the latter threatens to put her troops into motion. The danger of losing such a weight in their scale, as that of Prussia, would occasion this court to prefer conciliation to war. Add to this, the distress of their finances, and perhaps not so warm a zeal in the new ministry for the innovations in Holland. I hardly believe they will think it worth while to purchase the change of constitution proposed there, at the expense of a war. But of these things, you will receive more particular and more certain details from Mr. Dumas, to whom they belong.
Mr. Eden is appointed ambassador from England to Madrid. To the hatred borne us by his court and country, is added a recollection of the circumstances of the unsuccessful embassy to America, of which he made a part. So that I think he will carry to Madrid, dispositions to do us all the ill he can.
The late change in the ministry is very favorable to the prospects of the Chevalier de la Luzerne. The Count de Montmorin, Monsieur de Malesherbes, and Monsieur de Lamoignon, the Garde des Sceaux, are his near relations. Probably something will be done for him, and without delay. The promise of the former administration to the Count de Moutier, to succeed to this vacancy, should it take place, will perhaps be performed by the present one.
Mr. Barclay has probably informed you of his having been arrested in Bordeaux, for a debt contracted in the way of his commerce. He immediately applied to the parliament of that place, who ordered his discharge. This took place after five days’ actual imprisonment. I arrived at Bordeaux a few days after his liberation. As the Procureur General of the King had interested himself to obtain it, with uncommon zeal, and that too on public principles, I thought it my duty to wait on him and return him my thanks. I did the same to the President of the parliament, for the body over which he presided; what would have been an insult in America, being an indispensable duty here. You will see by the enclosed printed paper, on what grounds the Procureur insisted on Mr. Barclay’s liberation. Those on which the parliament ordered it, are not expressed. On my arrival here, I spoke with the minister on the subject. He observed, that the character of Consul is no protection in this country, against process for debt: that as to the character with which Mr. Barclay had been invested at the court of Morocco, it was questionable whether it would be placed on the diplomatic line, as it had not been derived immediately from Congress; that if it were, it would have covered him to Paris only, where he had received his commission, had he proceeded directly thither, but that his long stay at Bordeaux, must be considered as terminating it there. I observed to him, that Mr. Barclay had been arrested almost immediately on his arrival at Bordeaux. But, says he, the arrest was made void by the parliament, and still he has continued there several weeks. True, I replied, but his adversaries declared they would arrest him again, the moment he should be out of the jurisdiction of the parliament of Bordeaux, and have actually engaged the Maréchausée on the road, to do it. This seemed to impress him. He said he could obtain a letter of safe conduct which would protect him to Paris, but that immediately on his arrival here, he would be liable to arrest. I asked him, if such a letter could not be obtained to protect him to Paris, and back to Bordeaux, and even to America? He said, that for that, the consent of the greater part of his creditors would be necessary; and even with this, it was very doubtful whether it could be obtained: still, if I would furnish him with that consent, he would do what should depend on him. I am persuaded he will, and have written to Mr. Barclay to obtain the consent of his creditors. This is the footing on which this matter stands at present. I have stated it thus particularly, that you may know the truth, which will probably be misrepresented in the English papers, to the prejudice of Mr. Barclay. This matter has been a great affliction to him, but no dishonor where its true state is known. Indeed he is incapable of doing any thing not strictly honorable.
In a letter of August the 30th, 1785, I had the honor of mentioning to you what had passed here, on the subject of a convention for the regulation of the two post offices. I now inclose you a letter from the Baron D’Ogny, who is at the head of that department, which shows that he still expects some arrangement. I have heard it said, that M. de Creve-coeur is authorized to treat on this subject. You doubtless know if this be true. The articles may certainly be better adjusted there, than here. This letter from the Baron D’Ogny was in consequence of an application from a servant of mine, during my absence, which would not have been made had I been here. Nor will it be repeated; it being my opinion and practice to pay small sums of money, rather than to ask favors.
I have the honor to inclose you also, copies of a letter and papers from the Marechal de Castries, on the claim of an individual against the State of South Carolina, for services performed on board the Indian; and the petition of another, on a like claim: also copies of letters received from O’Bryan at Algiers, and from Mr. Lambe. A letter of the 26th of May, from Mr. Montgomery, at Alicant, informs me, that by a vessel arrived at Carthagena from Algiers, they learn the death of the Dey of that republic. Yet, as we hear nothing of it through any other channel, it may be doubted. It escaped me at the time of my departure to Aix, to make arrangements for sending you the gazettes regularly, by the packets. The whole are now sent, though a great part of them are so old as to be not worth perusal. Your favor of April the 24th, has been duly received.
I have the honor,to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect. Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LXII. TO MADAME DE CORNY, June 30,1787
TO MADAME DE CORNY.
Paris, June 30,1787.
On my return to Paris, it was among my first attentions to go to the rue Chaussée d’Antin, No. 17, and inquire after my friends whom I had left there. I was told they were in England. And how do you like England, Madam? I know your taste for the works of art gives you little disposition to Anglomania. Their mechanics certainly exceed all others in some lines. But be just to your own nation. They have not patience, it is true, to set rubbing a piece of steel from morning to night, as a lethargic Englishman will do, full charged with porter. But do not their benevolence, their cheerfulness, their amiability, when compared with the growling temper and manners of the people among whom you are, compensate their want of patience? I am in hopes that when the splendor of their shops, which is all that is worth seeing in London, shall have lost the charm of novelty, you will turn a wishful eye to the good people of Paris, and find that you cannot be so happy with any others. The Bois de Boulogne invites you earnestly to come and survey its beautiful verdure, to retire to its umbrage from the heats of the season. I was through it to-day, as I am every day. Every tree charged me with this invitation to you. Passing by la Muette, it wished for you as a mistress. You want a country-house. This is for sale; and in the Bois de Boulogne, which I have always insisted to be most worthy of your preference. Come then, and buy it. If I had had confidence in your speedy return, I should have embarrassed you in earnest with my little daughter. But an impatience to have her with me, after her separation from her friends, added to a respect for your ease, has induced me to send a servant for her.
I tell you no news, because you have correspondents infinitely more au fait of the details at Paris than I am. And I offer you no services, because I hope you will come as soon as the letter could, which should command them. Be assured, however, that nobody is more disposed to render them, nor entertains for you a more sincere and respectful attachment, than him, who, after charging you with his compliments to Monsieur de Corny, has the honor of offering you the homage of those sentiments of distinguished esteem and regard, with which he is, Dear Madam, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.