FROM THE GARONNE TO THE RHONE; OR, NOTES, SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY, BY THE WAY. By ANGUS B. REACH , AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC. LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET. MDCCCLII. LONDON: HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET. TO CHARLES MACKAY, Esq. , LL. D., MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY FRIEND, These Pages ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED....

" Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux! " The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy state of dose in which I lay, luxuriously stretched back amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers, in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest diligences which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard. " Voila! la Voila! " The bloused peasant who drove the six stout nags therewith stirred in his place; his long whip whistled and cracked; the horses flung up their heads as they broke into a cante

That our worthy forefathers in Guienne loved good wine, is a thing not to be doubted—even by a teetotaller. When the Earl of Derby halted his detachments, he always had a pipe set on broach for the good of the company; and it is to be presumed that he knew their tastes. The wines of the Garonne were also, as might be expected, freely imported into England: "Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne, Of the Ruele, and of the Rochel wyn." As far down, indeed, as Henry VIII.'s time you might get Gascony a

So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us now proceed to the joyous ingathering of the fruits of the earth—the great yearly festival and jubilee of the property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in the sky has been watched—every cold night breeze felt with nervous apprehension. Upon the last bright weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the wine depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded sun, fanned by the mild breezes of

Turn to the map of France—to that portion of it which would be traversed by a straight line drawn from Bordeaux to Bayonne—and you will observe that such a line would run through a vast extent of bare-looking country—of that sort, indeed, where Roads, you will observe, are few and far between; the names of far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar to you; and, indeed, nine-tenths of this part of the map consists of white paper. The district you are looking at is the Landes, forming now a department

The sun was low in the heavens next morning when I was afoot and down to the beach, the glorious bay now brimming full, and the schooners and chasse marées , like the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating double, ships and shadows. The scene was very strange. The green meadow had disappeared, and where it had been, a gleaming lake stretched brilliant in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods like a mirror in an ebony frame, cutting slices of sweeping bay out of their dusky margins, and piercing their d

A solemn imprecation is on record, uttered against the memory of the man who invented getting up by candle-light; to which some honest gentleman, fond of long lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated against the man who invented getting up at all. Whatever we may think of the latter commination, I suppose we shall all agree in the propriety of the former. At all events, no one ever execrated with more sincere good will the memory of the ingenious originator of candle-light turnings-out tha

Excepting, perhaps, the famous city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pau is the most Anglicised town in France. There are a good many of our countrymen congregated under the old steeples of Tours which every British man should love, were it only for Quentin Durward; but they do not leaven the mass; while in Pau, particularly during the winter time, the main street and the Place Royale look, so far as the passengers go, like slices cut out from Weymouth, Bath, or Cheltenham. You see in an instant the insular

The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most varied of the clefts running deep into the Pyrenees, opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some thirty miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow horns, both forming cul de sacs for all, save active pedestrians and bold muleteers, the bathing establishment of Eaux Bonnes being situated in one, and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating as to my best course for seeing some of the mountain scenery, as I hung over the parapet of the bri

I wakened next morning to a mournful reveillé —the pattering of the rain; and, looking out, found the Place one puddle of melting sleet. The fog lay heavy and low upon the hills, and the sky was as dismal as a London firmament in the dreariest day of November. Still, M. Martin was sanguine that it would clear up after breakfast. Such weather was absurd—nonsensical; he presumed it was intended for a joke; but if so, the joke was a bad one. However, it must be fine speedily—that was a settled poin

The next day by noon—still raining—I was at Pau; and having bidden adieu to M. Martin, started for Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great centre of Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you are on ancient English ground. The rich plain all around you is the old County of Bigorre, which was given up to England as portion of the ransom of King John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with a gallant train, the Black Prince, to visit the Count of Argmanac—the celebrated Gaston Phœbus, Count o

Again in the banquette of the diligence, which, rolling on the great highway from Toulouse to Marseilles, has taken me up at Carcassone, and will deposit me for the present at Beziers. We have entered in Languedoc, the most early civilised of the provinces which now make up France—the land where chivalry was first wedded to literature—the land whose tongue laid the foundations of the greater part of modern poetry—the land where the people first rebelled against the tyranny of Rome—the land of th

I left Beziers for the Mediterranean, by Pierre Paul Riquet's canal. The track-boat passes once a-day, taking upwards of thirty-five hours to make the passage from Toulouse to Cette. The Beziers station is about a mile from the town; and on approaching it early in the morning, I found a crowd of people collected on the banks, looking at men dragging the canal with huge hooks at the end of poles. They were searching for the body of a poor fellow from Beziers, who had drowned himself under very re

Passing, for the present, Montpellier, where people with consumptions used to be sent to swallow dust, as likely to be soothing to the lungs, and to breathe the balmy zephyrs of the whispering mistral, I made straight for Lunel, in order to get from thence to one of the strangest old towns in France—Aigues-Mortes. All around us, as we hurried on, were vines and olives—a true land of wine and oil. The olive-tree did not improve on acquaintance—it got uglier and uglier—more formal, and more cast-i

As Launcelot Gobbo had an infection to serve Bassanio, so I somehow took ill with an infection to walk, instead of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose that Auguste had innoculated me, in some measure, with his mysterious love for the boundless swamps and primeval jungles of bulrush around; so that I felt a sort of pang in leaving them, and would willingly depart lingeringly and alone. Sending on my small baggage, then, by roulage , I strode forth out of the dead city, and was soon pacing alone the ec

In the foregoing pages I have sketched, with as much regard to a readable liveliness, and to vivid local colouring as I could command, the features and incidents of part—the most interesting one—of an extended journey through France. My primary purpose in undertaking the latter was, to prepare a view of the social and agricultural condition of the peasantry, for publication in the columns of the Morning Chronicle ; and accordingly a series of letters, devoted to that important subject, duly appe