s being
beaten and turned out of the house.

We met, every day, large numbers of recruits in companies of one or two
hundred, on their way to Marseilles to embark for Algiers. They were
mostly youths, from sixteen to twenty years of age, and seemed little to
forebode their probable fate. In looking on their fresh, healthy faces
and bounding forms, I saw also a dim and ghastly vision of bones
whitening on the desert, of men perishing with heat and fever, or
stricken down by the aim of the savage Bedouin.

Leaving next morning at day-break, we walked on before breakfast to
Orgon, a little village in a corner of the cliffs which border the
Durance, and crossed the muddy river by a suspension bridge a short
distance below, to Cavaillon, where the country people were holding a
great market. From this place a road led across the meadow-land to
L'Isle, six miles distant. This little town is so named, because it is
situated on an island formed by the crystal Sorgues, which flows from
the fountains of Vaucluse. It is a very picturesque and pretty place.
Great mill-wheels, turning slowly and constantly, stand at intervals in
the stream, whose grassy banks are now as green as in spring-time. We
walked along the Sorgues, which is quite as beautiful and worthy to be
sung as the Clitumnus, to the end of the village, to take the road to
Vaucluse. Beside its banks stands a dirty, modern "Hotel de Petrarque et
Laure." Alas, that the names of the most romantic and impassioned lovers
of all history should be desecrated to a sign-post to allure
gormandizing tourists!

The bare mountain in whose heart lies the poet's solitude, now rose
before us, at the foot of the lofty Mont Ventoux, whose summit of snows
extended beyond. We left the river, and walked over a barren plain,
across which the wind blew most drearily. The sky was rainy and dark,
and completed the desolateness of the scene, which in no wise heightened
our anticipations of the renowned glen. At length we rejoined the
Sorgues and entered a little green valley running up into the mountain.
The narrowness of the entrance entirely shut out the wind, and except
the rolling of the waters over their pebbly bed, all was still and
lonely and beautiful. The sides of the dell were covered with olive
trees, and a narrow strip of emerald meadow lay at the bottom. It grew
more hidden and sequestered as we approached the little village of
Vaucluse. Here, the mountain towers far above, and pr