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 deg.
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