. 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 Saum