g, evaporation, and
filtration, affords a very small proportion of purging salt, and
calcarious earth, which last ferments with strong acids. As I had
neither hydrometer nor thermometer to ascertain the weight and warmth
of this water; nor time to procure the proper utensils, to make the
preparations, and repeat the experiments necessary to exhibit a
complete analysis, I did not pretend to enter upon this process; but
contented myself with drinking, bathing, and using the douche, which
perfectly answered my expectation, having, in eight days, almost cured
an ugly scorbutic tetter, which had for some time deprived me of the
use of my right hand. I observed that the water, when used externally,
left always a kind of oily appearance on the skin: that when, we boiled
it at home, in an earthen pot, the steams smelled like those of
sulphur, and even affected my lungs in the same manner: but the bath
itself smelled strong of a lime-kiln. The water, after standing all
night in a bottle, yielded a remarkably vinous taste and odour,
something analogous to that of dulcified spirit of nitre. Whether the
active particles consist of a volatile vitriol, or a very fine
petroleum, or a mixture of both, I shall not pretend to determine: but
the best way I know of discovering whether it is really impregnated
with a vitriolic principle, too subtil and fugitive for the usual
operations of chymistry, is to place bottles, filled with wine, in the
bath, or adjacent room, which wine, if there is really a volatile acid,
in any considerable quantity, will be pricked in eight and forty hours.

Having ordered our coach to be refitted, and provided with fresh
horses, as well as with another postilion, in consequence of which
improvements, I payed at the rate of a loui'dore per diem to Lyons and
back again, we departed from Aix, and the second day of our journey
passing the Durance in a boat, lay at Avignon. This river, the Druentia
of the antients, is a considerable stream, extremely rapid, which
descends from the mountains, and discharges itself in the Rhone. After
violent rains it extends its channel, so as to be impassable, and often
overflows the country to a great extent. In the middle of a plain,
betwixt Orgon and this river, we met the coach in which we had
travelled eighteen months before, from Lyons to Montpellier, conducted
by our old driver Joseph, who no sooner recognized my servant at a
distance, by his musquetoon, than he came running