ousay
had a very near resemblance to what we had passed through the preceding
day, except that it was more hilly, and the hills being clothed in
vines, more beautiful. On some of these hills, moreover, amidst groves
or tufts of trees, and lawns extending down the declivity, were some
very pretty chateaus, which being white and clean, looked gay and
animated. The landscape, indeed, seemed to improve upon us as we
advanced; every mile was as charming as the preceding, but every mile
began to have a new character. Sometimes the river ran through a plain
in which the peasants were gathering in their harvest, to the very brink
of the water. Sometimes, the banks on each side were covered with
forests, from the centre of which were visible steeples, villas,
windmills, and abbeys. At Chousay, I saw the cleanly way in which the
Vignerons of the Loire bruise their grapes. In Spain and Portugal, they
are put into a mash tub, and the juice is trodden from them by the bare
feet of men, women, and girls hired for the purpose: here the practise
is to use a wooden pestle. The grapes being collected and picked, are
put into a large vat, where they are bruised in the manner I have
mentioned, and are thence carried to the press. The vintage had not
indeed as yet begun, but I saw the process performed on a small quantity
of grapes, which had been ripened in a garden. Every vineyard
proprietor, besides his stock-fruit, has some peculiar species of grape
from which he makes the wine for his own use and that of his immediate
friends: these grapes are very carefully picked and culled, and none but
the soundest and best are thrown into the tub. The wine thus made is
infinitely superior to the stock-wine for sale: when old, it is not
inferior to Hock, and I believe is frequently sold as such by the
foreign purchasers.

Our next post was Planchoury, a small village, which we reached about
six o'clock in the evening, and where we agreed to remain for the night,
that our horses might have a rest, which they seemed to require. Our inn
here was a farm-house. We had for our supper a couple of roasted fowls,
and a dish which I had never seen before, some new wheat boiled with
pepper and salt. It was so savoury, and I have reason to believe so
wholesome, that I have frequently taken it since. I can say from
experience, that it is a powerful sudorific, and very efficacious in a
cold. I must not forget to mention that I slept on some straw, in a kind
of