Wednesday, October 20, 1830 Travel Journal

1830

October

Wednesday 20

6 3/4

11 1/2

Marginal note: Nothing for cows to eat –

Ready at 8 10/.. – Went out for 25 minutes on the port to buy 2 prints of the different national flags –

Then breakfast in 10 minutes and off at at 8 25/.. from the hotel Beauveau Marseille.  A fine town – Excellent shops, and not dear when not surfait – The best breaded and worst milked town in France ? Impossible, said the waiter last night, to get lait de vache unless you tirez (milk) it yourself – The people of the Inn have a cow, and do certainly draw the milk as wanted – The great singularity of Marseille is the herds of goats driven about in the streets night and morning to serve all with milk en passant. 

The town supplied with water by 2 inconsiderable streams – and no water in the country but what comes from these –

In 1/2 hour from Marseille, quite among the hills – Fine picturesque limestone hills, sometimes wooded, sometimes vines up almost to the top, but often quite bare and white as the Dover Cliffs – The large plain of Marseilles studded all over with white houses like a plum pudding stuck full of blanched almonds – Singular appearance this –

The plain greener and more wooded and fertile as we near the mountains – Fine drive to the good little town of Aubagne, a garden of vines and olives and mulberries all the way – But the whole road very stupid for a pedestrian – All about Marseilles and here, the roads and all the enclosures shut with high limestone, lime plastered over walls (against the mistral) that must prevent one’s seeing anything – Limestone put on to mend the roads is ground to dust at once –

The mountains, right, nicely wooded out of Aubagne – The vines all today not so yellow as elsewhere, merely a yellowish green – Mountains, left, bare and hoary – Then by and by wooded on each side the narrow valley – Scarcely anything but pinaster – Stone or Italian pine grows not in England.

 

Fine sunny cool day – it is a vallon, narrowish valley we have gone along ever since 1/2 hour from Marseille which becomes much narrower about 25 minutes from Aubagne – Vines in rows, narrow row beds here – Plough 3 or 4 turns between each bed, and do not cut the plants down

At 10 3/4, incur a cross thinking of π [Mariana] and enter narrow rocky wooded pretty defile for about 20 minutes, and then drag down steep hill into the round vineyard plain of the little town of Cuges and stop to change horses at 11 1/2 – A poorish little town beset with beggars all the time –

In a few minutes, mount the steep hills out of the valley, the limestone hills covered with the light green pinaster, and the caper bush (which began about Aubagne) here on both sides the road growing low, little higher than tall bilberries – Vines all the way – The mountain side walled up for them in little terrasses and pinaster at the tops about full 3/4 hour’s ascent –

Should have walked, but dozed and never thought of it till too late –

At the guardhouse at the top at 12 35/..  Reddish soil here among the limestone – in 5 minutes, begin the descent of 1/2 hour – Vines and olives in all directions, then a little ascent, and descent again – Old castle.  No, says the postillon, village of Castellé at the top of hill right – Vines terrassed up to the tops of the hills –

Delightful, cool, mild, balmy air – Charming drive amid vines and olives – Neat houses scattered up and down –Perpetually ascending and descending – A very hilly stage –

Beausset a little narrow streeted town –

At 2 1/2, Gorges des Ollioules – Ruined castle at the top (left) and on our sortie at the other end of the gorge, ruined church (left) and castle right, and at 2 3/4, picturesque village of little town of Ollioules –

Singular look back up the white mountains of the Gorge and on the mountains terrassed up to the top on each side the town, with olives and vines and figs –Dotted all over with white houses as elsewhere, Fine conical hill (right – en avant –) crowned by church steeple ? and village ?,  the olives here and for the last stage or 2 full of black fruit – The trees are kept low, but so many of the trunks are 3 feet circumference a foot from the ground –

Very few horses, almost all mules hereabouts from Toulouse. 

Here no view of the sea from Marseille till now, 3 p.m., for a little while very fine – The plain greener than about Marseilles.  The same sort of garden of vines and olives dotted all over with white houses – Just a peep of the town of the masts of shipping and a large round tower of fat blackish clouds (left) – I fear we shall have rain soon – Great high white walls there as at Marseilles – along the narrow road sides and some of the mountains (left) perfectly bare and hoary –

Alight at the Croix d’Or Toulon at 3 40/..  Enter the town through the fort and pass the 2nd gateway at 3 33/.. – Pass along a good but not wide street – At the Inn at 3 40/..

From about 4 1/2 to 6, wrote 2 pages pretty small and close to Lady Stuart.

Dinner at 6 10/.. – Somehow fell asleep afterwards about 7 and did not awake till 10 1/4, when came to my room –

Very fine, cool day – Fahrenheit 63° at 11 1/2 p.m.

WYAS Finding Numbers SH:7/ML/TR/8/0029, SH:7/ML/TR/8/0030, and SH:7/ML/TR/8/0031