For It Must Be Observed, That The Same Mountains Which Serve As Funnels And Canals, To Collect And Discharge The Keen Blasts Of Winter, Will Provide Screens To Intercept Intirely The Faint Breezes Of Summer.

Aix, though pretty well provided with butcher's meat, is very ill supplied with potherbs; and they have no poultry but what comes at a vast distance from the Lionnois.

They say their want of roots, cabbage, cauliflower, etc. is owing to a scarcity of water: but the truth is, they are very bad gardeners. Their oil is good and cheap: their wine is indifferent: but their chief care seems employed on the culture of silk, the staple of Provence, which is every where shaded with plantations of mulberry trees, for the nourishment of the worms. Notwithstanding the boasted cheapness of every article of housekeeping, in the south of France, I am persuaded a family may live for less money at York, Durham, Hereford, and in many other cities of England than at Aix in Provence; keep a more plentiful table; and be much more comfortably situated in all respects. I found lodging and provision at Aix fifty per cent dearer than at Montpellier, which is counted the dearest place in Languedoc.

The baths of Aix, so famous in antiquity, were quite demolished by the irruptions of the barbarians. The very source of the water was lost, till the beginning of the present century (I think the year 1704), when it was discovered by accident, in digging for the foundation of a house, at the foot of a hill, just without the city wall. Near the same place was found a small stone altar, with the figure of a Priapus, and some letters in capitals, which the antiquarians have differently interpreted. From this figure, it was supposed that the waters were efficacious in cases of barrenness. It was a long time, however, before any person would venture to use them internally, as it did not appear that they had ever been drank by the antients. On their re-appearance, they were chiefly used for baths to horses, and other beasts which had the mange, and other cutaneous eruptions. At length poor people began to bathe in them for the same disorders, and received such benefit from them, as attracted the attention of more curious inquirers. A very superficial and imperfect analysis was made and published, with a few remarkable histories of the cures they had performed, by three different physicians of those days; and those little treatises, I suppose, encouraged valetudinarians to drink them without ceremony. They were found serviceable in the gout, the gravel, scurvy, dropsy, palsy, indigestion, asthma, and consumption; and their fame soon extended itself all over Languedoc, Gascony, Dauphine, and Provence. The magistrates, with a view to render them more useful and commodious, have raised a plain building, in which there are a couple of private baths, with a bedchamber adjoining to each, where individuals may use them both internally and externally, for a moderate expence.

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