Young und Okey - 1915 - Travels in France and Italy during the years 1787,

Travels in France and Italy/27
waiting girl at an inn will be looked for in vain in France.—34 miles.
10th. Cross the Dordonne by a ferry; the boat well contrived for
driving in at one end, and out at the other, without the abominable operation,
common in England, of beating horses till they leap into them;
the price is as great a contrast as the excellence; we paid. for an English
whisky, a French cabriolet, one saddle-horse, and six persons, no more
than 50 sous (2S. id.). I have paid half-a-crown a wheel in England for
execrable ferries, passed over at the hazard of the horses’ limbs.—This
river runs in a very deep valley between two ridges of high hills: extensive
views, all scattered with villages and single houses; an appearance
of great population. Chestnuts on a calcareous soil, contrary to the
Limosin maxim.
Pass Payrac, and meet many beggars, which we had not done before.
All the country, girls and women, are without shoes or stockings;
and the ploughmen at their work have neither sabots nor feet to their
stockings. This is a poverty that strikes at the root of national prosperity;
a large consumption among the poor being of more consequence
than among the rich: the wealth of a nation lies in its circulation and
consumption; and the case of poor people abstaining from the use of
manufactures of leather and wool ought to be considered as an evil of
the first magnitude. It reminded me of the misery of Ireland. Pass Pontde-Rodez,
and come to high land, whence we enjoyed an immense and
singular prospect of ridges, hills, vales, and gentle slopes, rising one
beyond another in every direction, with few masses of wood, but many
scattered trees. At least forty miles are tolerably distinct to the eye, and
without a level acre; the sun, on the point of being set, illumined part of
it, and displayed a vast number of villages and scattered farms. The
mountains of Auvergne, at the distance of 100 miles, added to the view.
Pass by several cottages, exceedingly well built of stone and slate or
tiles, yet without any glass to the windows; can a country be likely to
thrive where the great object is to spare manufactures? Women picking
weeds into their aprons for their cows, another sign of poverty I observed,
during the whole way from Calais.—30 miles.
11th. See for the first time the Pyrenees, at the distance of 150
miles.—To me, who had never seen an object farther than sixty or seventy,
I mean the Wicklow mountains, as I was going out of Holyhead,
this was interesting. Wherever the eye wandered in search of new objects
it was sure to rest there. Their magnitude, their snowy height, the
line of separation between two great kingdoms, and the end of our trav-