Rhone valley gives one a sense of depression and almost of melancholy. Hawthorne called the region bleak, bar- ren, brown, and bare. To be sure he saw it in winter, but even in early spring we have a little of the same feel- ing. Beyond the verdure stand the great rounded bluffs,--scorched and cal- cined. What look like patches of black furze cap their tops, and reach scant- ily down their sides; while roads climb up in dusty zig- zags, cramped or sweeping as the ravines dictate. "Old as the rocks of Provence," the proverb says. Not merely old, they seem, but dead, the bleached skeleton of a land once young, a fit guardian of ruined forums and amphitheatres and the fallen temples of perished gods. Even the valley seems withering in their ashen grasp. The straight white roads burn. The watercourses are already drying.
THE WALL OF DIE.
Stronger yet is the tinge of sadness as we turn ab- ruptly, from the Rhone, and for thirty miles climb the valley of the Drôme. Little
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Publication Information: Book Title: The Troubadours at Home: Their Lives and Personalities, Their Songs and Their World. Volume: 1. Contributors: Justin H. Smith - author. Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1899. Page Number: 96.
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