Still going southward, the vineyards began to border our track, together
with what I at first took to be orchards, but soon found were plantations
of olive-trees, which grow to a much larger size than I supposed, and
look almost exactly like very crabbed and eccentric apple-trees. Neither
they nor the vineyards add anything to the picturesqueness of the
landscape.

On the whole, I should have been delighted with all this scenery if it
had not looked so bleak, barren, brown, and bare; so like the wintry New
England before the snow has fallen. It was very cold, too; ice along the
borders of streams, even among the vineyards and olives. The houses are
of rather a different shape here than, farther northward, their roofs
being not nearly so sloping. They are almost invariably covered with
white plaster; the farm-houses have their outbuildings in connection with
the dwelling,--the whole surrounding three sides of a quadrangle.

We travelled far into the night, swallowed a cold and hasty dinner at
Avignon, and reached Marseilles sorely wearied, at about eleven o'clock.
We took a cab to the Hotel d'Angleterre (two cabs, to be quite accurate),
and find it a very poor place.

To go back a little, as the sun went down, we looked out of the window of
our railway carriage, and saw a sky that reminded us of what we used to
see day after day in America, and what we have not seen since; and, after
sunset, the horizon burned and glowed with rich crimson and orange
lustre, looking at once warm and cold. After it grew dark, the stars
brightened, and Miss M------ from her window pointed out some of the
planets to the children, she being as familiar with them as a gardener
with his flowers. They were as bright as diamonds.