I stood at the foot of this great fabric, and gazed up at it in astonishment.  The exterior wall, three hundred and thirty-four feet in length, and rising to the height of one hundred and twenty-one feet, is still in excellent, preservation, and through its rows of solid arches one looks on the broken ranges of seats within.  On the crag above, and looking as if about to topple down on it, is a massive fragment of the fortress of the Princes of Orange, razed by Louis XIV.  Passing through the city, we came to the beautiful Roman triumphal arch, which to my eye is a finer structure than that of Constantino at Rome.  It is built of a rich yellow marble and highly ornamented with sculptured trophies.  From the barbaric shields and the letters MARIO, still remaining, it has been supposed to commemorate the victory of Marius over the barbarians, near Aix.  A frieze, running along the top, on each side, shows, although broken and much defaced by the weather, the life and action which once marked the struggling figures.  These Roman ruins, scattered through Provence and Languedoc, though inferior in historical interest, equal in architectural beauty the greater part of those in the Eternal City itself.

The rest of the day the road was monotonous, though varied somewhat by the tall crags of Mornas and Mont-dragon, towering over the villages of the same name.  Night came on as the rock of Pierrelatte, at whose foot we were to sleep, appeared in the distance, rising like a Gibraltar from the plain, and we only reached it in time to escape the rain that came down the valley of the Rhone.

Next day we passed several companies of soldiers on their way to Africa.  One of them was accompanied by a young girl, apparently the wife of the recruit by whose side she was marching.  She wore the tight blue jacket of the troop, and a red skirt, reaching to the knees, over her soldier pantaloons; while her pretty face showed to advantage beneath a small military cap.  It was a “Fille du Regiment” in real life.  Near Montelimart, we lost sight of Mont Ventoux, whose gleaming white crest had been visible all the way from Vaucluse, and passed along the base of a range of hills running near to the river.  So went our march, without particular incident, till we bivouacked for the night among a company of soldiers in the little village of Loriol.

Leaving at six o’clock, wakened by the trumpets which called up the soldiery to their day’s march, we reached the river Drome at dawn, and from the bridge over its rapid current, gazed at the dim, ash-colored masses of the Alps of Dauphine, piled along the sky, far up the valley.  The coming of morn threw a yellow glow along their snowy sides, and lighted up, here and there, a flashing glacier.  The peasantry were already up and at work, and caravans of pack-wagons rumbled along in the morning twilight We trudged on with them, and by breakfast-time had made some distance of the way to Valence.  The road, which does not approach the Rhone, is devoid of interest and tiresome, though under a summer sky, when the bare vine-hills are latticed over with green, and the fruit-trees covered with blossoms and foliage, it might be a scene of great beauty.