or the earlier hours of the afternoon, produce wines of the first quality.  Seven hundred vines, three feet apart, yield a feuillette, which is about two and a half pieces, to the arpent.  The best red wine is produced at the upper end, in the neighborhood of Ampuis; the best white, next to Condrieu.  They sell of the first quality and last vintage, at one hundred and fifty livres the piece, equal to twelve sous the bottle.  Transportation to Paris is sixty livres, and the bottle four sous; so it may be delivered at Paris in bottles, at twenty sous.  When old, it costs ten or eleven louis the piece.  There is a quality which keeps well, bears transportation, and cannot be drunk under four years.  Another must be drunk at a year old.  They are equal in flavor and price.

The wine called Hermitage, is made on the hills impending over the village of Tain; on one of which is the hermitage which gives name to the hills for about two miles, and to the wine made on them.  There are but three of those hills which produce wine of the first quality, and of these, the middle regions only.  They are about three hundred feet perpendicular height, three quarters of a mile in length, and have a southern aspect.  The soil is scarcely tinged red, consists of small rotten stone, and is, where the best wine is made, without any perceptible mixture of earth.  It is in sloping terraces.  They use a little dung.  An homme de vignes, which consists of seven hundred plants, three feet apart, yields generally about three quarters of a piece, which is nearly four pieces to the arpent.  When new, the piece is sold at about two hundred and twenty-five livres; when old, at three hundred.  It cannot be drunk under four years, and improves fastest in a hot situation.  There is so little white made in proportion to the red, that it is difficult to buy it separate.  They make the white sell the red.  If bought separately, it is from fifteen to sixteen louis the piece, new, and three livres the bottle, old.  To give quality to the red, they mix one eighth of white grapes.  Portage to Paris is seventy-two livres the piece, weighing six hundred pounds.  There are but about one thousand pieces of both red and white, of the first quality, made annually.  Vineyards are never rented here, nor are laborers in the vineyard hired by the year.  They leave buds proportioned to the strength of the vine, sometimes as much as fifteen inches.  The last hermit died in 1751.

In the neighborhood of Montelimart, and below that, they plant vines in rows, six, eight, or ten feet apart, and two feet asunder in the row, filling the intervals with corn.  Sometimes the vines are in double rows, two feet apart.  I saw single asses in ploughs proportioned to their strength.  There are few chateaux in this province.  The people, too, are mostly gathered into villages.  There are, however, some scattering farm-houses.  These are made either of mud, or of round stone and mud.