March 24.  From Nismes to Arles.  The plains extending from Nismes to the Rhone, in the direction of Aries, are broken in one place by a skirt of low hills.  They are red and stony at first, but as you approach the Rhone, they are of a dark gray mould, with a little sand, and very good.  They are in corn and clover, vines, olives, almonds, mulberries, and willow.  There are some sheep, no wood, no enclosures.

The high hills of Languedoc are covered with snow.  At an ancient church, in the suburbs of Aries, are some hundreds of ancient stone coffins, along the road-side.  The ground is thence called Les Champs Elysees.  In a vault in a church, are some curiously wrought, and in a back yard are many ancient statues, inscriptions, &c.  Within the town are a part of two Corinthian columns, and of the pediment with which they were crowned, very rich, having belonged to the ancient capitol of the place.

But the principal monument here, is an amphitheatre, the external portico of which is tolerably complete.  How many porticoes there were, cannot be seen; but at one of the principal gates there are still five, measuring, from out to in, seventy-eight feet, ten inches, the vault diminishing inwards.  There are sixty-four arches, each of which is, from centre to centre, twenty feet, six inches.  Of course, the diameter is of four hundred and thirty-eight feet; or of four hundred and fifty feet, if we suppose the four principal arches a little larger than the rest.  The ground floor is supported on innumerable vaults.  The first story, externally, has a tall pedestal, like a pilaster, between every two arches; the upper story, a column, the base of which would indicate it Corinthian.  Every column is truncated as low as the impost of the arch, but the arches are all entire.  The whole of the upper entablature is gone, and of the Attic, if there was one.  Not a single seat of the internal is visible.  The whole of the inside, and nearly the whole of the outside, is masked by buildings.  It is supposed there are one thousand inhabitants within the amphitheatre.  The walls are more entire and firm than those of the ampitheatre at Nismes.  I suspect its plan and distribution to have been very different from that.

Terrasson.  The plains of the Rhone from Arles to this place, are a league or two wide; the mould is of a dark gray, good, in corn and lucerne.  Neither wood, nor enclosures.  Many sheep.

St. Remy.  From Terrasson to St. Remy, is a plain of a league or two wide, bordered by broken hills of massive rock.  It is gray and stony, mostly in olives.  Some almonds, mulberries, willows, vines, corn, and lucerne.  Many sheep.  No forest, nor enclosures.