June 1,2.  The country from Nantes to L’Orient is very hilly and poor, the soil gray; nearly half is waste, in furze and broom, among which is some poor grass.  The cultivated parts are in corn, some maize, a good many apple trees; no vines.  All is in small enclosures of quick hedge and ditch.  There are patches and hedge-rows of forest-wood, not quite deserving the name of timber.  The people are mostly in villages; they eat rye-bread, and are ragged.  The villages announce a general poverty, as does every other appearance.  Women smite on the anvil, and work with the hoe, and cows are yoked to labor.  There are great numbers of cattle, insomuch that butter is their staple.  Neither asses nor mules:  yet it is said that the fine mules I have met with on my journey, are raised in Poictou.  There are but few chateaux here.  I observe mill-ponds, and hoes with long handles.  Have they not, in common with us, derived these from England, of which Bretagne is probably a colony?  L’Orient is supposed to contain twenty-five thousand inhabitants.  They tell me here, that to make a reasonable profit on potash and pearlash, as bought in America, the former should sell at thirty livres, the latter thirty-six livres, the quintal.  Of turpentine they make no use in their vessels.  Bayonne furnishes pitch enough; but tar is in demand, and ours sells well.  The tower of L’Orient is sixty-five pieds above the level of the sea, one hundred and twenty pieds high, twenty-five pieds in diameter; the stairs four feet radius, and cost thirty thousand livres, besides the materials of the old tower.

June 3, 4, 5.  The country and productions from L’Orient to Rennes, and from Rennes to Nantes, are precisely similar to those from Nantes to L’Orient.  About Rennes, it is somewhat leveller, perhaps less poor, and almost entirely in pasture.  The soil always gray.  Some small, separate houses, which seem to be the residence of laborers, or very small farmers; the walls frequently of mud, and the roofs generally covered with slate.  Great plantations of walnut, and frequently of pine.  Some apple trees and sweet-briar still in bloom, and broom generally so.  I have heard no nightingale since the last day of May.  There are gates in this country made in such a manner, that the top rail of the gate overshoots backwards the hind post, so as to counterpoise the gate, and prevent its swagging.

Nantes.  Vessels of eight feet draught only can come to Nantes.  Those which are larger, lie at Painboeuf, ten leagues below Nantes, and five leagues above the mouth of the river.  There is a continued navigation from Nantes to Paris, through the Loire, the canal de Briare and the Seine.  Carolina rice is preferred to that of Lombardy for the Guinea trade, because it requires less water to boil it.