I have the honor to be, with sentiments of high esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

MEMORANDA TAKEN ON A JOURNEY FROM PARIS IN 1787

Memoranda taken on a Journey from Paris into the Southern Parts of France, and Northern of Italy, in the year 1787.

CHAMPAGNE.  March 3. Sens to Vermanton.  The face of the country is in large hills, not too steep for the plough, somewhat resembling the Elk hill and Beaver-dam hills of Virginia.  The soil is generally a rich mulatto loam, with a mixture of coarse sand, and some loose stone.  The plains of the Yonne are of the same color.  The plains are in corn, the hills in vineyard, but the wine not good.  There are a few apple-trees, but none of any other kind, and no enclosures.  No cattle, sheep, or swine; fine mules.

Few chateaux; no farm-houses, all the people being gathered in villages.  Are they thus collected by that dogma of their religion, which makes them believe, that to keep the Creator in good humor with his own works, they must mumble a mass every day?  Certain it is, that they are less happy and less virtuous in villages, than they would be insulated with their families on the grounds they cultivate.  The people are illy clothed.  Perhaps they have put on their worst clothes at this moment, as it is raining.  But I observe women and children carrying heavy burthens, and laboring with the hoe.  This is an unequivocal indication of extreme poverty.  Men, in a civilized country, never expose their wives and children to labor above their force and sex, as long as their own labor can protect them from it.  I see few beggars.  Probably this is the effect of a police.

BURGUNDY.  March 4. Lucy-le-Bois.  Cussy-les-Forges.  Rouvray.  Maison-neuve.  Vitieaux.  La Chaleure.  Pont de Panis.  Dijon.  The hills are higher, and more abrupt.  The soil a good red loam and sand, mixed with more or less grit, small stone, and sometimes rock.  All in corn.  Some forest wood here and there, broom, whins, and holly, and a few enclosures of quick-hedge.  Now and then a flock of sheep.

The people are well clothed, but it is Sunday.  They have the appearance of being well fed.  The Chateau de Sevigny, near Cussy-les-Forges, is a charming situation.  Between Maison-neuve and Vitteaux the road leads through an avenue of trees, eight American miles long, in a right line.  It is impossible to paint the ennui of this avenue.  On the summits of the hills, which border the valley in which Vitteaux is, there is a parapet of rock, twenty, thirty, or forty feet perpendicular, which crowns the hills.  The tops are nearly level, and appear to be covered with earth.  Very singular.  Great masses of rock in the hills between La Chaleure and Pont de Panis, and a conical hill in the approach to the last place.