Page:Letters from Italy - describing the manners, customs, antiquities, paintings, etc. of that country, in the years MDCCLXX and MDCCLXXI - to a friend residing in France (IA lettersfromitaly01mill).pdf/41

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neglected; on the other side of Aix the mountains are laboured until their extreme acclivity mocks the peasant's toil. Their corn is still very green, their hay now making; having a bad prospect of grapes this year, they have neglected their vines, whose branches trail in disorder along the ground. – From Aix hither, there is no mountain to ascend or descend; fertile plains open themselves out on each side of the road to a great extent, whose boundaries are mountains covered with snow. Abundance of standard fruit-trees, forming considerable orchards, and bending under their harvests, the corn growing between them in many places, strike the mind with ideas of plenty, widely differing from those I had formed of Savoy. But it seems this landscape is to have its contrast. – At Aix we made every inquiry, our time would permit of, in regard to the medicinal qualities of its waters. Two of the springs burst out of a rock on the side of a steep mountain, which are arched over like a grotto. The upper bath, supplied by one of these springs, has a strong sulphureous smell and taste. The spring flows out of a leaden pipe inserted in the rock, in a stream which measures about two inches and a half diameter it is so excessively hot, that I could not suffer it to fall upon my hand for a quarter of a minute. M– held his hand repeatedly under it, till at last it swelled, looked very red, and itched. Our guide told us, that a Geneva gentleman, who had but just left the town, and who was so para-