We lay at Loumas; the next morning, came to Aix, having passed that extremely rapid and dangerous river of Durance. In this tract, all the heaths, or commons, are covered with rosemary, lavender, lentiscus, and the like sweet shrubs, for many miles together; which to me was very pleasant. Aix is the chief city of Provence, being a Parliament and Presidential town, with other royal Courts and Metropolitan jurisdiction. It is well built, the houses very high, and the streets ample. The Cathedral, St. Savior's, is a noble pile adorned with innumerable figures; especially that of St. Michael; the Baptisterie, the Palace, the Court, built in a most spacious piazza, are very fair. The Duke of Guise's house is worth seeing, being furnished with many antiquities in and about it. The Jesuits have here a royal College, and the City is a University.
7th October, 1644. We had a most delicious journey to Marseilles, through a country sweetly declining to the south and Mediterranean coasts, full of vineyards and olive-yards, orange trees, myrtles, pomegranates, and the like sweet plantations, to which belong pleasantly-situated villas to the number of above 1,500, built all of freestone, and in prospect showing as if they were so many heaps of snow dropped out of the clouds among those perennial greens. It was almost at the shutting of the gates that we arrived. Marseilles is on the sea-coast, on a pleasant rising ground, well walled, with an excellent port for ships and galleys, secured by a huge chain of iron drawn across the harbor at pleasure; and there is a well-fortified tower with three other forts, especially that built on a rock; but the castle commanding the city is that of Notre Dame de la Garde. In the chapel hung up are divers crocodiles' skins.
We went then to visit the galleys, being about twenty-five in number; the Capitaine of the Galley Royal gave us most courteous entertainment in his cabin, the slaves in the interim playing both loud and soft music very rarely. Then he showed us how he commanded their motions with a nod, and his whistle making them row out. The spectacle was to me new and strange, to see so many hundreds of miserably naked persons, their heads being shaven close, and having only high red bonnets, a pair of coarse canvas drawers, their whole backs and legs naked, doubly chained about their middle and legs, in couples, and made fast to their seats, and all commanded in a trice by an imperious and cruel seaman. One Turk among the rest he much favored, who waited on him in his cabin, but with no other dress than the rest, and a chain locked about his leg, but not coupled. This galley was richly carved and gilded, and most of the rest were very beautiful. After bestowing something on the slaves, the capitaine sent a band of them to give us music at dinner where we lodged. I was amazed to contemplate how these miserable caitiffs lie in their galley crowded together; yet there was hardly one but had some occupation, by which, as leisure and calms permitted, they got some little money, insomuch as some of them have, after many years of cruel servitude, been able to purchase their liberty. The rising-forward and falling-back at their oar, is a miserable spectacle, and the noise of their chains, with the roaring of the beaten waters, has something of strange and fearful in it to one unaccustomed to it. They are ruled and chastised by strokes on their backs and soles of their feet, on the least disorder, and without the least humanity, yet are they cheerful and full of knavery.