The pleasure of the traveller in surveying such scenes, cannot but be frequently interrupted, by the recollection of the various atrocities which the inhabitants of these fine provinces committed against each other, and of the immense number of innocent victims that were driven from their abode to perish by famine or the sword.
SAUMUR TO TOURS--TOURS--TOURS TO BLOIS--ORLEANS--AND ORLEANS TO PARIS.
I hired a small carriage, called a _patache_, to convey me to Saumur and Tours; it is driven by a postillion with two horses, and is open in front, giving the traveller a better opportunity of viewing the country than in a close vehicle.
The town of Saumur is built on both banks of the Loire, with a handsome stone bridge over it; an ancient castle, built on a high rock, commands the whole town. The road from Angers to this place is a high raised causeway, paved, and runs parallel to the river, within a few paces of its banks, the whole distance. Here we entered into Touraine from the province of Anjou. From Saumur to Tours, the road is like the former. The river Loire is on the right hand, and a flat level country on the left, covered with orchards, groves, and meadows. The road is every where raised so high, that it forms a very steep declivity, with narrow pathways down to the entrance of the cottages and villages, which are most romantically situated,--some in orchards, some amidst vineyards, some in gardens, and others in recesses peeping from between the trees. The fences are fantastically interwoven with wreaths of the vines, which frequently creep up the trunk of a pear or a cherry-tree, and cover the slated roofs of the houses, thereby, from the natural luxuriance and wildness of their spreading branches in the fruit season, answering at once the purposes of utility and ornament; for the slates, retaining the heat, ripen the grape sooner than any other mode of training. The corn was now ripe, and added to the interest and beauty of the scenes; in many of the fields the reapers were at work, and the harvest (which happily for France had not been so abundant for many years) was going on with the assistance of the female peasantry, who on all occasions partake and cheer the labours of the field.