A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an autumnal morning, watching the pale negative lighting of the east--then the spreading of the dim approaching day--stars going out, and the outlines of hills coming in--and houses and trees, faint and comfortless, looming amid the grey, cold mist. The Garonne gradually turned from black to yellow--the genuine pea-souppy hue--and bit by bit the whole landscape came clearly into stark-staring view--but still cold and dreary-looking--until the cheering fire stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising sun. In half an hour the valley of the Garonne was a blaze of warmth and cheerfulness, and nothing could be more picturesquely beautiful, seen under such auspices, than the fleet of market-boats through which we threaded our way, and which were floating quietly down to Bordeaux. I dismiss the mere vegetable crafts; but the fruit-boats would have made Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled--clustered--heaped over--with mountains of grapes bigger than big gooseberries--peaches and apricots, like thousands of ladies' cheeks--plums like pulpy, juicy cannon-balls--and melons big as the head of Gog or Magog. I could not understand how the superincumbent fruit did not crush that below; but I suppose there is a knack in piling. At all events, the boats were loaded to the gunwales with the luscious, shiny, downy, gushing-looking globules, purple and yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened by the grateful green of the clustering leaves. These boats looked like floating cornucopias. Amongst them sometimes appeared a wine-boat--one man at the head, one at the stern, and a Pyrenees of wine casks between them--while here and there we would pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge, towed by a string of labouring oxen, and steered from a platform amidships by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, and heavier than the mast. And now for a bit of the landscape. We have Gascony to our right, and Guienne to our left.