St. Remy is four leagues from Avignon: at the end of the second mile, we crossed by a ferry the Durance, a mighty Alpine torrent. I had before observed that its waters are colder and more turbid than those of the Rhone at the point of their confluence. The Rhone deposits in the Leman Lake a part of the soil it brings with it in its course through the Valais. The Durance is so impetuous, that its bridge on the road to Marseilles is almost always insecure. A company of Dutchmen undertook to confine this river to a certain bed by embanking, on condition of receiving all the land they should recover: but though they could, no doubt, deal very well with placid and stagnant canals, they found the Durance so impatient of dykes, as the Araxes was indignant at a bridge, that they abandoned the enterprise. My sons, who were our stewards and ciceroni, had ordered a basket of provisions to be brought by the carriage, that we might dine _au frais_ near the monuments, the objects of our visit. We took café au lait, however, on arriving at the village, supplying the place of milk by beating the yolks of fresh eggs into a liquid foam here called _lait de poule_, and well known as a substitute for an article, the want of which is not much felt by those who are used to be without it. We had no butter: beurre frais de Lyon is sent down the Rhone to Avignon, and sometimes contains maggots. I paid ten sous a day for a small quantity of beurre du jour made on purpose for our family breakfast,--the only demand for it in all the town. The want of butter, and the scarcity of our four pleasant early fruits, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, and strawberries, a rare and short-lived luxury in the south of France,--are great privations; and this must be added to the inconveniences of a hot climate. Even cherries quickly become uneatable, breeding worms within them as soon as ripe.