About three miles from Beausset, the road inclines towards a barrier of high and nearly perpendicular rock to the right, which it appeared impossible either to penetrate or ascend. A large string of mules, however, which met us from Toulon, loaded with barilla for the great glass works at Beausset, showed us that the one or the other was practicable, and on advancing a little farther, we distinguished the chasm through which the road to Toulon is conducted, surmounted by the black ruins of an old castle to the left. On the right of the road in this place, a singular cluster of conical rocks occurs, which, both from their form and position, seem exactly like a heap of gigantic shells, piled up to batter the old ruin on the opposite cliff. Their appearance was that of a mass of large pebbles, held together by indurated clay; but as each probably weighed some scores of tons, it was impracticable to bring away one as a geological specimen; nor would such specimen give a more accurate idea of the singular and wild effect of the whole mass, than a single corner stone of the Colosseum would of the grandeur of the whole amphitheatre. The country name of the castle is Chateau Negro, as we understood from some gens d'armes whom we met in the pass; and the houses adjoining it, which seem actually overhanging the perpendicular edge of the rock, belong to the ancient bourg of Emenos. Nothing, one would suppose, but the overruling motive of security, ever could have induced human beings to take up their abode in such an eagle's nest as this, and its date is therefore probably as ancient as it professes to be. In days of old, the castle must have been completely the key of the pass, many hundred yards of which would have been exposed to stones and arrow-shot from it. A turn to the right conducted us into the heart of the Val d'Ollioules, as this mountain chasm is called, which is somewhat on the scale of the celebrated pass of Pont Aberglasllyn in Wales, but far exceeds it in striking effect. A dreary whiteness, unrelieved by hardly a single blade of vegetation, covers the whole, as if it had been recently cleft by a volcanic eruption, and had as yet had no time to smooth down the sharpness of its original fissure; and nothing occurs to break the silence, except the trickling of a narrow brook, which just finds room to creep along the side of the road, the distant bleating of numberless adventurous goats, climbing over head from the mere love of peril, and the occasional echo of large stones disengaged by their leaps. One of these, of a size which would have shattered the carriage to pieces, came whirling and crashing down just in the direction which it had quitted. The whole spot, in short, is such as Tasso might have imagined to be the scene of Ismeno's incantation, and the congress of devils whom he convoked; and at a sudden turn of the road, the Chateau Negro peeps from between the opposite heights in such a new and striking position, as to seem,