Chapter V: The Yankee Boys' Holiday in Provence

The peasants now began to return to the village, while the boys prepared to camp out. Walter, at a hasty glance along the side of the mountain, perceiving many trees, took it for granted, without further examination, that they were forest trees, and would furnish material for a fire; but as they approached, to his great chagrin, he noticed that they were mulberry, olive, and figs, and that there was not even a bush or a bramble that could be taken to feed a fire. This at once reversed the whole train of his ideas, and threw him into a state of mind entirely foreign to his usual cheerful, buoyant frame, and a mood not to be pleased with anything, which communicated itself, though with less intensity, to Ned, who, never having experienced those peculiar emotions begotten of the free wild life in the woods, was not peculiarly touched by the disappointment.

"I think it is a great way for people who live by their labor to be so far from their work. I should think it would take half of their time to go and come."

"They don't know how to put things ahead with a rush, as we do," said Walter.

"How can a man think much of his time when it's worth only twenty cents a day?"

"It ain't worth that, for a sou ain't quite a cent. They will work all day in a half bushel, and don't know how to take advantage of work. I've heard the captain say that they were once little better than slaves to the aristocracy, and have been so long used to working at a slave jog that they keep it up, and always want to huddle together like a nest of rats."

While talking they had gained the declivity of the hill, and sat down.

"Only look at that troop, Wal."

It was, indeed, a curious spectacle, that peasant train,--some driving asses, others mules, and still others oxen attached to their queer-looking carts heaped with olives, and all making for the gap between the hills, through which the boys had seen the church spire.

Spreading their blankets beneath a shelving rock, they rolled themselves in them, and began to converse.

"How sweet this air smells!" said Ned, snuffing the odor of the wild thyme, lavender, marjoram, absinthe, and other fragrant plants among which they lay.

"I don't think much of it," said Walter, who was not in a humor to be pleased with anything. "I call it a God-forsaken country, all dried up, no water to drink without travelling ten miles, and then sucking it out of the rocks. Here we've passed two or three beds of brooks all dried up; plenty of water when you don't want it, none when you do; and not a stick of wood to build a camp fire. This smell is not to be mentioned in the same day with the fragrance of good pine woods, and I know it isn't half so wholesome. Give me a good apple orchard in bloom, and you may have all these miserable herbs."

"I'm sure," said Ned, "I'd rather have a tumbler of cider than all their sour wine; and what is an olive to an apple?"

"Yes, Ned, to the cat-heads that grow down behind our pig-sty. They may talk about the juice of the grape; give me the good maple sirup, and sap, and a country where a man can earn enough to afford to eat meat."

"I know it, Walter; and where the women don't have to shovel dirt, hoe, reap, and work just like an Indian squaw. I twigged that. And then brag about their politeness!"

"I never heard there was any politeness among the Griffins; but I wonder what my father would say to see mother shovelling sand, or lugging manure on her back up the side of a mountain. Guess he'd roar some; guess she'd have to scud into the house quicker."

"Did you ever see such pigs?" said Ned, who was now thoroughly imbued with the fault-finding humor of his companion. "Guess they have to boil their pork; for I don't believe there's grease enough in it to fry itself."

"Did you ever see such oxen? They ain't bigger than rats--nasty, scraggly-looking things, cow-horned and cat-hammed, no necks or quarters, every hair sticking up straight. Don't believe they could twitch a spruce bush. I'll bet our old Star and Golding (just let father speak to 'em) would drag six such, tail foremost. They're welcome to their silks; I'd rather have mother's fulled cloth than all their spider's web. They're welcome to their warm weather, vines, figs, cockroaches, garlic, and all their herbs; give me three feet of snow, a good log camp, a roaring fire, and game in plenty, and they are welcome to the almond trees and pot herbs. Goodness! to call three olive trees, on a bit of ground that I could straddle, a farm. One good fat bear would make more and better grease than an acre of 'em."

"What do you suppose they would say, Walter, to see Lion Ben's acres? and what to the Lion himself?"

"Jerusalem!" said Walter, borrowing one of his brother Joe's by-words; "only let him get into one of his rages, and he would slay the whole country with the jaw-bone of an ass."

"Well," said Ned, who felt that a good part of Walter's spleen arose from the lack of the camp fire he had anticipated. "They all seemed very kind, you know; and Gabriel asked and urged us to go to his house."

"Yes; to be eaten up with fleas and ten thousand bugs and stinging concerns they have here."

Thus growling and grumbling, Walter fell asleep. The last words distinguishable were, "God-forsaken country; no wood for a camp fire."

In the morning, as the result of a consultation held while eating, they determined first to ascend the hill, and afterwards to explore the country. Here they found a long moss on the rocks, which they concluded would be just the thing with which to fill their beds, and resolved to take some of it with them when they returned.

"O, Wal, we'll dry some of these fragrant plants, and mix with the moss."

"Yes; that will be nice."

Following a cart track through a gap in the hills, they came upon a highway in most excellent order, and bordered with trees, and saw, a little upon their left, the village of the peasants, consisting of houses built of mud and stone huddled together, many without glass, and no entrance for light except the door, the roofs covered with tiles, and not a tree near them.

Their attention was attracted by the towers of a large castle, evidently in ruins, upon the summit of an eminence that commanded the village. With curiosity greatly excited, they were about to climb the hill to view it more closely, when Ned said, "Let us go ahead, see the country, come back here to-night, and camp in the ruins."

Skirting the base of the hill upon which the castle stood, they came again upon the stream that watered the vale,--now increased in volume by affluents from the mountains,--falling over a cliff upon which were the remnants of a dam, and just below it a mass of half-burned timber and large stones, that Walter, more familiar than Ned with such matters, declared to be the ruins of some kind of a mill. These large circular stones lay embedded in a mass of coals and brands, the shafts burned out of them, white from the action of fire, and every one split in two. It seemed probable this had been accomplished by flinging water upon them while red hot.

There was no water, at this time, within several rods of the stones; but, from the appearance of the banks, it was evident that the stream, since the destruction of the dam, had changed its channel, and had once flowed near to the stones, to which it had been brought in a flume, the remains being still visible. After inspecting these stones with the greatest curiosity, Walter said,--

"I don't see what they could grind with such stones as these; they certainly couldn't grind grain; they couldn't _grind_ anything; they are not 'picked,' like a millstone, but as smooth as my hand; they could only squat. If they raised apples here, I should think they were made to squat them."

Our young readers will bear in mind that mill-stones are "picked," or cut in sweeping furrows, which leave sharp edges to catch and grind the grain.

Still farther from the bank of the stream, on some high and level ground, were two more pairs of stones. These, it was evident, had not been enclosed in any building, as the only cinders lying around were those resulting from the burning of the shafts that had once been used to operate them. The lower stones were raised about two feet from the ground, and dishing nearly ten feet in diameter, with holes drilled through them, around a central one. Upon these lay two smaller stones, with square holes in their centres, in one of which was a half-burned shaft. These were all, save one upper stone, split in halves.

"How did they split these?" asked Ned. "They have not been heated."

"With powder," said Walter, pointing to holes drilled in the stones.

"Then why didn't they split this one?"

"They tried to, but the charge blew out; there are the holes."

"Perhaps their powder gave out."

"I guess I know how this went."

"How?"

"This stone ran on its edge round the other; there was an upright shaft in the middle; and that hole in the centre was made to receive a pintle, to hold the foot of it, and it was turned by a horse, or by hand, just like a cider mill."

Walter began to hunt in the long grass around the stone, and soon exclaimed,--

"Here it is! here is the track worn into the ground, where somebody or something travelled."

"It was a horse or mule," said Ned, holding up a rusty shoe.

"That is too big for the foot of an ass."

"What is the stone trough underneath for, Wal?"

"To catch whatever ran from the mill. It must have been liquid, for nothing else could go through these holes."

"It is very strange," said Ned, "that these people should set to work and plant trees along the highways, and not put so much as one tree, rosebush, or even a lilac, around their own houses."

Although not aware of it, they were now among a people to whom those peculiar feelings which in the mind of the Anglo-Saxon are connected with home and the domestic hearth, are unknown. Had they been aware that these splendid roads, ornamented with magnificent trees, and so skilfully laid out as to present the most picturesque and imposing scenery to the eye of the traveller, were all constructed and kept in order by means of the dreaded "_corvée_,"--compulsory labor, which signified that the poor peasant might be taken from his work to labor on the public roads, and, should he chance to offend a capricious master, even in time of harvest, to leave the bread of his household to waste in the field,--they would have ceased to wonder that the wretched peasant, burdened with a thousand exactions and goaded to despair, should be rather disposed to brood over his wrongs, and nurse the hope of vengeance, than to embellish a dwelling which, in the great majority of instances, was not his own.

Determining to follow the course of the stream, rather than the highway, they had proceeded but a short distance, when they reached a spot, where, divided by a mass of rock, it encircled a level island of about three acres, entirely covered with a growth of rods as smooth and pointed as a bulrush. They were planted in regular rows, with great care, were eight or ten feet in height, perfectly straight, and entirely destitute of leaves or limbs, except that in some instances there was a fork at the top.

"What can these be?" asked Ned.

"I don't know; let's see if we can't find a place where we can wade across."

Following the stream till abreast the middle of the island, they espied a row of stepping-stones, upon which they crossed, and, finding a peasant at work, he informed them that they were "osiers," anglice sallows, and were used to make hampers for wine, cover bottles and demijohns, and tie vines to the stakes, were made into chairs and playthings for children, and that a great many, after being divested of their bark, were exported to New York.

"Why, Walter," said Ned, "these are the very things Mr. Bell made baskets of, that he and Charlie called sallies. I heard him ask the captain to get him some rods, and tell him that if he put them in earth or wet moss in the vessel's hold, they would grow by being stuck down, when the vessel got home."

"Then we will get a lot for him."

They asked the peasant, who told them the rods must be cut into pieces, seven or eight inches long, that in two years they would yield something, and in three a good crop of rods.

"Charlie has a splendid place to plant them on," said Ned, "right on a little flat by the mouth of the brook."

"Yes," said Walter, "but here are willows ten feet high. Mr. Bell carried no willows like these."

The peasant told him the reason that these grew so remarkably, was, that in the spring and fall the stream overflowed its banks, leaving a rich slime, which fertilized the soil, and the island, being surrounded by water, was moist throughout the year, and that the largest he was then cutting were used to hoop wine casks.

On the other side of the little isle was a rude bridge, upon which they crossed to the opposite shore. Following the course of the stream over heaps of gravel mixed with stones, brought down by streams from the mountains in the spring floods, they proceeded for miles through the most monotonous, dreary scenery imaginable; not a tree, bush, or scarcely a blade of grass to relieve the eye, Walter often repeating his favorite expression, "a God-forsaken country."

At length, as the sun attained its meridian, the face of the country became more diversified, breaking into gentle swells, and even hills of moderate elevation. Here they met with a little brook, which wound among the hills, and fell into the stream with a grateful murmur. Its banks were margined with a broad belt of green grass, and fringed with bushes and small trees, many of them evergreens.

"This is excellent water," said Ned, as he stooped and drank. "Suppose we eat here."

"I wouldn't; let us follow the stream into the valley I see yonder, eat, and rest there, and then go back."

They were led to a glen, the banks of which, broken into irregular, gentle slopes, were clothed with groves of large trees entirely clear of underbrush. Flinging themselves at the roots of a massive tree standing by itself at the extremity of a slight elevation, around which the brook wound, and where the sun shone warm and pleasantly, they began leisurely to eat, till, the demands of appetite appeased, they stretched themselves upon the grass.

"Wonder what kind of trees these are," said Ned; "guess they are walnuts."

"They look more like oaks," said Walter.

"Well, so they are," said Ned, who, lying on his back, was looking up through the branches, "for I see an acorn."

"Here is another I've found on the ground. What a funny acorn! The cup comes half way over it."

Near by them was a rude building open at the sides, and with thatched roof.

"I'm going to see what is in that building, Wal." And going to it, he cried out, "Come here; it is half full of great sheets of cork."

"So it is, Ned; and these are cork trees, you may depend." Trying the bark with their knives, they found it to be the fact.

"O, my! I'm so glad we came! Only think how much we have learned to-day; and we've got the old castle to see when we go back."

"I never thought before," said Walter, "that a cork tree was an oak, and bore acorns."

Returning, they re-crossed the island.

"How old," asked Walter of the peasant, "must a cork tree be, before they can take off the cork?"

"Twenty years; after that, they take it every ten years, but the cork is not of the best quality till the third stripping."

"Don't it injure the tree?"

"No more than it does you to peel the dead skin from your hands; only the live bark beneath must not be injured."

"What time of year do they peel it?"

"July and August."

"How do they get it off?"

"They first pound the tree to loosen the dead bark from the live, then make two up and down cuts the whole length of the body of the tree, then cross-cuts about three feet apart, and remove the bark with a wedge."

"That," said Walter, "is the way we peel hemlock bark in America; only we cut the trees down, and don't beat the bark."

"What else do they do to it?" asked Ned.

"They scorch it to close the grain, and warp it straight, then put on rocks to keep it so till it gets set (like that you saw in the hovel), when it is ready to sell."

As they went on, Walter said, "I shouldn't think a man in this country would ever have courage enough to commence farming."

"Why not?"

"Because you must wait twelve years for an olive tree, twenty for a cork, and forty before the bark is first rate. Give me New England, where, with nothing under heavens but his rifle and narrow axe, a man can raise his bread on a burn the first year, knock up a log hut, and have his meat for the killing."

"And wood enough for a camp fire," said Ned, laughing.