Search -
Bradshaw's Invalid's Companion to the Continent
Bradshaw's Invalid's Companion to the Continent Author:Bradshaw Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IIL NISMES—MONTPELIER TOULOITSE—BAGNfiRES DE I/UCHON— BAGNfiRES De Bigoere—baeeges—cautebets. Proceeding from Marseilles westward, the first int... more »eresting place that presents itself on the line is Aries, an irregularly built town on one of the embouchures of the Ehone, containing about 20,000 inhabitants, and alike celebrated for the beauty of the women, which i heightened by a becoming costume,—and for its Eoman remains, especially the amphitheatre, which is in tolerable preservation. Adjoining the cathedral are cloisters, whose Gothic arches, supported by finely-sculptured pillars, are a good specimen of architectural skill in the earlier periods of Christianity. To the south of Arles- is an extensive tract of marshy land (the Camargue),; between two branches of the Rhone, embanked ta exclude the sea. It is made available for the pasturage; of extensive flocks and herds, which, on the approach ef summer, are driven up to the mountains. .l One of the finest remnants of Roman antiquity, the Pont du Gfard, stands not far from the direct road from Avignon to Nismes, from which it is five miles distant; This stupendous erection, stretching across the valley of the Gordon, which served at the same time for a bridge and aqueduct, consists of three rows of arches, one above the other, in excellent preservation; when seen from below, the effect is striking. Nismes is a handsome, clean, cheerful-looking town, with a population of about 40,000 inhabitants, a large proportion of which number are Protestants, between whom and the Catholics a spirit of hostility formerly existed, which frequently broke out into riots, attended with loss of life. Nismes is not a place of much commerce, many of the inhabitants being rentiers. It is little resorted to by English families,...« less