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Country between Moulins and Rouane Bresle Account of the Provinces of the Nivernois and Bourbonnois Climate Face of the Country Soil Natural Produce Agricultural Produce Kitchen Garden French Yeomen Landlords Price of Land Leases General Character of the French Provincial Farmers. ON the following day we left Moulins for Lyons.
The climate of the departments of the Nievre and the Allier, which include the provinces of the Nivernois and Bourbonnois, is the most delightful under Heaven, being at once most healthy, and such as to animate and inspirit the senses and the imagination: it is an endless succession of the most lovely skins, without any interruption, except by those rains which are necessary to nourish and fertilize.
Others grew in ears, which they had so big that out of one would have been stuff enough got to make a doublet, a pair of breeches, and a jacket, whilst with the other they might have covered themselves as with a Spanish cloak: and they say that in Bourbonnois this race remaineth yet. Others grew in length of body, and of those came the Giants, and of them Pantagruel.
I have frequently had occasion to speak of the slovenly agriculture of the French farmers, and I am sorry to have to add, that the fertility of the provinces of Nivernois and the Bourbonnois, is rather to be imputed to the felicity of their soil and climate than to their cultivation.
The chesnut trees, which are numerous in this part of the Bourbonnois, in beauty at least, infinitely exceed the British oaks: they have a bossy foliage, which reminds one of the Corinthian volutes.
It had formerly several other names and was famous for its capital, Thebes; it is now called Stramulipa Boii, an ancient people of Germany who, passing the Rhine, settled in Gaul, the Bourbonnois; they join with the Helvetians in their expedition against Gaul, G. i. 5; attack the Romans in flank, ibid. 25; Caesar allows them to settle among the Aeduans, ibid. 28
John, duke de Bourbonnois, published a declaration, that he would go over to England, with sixteen knights, and there fight it out, in order to avoid idleness, and merit the good graces of his mistress.
I never felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till now, to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France, in the heyday of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up, a journey, through each step of which Music beats time to Labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters: to pass through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at every group before me, and every one of them was pregnant with adventures.
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