When pressed, they can pass and
repass between Toulouse and Beziers in fourteen days; but sixteen is the
common period. The canal is navigated ten and a half months of the year:
the other month and a half being necessary to lay it dry, cleanse it,
and repair the works. This is done in July and August, when there would
perhaps be a want of water.
May 21. _Baziege. Toulouse_. The country continues hilly, but very rich.
It is in mulberries, willows, some vines, corn, maize, pasture, beans,
flax. A great number of chateaux and good houses in the neighborhood
of the canal. The people partly in farm-houses, partly in villages.
I suspect that the farm-houses are occupied by the farmers, while the
laborers (who are mostly by the day) reside in the villages. Neither
strawberries nor pease yet at Baziege or Toulouse. Near the latter are
some fields of yellow clover.
At Toulouse the canal ends. It has four communications with the
Mediterranean. 1. Through the ponds of Thau, Frontignan, Palavas,
Maguelone, and Manjo, the _canal de la Radela Aigues-mortes, le canal
des Salines de Pecair,_ and the arm of the Rhone called _Bras de Fer_,
which ends at Fourgues, opposite to Arles, and thence down the Rhone.
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