I was infinitely taken with this agreeable cheate.' But he was certainly gradually acquiring the materials which were afterwards to be so well used by him in his great works on gardening.

After a tour made in Normandy with Sir John Cotton, a Cambridgeshire knight, he quitted Paris in April, 1644.

Marching across by Chartres and Estamps to Orleans, the party of which he formed one had an encounter with brigands, 'for no sooner were we entred two or three leagues into ye Forest of Orleans (which extends itself many miles), but the company behind us were set on by rogues, who, shooting from ye hedges and frequent covert, slew fowre upon the spot...

I had greate cause to give God thankes for this escape.' Taking boat, he went down the Loire to St.Dieu, and thence rode to Blois and on to Tours, where he stayed till the autumn.

'Here I took a master of the language and studied the tongue very diligently, recreating myself sometimes at the maill, and sometymes about the towne.' Here, too, he paid his duty to the Queen of England, 'having newly arrived, and going for Paris.' In the latter part of September, still accompanied by his friend Thicknesse, he left Tours and 'travelled towards the more southerne part of France, minding now to shape my course so as I might winter in Italy.' Journeying southward, partly by road and partly by river, he visited Lyons, Avignon, and Marseilles, whither he wended his way deliciously 'thro' a country sweetely declining to the South and Mediterranean coasts, full of vineyards and olive-yards, orange-trees, myrtils, pomegranads, and the like sweete plantations, to which belong pleasantly-situated villas ......