III.


 n JOUN BIGELOW.
 T IlE allowing description of a visit to the Chateau de Jon
 was piiblihtbd two years ago in the New York Independent.
 It is rr..m the pen of John Bigelow, Esq., the accomplished as-
 sodiate of William Cullen Bryant, in the editorship of the New
 SYork Elening Po-t, who is now (in 1863) a consul of the Unit-
 ,:d Stitet in Italy. It iq not rjecee-ary to point out the few
 error of.II memory that occur in it; for the reader of the pre-
 cediLg [iag',. will n.,tiee them nat on:t':-

 Returnuirng to Paris by way if Lausanue from a hurried trip
 to Genera, lazt winter, I took the somewhat unusual route over
 the mountains to Pontarlipr. I wanted to get a view, if possi-
 ble. f Mont Blanc from the heights of the Jura; to become
 Ulrtter acqliainted with the people of this department of France,
 whom of all the French I most admire; and, above all, to visit
 the famous Chateau die Jous, where Mirabeau was confined
 at the tim.- he contracted his scandalous engagements with
 Madame de Monnier, the Sophie" of his Vincennes corre-
 spondrfnc-i, and where Toussaint L'Ouverture died, a victim to
 the treat hery of the French Government, and the severity of
 an Alpine climate.
 As the diligence passed under the Fort de Joux,,-the rhief
otj.''t of my pilgrimage before reaching Pontarlier,- I dis-
mounted, allowing my baggage to go on to the bureau de posts.
The t;rt, now more than seven centuries old, stands upon the
vi-ry summit of a solid roAk about firv hundred feet high, which
descends vetry abruptly on all sides, and, by its position at a de-
file in the mountains, commands the approach from every direc-
 347