NOTES TO CANTO I.
1 Lotus Farm, or Falabrego Mas. The word mas, meaning a farm or homestead, is used in the arrondissement of Arles and in Languedoc. Every mas has a distinctive name,—Mas de la Font, Fountain Farm; Mas de l'Oste, Host Farm; &c. The falabrego ia the fruit of a species of lotus, called in French micoculier. (It is the Celtis austratis of Linnæus; and nearly related to, if not identical with, Celtis occidentalis, the sugar-berry of our Northern woods, remarkable for the delicate texture of its foliage, and singularly rich crimson color of its tiny fruit.—Am. Tr.)
2 La Crau, from the Greek χρὰυρος, arid, is a vast stony plain, bounded on the north by the Alpines (Lower Alps), on the east by the meres of Martigue, west by the Rhone, and south by the sea. It is the Arabia Petræa of France.
3 Magalouno. Of this city, formerly a Greek colony, nothing now remains but a single church in ruins.
4 Li Baus, in French Les Baux, is a ruined town, formerly the capital of the princely house of Baux. It is three leagues from Arles, on the summit of the Alpines; and, as the name of this poetical locality occurs often in the poem, the following description from Jules Canonge's History of the town of Baux, in Provence, may interest the reader:—
"At length there opened out before me a narrow valley. I bowed to the remains of a stone cross that sanctify the way; and, when I raised my eyes, they were riveted in astonishment on a set of towers and walls on the top of a rock, the like of which I had never before seen, save in works in which the genius of
