This celebrated Roman monument is distant about three leagues from the
city of Nismes. Instead of finding it in a ruinous condition, as he
might reasonably have expected, the traveler, on approaching it, is
agreeably disappointed when he perceives that it looks as fresh as a
modern bridge of a few years’ standing. The climate is either so pure
and dry, or the freestone with which it is built is so hard, that the
very angles of the stones remain as acute as if they had been recently
cut. A few of them have, indeed, dropped out of the arches; but the
whole is admirably preserved, and presents the eye with a piece of
architecture, so unaffectedly elegant, so simple, and, at the same time,
so majestic, that it defies the most phlegmatic spectator to view it
without admiration. It was raised in the Augustan age, by the Roman
colony of Nismes, to convey a stream of water between two mountains, for
the use of that city. By means of it the arena of the amphitheater could
be flooded for the _naumachiæ_. It stands over the river Gardon, a
beautiful pastoral stream, brawling among rocks which form a number of
pretty natural cascades, and overshadowed on each side by trees and
shrubs, which add greatly to the rural beauties of the scene.
This elegant structure consists of three bridges, or tiers of arches,
one above another; the first of six, the second of eleven, and the third
of thirty-six arches. The hight, comprehending the aqueduct on the top,
is one hundred and seventy-four feet and three inches, and the length,
between the two mountains, which it unites, is seven hundred and
twenty-three feet. The order of the architecture is Tuscan; but its
symmetry is inconceivable. By scooping the bases of the pilasters of the
second tier of arches, a passage was made for foot-travelers; but
although the ancients far excelled the moderns in point of beauty and
magnificence, they certainly fell short of them in point of convenience.
The inhabitants of Avignon have, in this particular, improved the Roman
work by a new bridge by apposition, constructed on the same plan with
that of the lower tier of arches, of which indeed it seems to be a part,
affording a broad and commodious passage over the river, to horses and
carriages. The aqueduct for the continuance of which this superb work
was raised, conveyed a stream of pure water from the fountain of Eure,
near the city of Uzes, and extended nearly six leagues in length.
[Illustration: ANCIENT ROMAN AQUEDUCT.]