Bordeleaux's trade is the life-blood of this city, and it is based almost entirely upon wine from the Morceaux valley. Good wines are bought and sold - bad wines are bought and drunk (mostly by the local sailors). Even the poor enjoy a bountiful supply of cheap, rough wine. Indeed, "the sober man of Bordeleaux" has passed into folklore as an impossible, or incredible being.
The city is dominated by great houses built by rival merchants, who, in a desperate bid to outdo each other, try to erect as tall and impressive a monument to their financial success as possible. The largest houses are almost castles, and the two largest and most imposing buildings in all Bordeleaux stand here: the Governor's Palace on Towerhill and Bordeleaux fortress on Execution Hill, each surrounded by lesser buildings seeking to emulate their grandeur. Between the two hills lies the great Bordeleaux bridge, spanning the width of the river Morceaux and marking the point beyond which large vessels cannot go.
The south bank below the bridge is mostly dockland, where ships load and unload cargoes into the numerous warehouses. Impromptu sales are held here, whilst the riverside boasts countless inns, vice-dens and other sources of attraction. Amidst the finery of rival merchants, gut-swollen aristocrats and dandied fops, there is little room for the poor who constitute the majority of the population and whose hovels sprawl along the outskirts beyond the two hills and well out of sight of the `high town'. The twin hills of Bordeleaux afford natural drainage and sewerage, so that the mercantile districts are relatively clean. However, what effluence does not flow into the river flows into the shanty towns of the poor, where disease is rife and the air hangs foully around the decaying buildings. Here human deprivation has reached its most disgusting nadir, where children may be bought and sold without question, where murder is rarely noticed and where the strong rule the weak amidst a petty kingdom of filth.