CHAPTER I.

MARSEILLES TO TOULON

The coast just east of Marseilles is quite unknown to the general Riviera traveller, although it is accessible, varied, and an admirable foretaste of the beauties of the Riviera itself.

Just over the great bald-faced peak of Mount Carpiagne lie Cassis and the Bec de l’Aigle, the virtual beginning of the wonderful scenic panorama of the Riviera.

One would have expected that as time went on Carsicus Portus of the Romans, the present Cassis, would have exceeded Marseilles in magnitude, for its situation was much in its favour. Great treasure-laden ships from the Orient would have avoided doubling the rocky promontory which stretches seaward between Marseilles and Cassis, and thereby saved the worry of many ever-present dangers. This was not to be, however, and Marseilles has grown at the expense of its better situated rival. Cassis, however, was a port of refuge to ships coming from the East, and on more than one occasion they put in here and landed their cargoes, which were sent overland to the already firmly established trading colony at Marseilles.

The origin of the name is doubtful. It seems plausible enough that it may have come from the old Provençal _classis_, a _filet_ or net, from the use of this in the fishing which was carried on here extensively in times past.

Some supposedly ancient quays, which may have dated from Roman times, were discovered in the eighteenth century, but the present port and its quays were constructed under the orders of Louis XIII.

The present fishing industry of Cassis is not very considerable, it being far less than that of Martigues or Port de Bouc. At Cassis there are but half a hundred men engaged, and the returns, as given in a recent year, were scarcely over eleven hundred francs per capita, which is not a great wage for a toiler of the sea.

Another harvest of the sea, little practised to-day, but formerly much more remunerative, is the gathering of a variety of coral which quite equals that of Italy or Dalmatia. This industry has of late grown less and less important here, as elsewhere, for the Italians, Greeks, and Maltese have so scraped over the bottom of the Mediterranean with their great hooked tridents that but little coral is now found.

Cassis figures in a story connected with the great plague or pest which befell Marseilles in the eighteenth century. Pope Clement XI. had sent to the Monseigneur de Belsunce a cargo of wheat to be distributed among the famished of Marseilles or elsewhere, “_comme il le jugerait à propos_.” In December, 1720, a fleet of _tartanes_,--the same lateen-rigged ships which one sees engaged to-day in the open-sea fishing industry of Martigues,--bringing the wheat to the stricken city, was forced to anchor in the Golfe des Lèques, just offshore from the little port of Cassis, “_par suite de la violente mistral qui balayait la mer_.” The same mistral sweeps the seas around Marseilles to-day, and works all sorts of disaster to small craft if they do not take shelter.

When the _tartanes_ were discovered off Cassis, the famishing sailor-folk of the town hesitated not a moment to put off and board them. The papal _tartane_ attempted to parley with them, but every vessel in the fleet was attacked in true Barbary-pirate fashion and captured; and the entire consignment was seized and distributed among the distressed people of Cassis and the surrounding country. The “pirates,” however, paid the Archbishop of Marseilles the full value of the shipment, “_comme c’était justice_.” Mgr. de Belsunce, “coming to Cassis on donkey-back,” brought back the money and founded a school for both sexes with the capital, besides giving to the poor of the town an annual sum equal to the interest on the principal. Whether this was a case of “heaping coals of fire” on the delinquent heads, or not, history does not say.

Cassis is the native city of the Abbé Barthélémy, a savant who, amid the constant study of ancient and modern Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldean, and Arabic, found time to write the “_Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis en Grèce_,” a work which has placed his name high in the roll of writers who have produced epoch-making literature.

Cassis is the perfect type of the small Mediterranean port. High above the houses of its nineteen hundred inhabitants, on the apex of a wooded, red-rock hill, are the ruins of a château. To the east is the grim and gray Cap, a mountain of considerable pretensions, while to the west is Pointe Pin, a height of perhaps fifteen hundred metres sloping gently down to the sea, and covered with scrub-pines save for occasional granite outcrops.

Cassis is a highly industrious little town, now mostly given over to the manufacture of cement, the coastwise shipping of which gives a perpetual liveliness to the port. The fishing, too, though, as before said, not very considerable, results in a constant traffic with the wharves of Marseilles, where the product is sold.

The white wine of Cassis, a “_vrai vin parfumé_,” which in another day was produced much more extensively than now, is as much the proper thing to drink with _bouillabaisse_ and _les coquillages_ as in the north are Chablis and Graves with oysters and lobsters.

The _vin de Cassis_ is like the wine of which Keats wrote:

“So fine that it fills one’s mouth with gushing freshness,--that goes down cool and feverless, and does not quarrel with your liver, lying as quiet as it did in the grape.”

The sheltering headland which rises high above Cassis is known as Le Gibel. On its highest peak the poet Mistral has placed the retreat of the heroine Esteulle in his poem “Calandau.” Black and menacing, Cap Canaille continues Le Gibel out toward the sea, and its sheer rise above the Mediterranean approximates five hundred metres.

On the opposite bank of a little bay, called in Provençal a _calanque_, rises the ruined towers and walls of a feudal château, of no interest except that it forms a grim contrasting note with the blue background of sky above and sea below.

A little farther on, sheltered at the head of a _calanque_, is Port Miou, which has a legend that has made it a popular place of pilgrimage for the Marseillais. The little port is well sheltered in the bay, with the entrance nearly closed by a great sentinel rock, which is, at times, wholly submerged by the waves. It is this which has given rise to the legend that a Genoese fisherman, surprised by a tempest and being unable to control his craft, abandoned the tiller and would have hurled himself into the sea if his son, obeying a sudden inspiration, had not steered the boat through the narrow strait and came to a safe harbour within. The father at once fell upon the boy, killing him with a blow; but, Providence taking no revenge, the boat drifted on to a safe anchorage.

The story is not a new one; the same legend, with variations, is heard in many parts of western Europe and as far north as Norway, but it is potent enough here to draw crowds of Sunday holiday-makers, in the summer months, from Marseilles.

In 1377 Pope Gregory XI., who desired to reëstablish the papacy at Rome after its seventy years at Avignon, took ship at Marseilles, but was held back by contrary winds and seas and hovered about the little archipelago of islands at the harbour’s mouth, until finally, when he had at last got well started on his way, a furious tempest arose and the vessel forced to anchor in the _calanque_ of Port Miou, called by the historian of the voyage Portus Milonis.

Beyond Cassis, eastward, are still to be traced the outlines of the old Roman road which led into Gaul from Rome, via Pisa and Genoa, until it finally passes Ceyreste, the ancient Citharista. The name was originally given to the site because of the chain of hills at the back, which formed a sort of a tiara (_citharista_ signifying tiara or crown), of which the little city formed the bright particular jewel. It must have been one of the first health resorts of the Mediterranean shore, for Cæsar founded here a hospital for sick soldiers. Since that day it appears to have been neglected by the invalids (real and fancied), for they go to Monte Carlo to live the same life of social diversion that goes on at Paris, Vienna, or New York.

Another explanation of the origin of the city’s name is that it was dedicated to Apollo, the god of music, and that its name came from the _cithare_, or zither, which, according to those learned in mythology, the god always bore.

Ceyreste, at all events, was of Grecian origin as to its name, and was perhaps the patrician suburb of La Ciotat, the city of sailors and merchants. Unlike most plutocratic towns, Ceyreste appears always to have had a due regard for the proprieties, for a French historian has written: “_Il est de notoriété publique que jamais aucun Ceyrestéen n’a subi de peine infamante, ni même afflictive. Jamais aucun crime n’a été commis dans la commune!_”

Ceyreste must console itself with these memories of a glorious past, for to-day it is but a minute commune of but a few hundred souls, most of whom have attached themselves in their daily pursuits to the busy industrial La Ciotat.

The railway issues from the Tunnel de Cassis, through olive-groves and great sculptured rocks, on the shores of the wonderful Baie de la Ciotat, flanked on one side by a rocky promontory and on the other, the west, by the Bec de l’Aigle, a queer beak-shaped projection which well lives up to its name.

The bay of La Ciotat is the first radiant vision which one has of a Mediterranean _golfe_, as he comes from the north or east. Things have changed to-day, and the considerable commerce of former times has already shrunk to infinitesimal proportions, though to take its place the port has become the location of the vast ship-building works of the “Cie. des Messageries-Maritimes,” whose three or four thousand workmen have taken away most of the local Mediterranean wealth of colour which many a less progressive place has in abundance. Accordingly La Ciotat is no place to tarry, though unquestionably it is a place to visit, if only for the sake of that wonderful first impression that one gets of its bay.

It was a fortunate day for the prosperity of La Ciotat when the engineers and directors of the great steamship company founded its vast workshops here. To be sure they do not add much to the romantic aspect of this charmingly situated coast town; but men must live, and great ocean liners must be built somewhere near salt water.

The prosperity of La Ciotat, the _ville des ouvriers_, has grown up mostly from its traffic by sea, the railway stopping at an elevation of some two hundred feet above the level of the quays. The traveller makes his way by a little branch train, but heavy merchandise for the ship-building yards is still brought first to Marseilles and then transhipped by boat.

Ship-building was one of the ancient occupations of the people of La Ciotat, hence it is natural enough to hear some old workman, who has become incapacitated by time, say: “_N’est-il pas naturel que La Ciotat soutienne son antique réputation en construisant de bons bateaux?_”

For a long time it was the grand ship-building yard of the Marseillais, who obtained here all their ships to “_faire la caravane_,” as the voyage to the Levant was called in olden times.

La Ciotat was perhaps the Burgus Civitatis of the itinerary of Antony, but in time it came to be known--in the Catalan tongue--as _Bort de Nostre Cieuta_, and it is so given in an ancient charter which conceded certain rights to the Marseillais.

In 1365 La Ciotat passed to the monks of the Abbey of St. Victor, but for a short time it was in the possession of the Catalans, who were the partisans of the Antipope Pierre de Luna. Few towns of its size in all France have had so varied a career as La Ciotat, until it finally settled down to the more or less prosaic affairs of later years. Forty families formed its first population, but, in the reign of François I., its population was twelve thousand or more, a number which has not perceptibly increased since.

During the pest of 1720, which fell so hard upon Marseilles, and indeed upon nearly all of the ports of maritime Provence, La Ciotat was saved from the affection by the observance of a stringent quarantine. To a great extent this was due to the prudence and fearlessness of the women. All entrance to the city was rigorously refused to strangers, and, when the troops from the garrison at Marseilles were sent here that they might be quartered in a place of safety, the women armed themselves with sticks and stones and formed a barrier, _dehors des murs_, and drove the soldiery off as if they had been an attacking foe. This is one of those Amazonian feats which prove the valour of the women of other days.

La Ciotat was frequently attacked by the Barbary pirates before these vermin were swept from the seas by the intervention of the two great republics, France and the United States. The English, too, attacked the intrepid little town, and there are brave tales of the valour of the inhabitants when bombarded by the guns of the _Seahorse_ in 1818.

Directly in front of La Ciotat, at the foot of the Côte de Saint Cyr, on the eastern shore of the bay, was an old Greek colony known to geographers as Tauroentum. Rich and powerful in its own right, Tauroentum rivalled its neighbour Marseilles, but the fleets of Pompey and Cæsar had one of those old-time sea-fights off its quays, and the city, having suffered greatly at the time, never recovered its prosperity, and the more opulent and powerful Marseilles became the metropolis for all time. The monumental remains to be observed to-day are mostly covered with the sands of time, and only the antiquarian and archæologist will get pleasure or satisfaction from any fragmentary evidences which may be unearthed. The subject is a vast and most interesting one, no doubt, but the enthusiast in such matters is referred to Lentheric’s great work on “La Provence Maritime.”

La Ciotat, with its workmen’s houses and its shipyard, will not detain one long. One will be more interested in making his way eastward along the coast, when every kilometre will open up new splendours of landscape.

Opposite La Ciotat is the hamlet of Les Lèques, well sheltered in the bay of the same name. Lamartine, _en route_ for the Orient, compared it with enthusiasm to the Bay of Naples, a simile which has been used with regard to many another similar spot, but hardly with as much of appropriateness as here. Said Lamartine: “_C’est un de ces nombreux chefs-d’œuvre que Dieu a répandus partout_.”

From Les Lèques it is but a step to Bandol, a place not mentioned in the note-books of many travellers, though to the French it is already recognized as a “_station hivernale et de bains de mer_.” This is a pity, for it will soon go the way of the other resorts.

Bandol is a small town of the Var, possessed of a remarkably beautiful and sheltered site, and, since it numbers but a trifle over two thousand souls, and has no palace hotels as yet, it may well be accounted as one of the places on the beaten track of Riviera travel which has not yet become wholly spoiled.

Bandol’s principal business is the growing of immortelles and artichokes, with enough of the fishing industry to give a liveliness and picturesqueness to the wharves of the little port.

It is a wonderfully warm corner of the littoral, here in the immediate environs of Bandol, and palms, banana-trees, the eucalyptus, and many other subtropical shrubs and plants thrive exceedingly. There is nothing of the rigour of winter to blight this warm little corner; only the mistral--which is everywhere (Monaco perhaps excepted)--or its equally wicked brother, _le vent d’est_, ever makes disagreeable a visit to this warm-welcoming little coast town.

A clock-tower, or belfry, an old château,--the construction of Vauban,--and a jetty, which throws out its long tentacle-like arm to sea, make up the chief architectural monuments of the town.

Not so theatrical or stagy as Monte Carlo or even Hyères, or as overrun with “swallows” as Nice or Menton, Bandol has much that these places lack, and lacks a great deal that they have, but which one is glad to be without if he wants to hibernate amid new and unruffling surroundings.

Very good wines are made from the grapes which grow on the neighbouring hillsides; rich red wines, most of which are sold as Port to not too inquisitive buyers. The industry is not as flourishing as it once was, though the inhabitants--some two hundred or more--who used to be engaged in the coopering trade, still hope that, phœnix-like, it will rise again to prosperity. What the culture once was, and what picturesque elements it possessed, art-lovers, and others, may judge for themselves by the contemplation of the celebrated canvas by Joseph Vernet, now in the Louvre at Paris.

The fishermen of Bandol find the industry more profitable than do many others in the small towns to the eastward of Marseilles, and, accordingly, they are more prominent in the daily life which goes on in the markets and on the quays. Their catch runs the whole gamut of the _poissons de Mediterranée_, including a unique species called the St. Pierre, whose bones somewhat resemble the instruments of the Passion.

Three thousand cases of immortelles are gathered each year from the hillsides and shipped to all parts, the crop having a value of more than a hundred thousand francs.

Bandol is the centre of the manufacture of _couronnes d’immortelles_ in France. The little yellow flowers literally clog the narrow streets of the town away from the waterside. The warm zone in which Bandol is situated is most favourable to the growth of the plant, which, according to the botanists, originally came from Crete and Malta. The natives of Bandol say that it originated with them, or at least with their _pays_.

A hot, dry soil is necessary to their growth, and they are at their best in June and July, when their golden yellow tufts literally cover the hillsides; that is, all that are not covered by narcissi. The flora of Bandol is most varied and abundant, but these two flowers predominate.

The culture of the immortelle is simple. In February or March the plants are set in the ground, from small roots, and the gathering commences in July of the second season, after which the poor, stripped stalks look anything but immortal. Each plant grows three or four score of stems, each stem bearing ten to twenty flowers.

Curiously enough there seems to be a diversity of opinion as to the colour that a crown of immortelles shall take. Not all of them are sent out in the golden colour nature gave them. Some are dyed purple and others black, and then, indeed, all their beauty has departed. The natives think so, too, but dealers in funeral supplies in Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles--who have about the worst artistic sense of any class of Frenchmen who ever lived--have got the idea that their clients like variety, and that bright yellow is too gay for a symbol of mourning.

Bandol sits in a great amphitheatre surrounded by wooded hillsides set out here and there with plantations of olive and mulberry trees and vines.

Harvest loads of grapes and olives form the chief characteristics of the traffic by the highways and byways throughout Provence, but in no section are they more brilliant and gay with colour than along the coast from Marseilles to Hyères.

Bandol is thought to have been one of those numerous nameless ports referred to by the Roman historians, but it is necessary to arrive at the end of the sixteenth century to find any mention of it by name. Nostradamus recounts that a certain Capitaine Boyer of Ollioules, who had rendered great service to the king during the troubles with the League, was given “_en fief et à paye-morte, à luy et à sa postérité, le fort de Bendort (Bandol), situé au bord de la mer_.”

Later this same Boyer was appointed governor of the Château de la Garde at Marseilles, and received, in addition, certain valuable rights connected with the tunny fishing on the Provençal coasts, which enterprise ultimately placed him in a position of great affluence.

The old château of Bandol, built on a bed of basalt, has the following pleasant _mot_ connected with it:

“Le gouverneur de cette roche, Retournant un jour par le coche, A, depuis environ quinze ans, Emporté la clé dans sa poche.”

Ten kilometres beyond Bandol is Ollioules, which is mentioned in the guide-books as being the gateway to the celebrated Gorges d’Ollioules, which, like most gorges and cañons, is of surprising spectacular beauty. This is a classic excursion for the residents of Toulon, who on Sunday flock to the site of this tortuous savage gorge, and breathe in some of those same delights which a mountaineer finds in a deep-cut cañon in the Rockies. There is nothing so very stupendous about this gorge, but it looks well in a photograph, and satisfies the Toulonais to their highest expectations, and altogether is a very satisfactory sort of a ravine, if one does not care for the beauties of the coast-line itself,--which is what most of us come to the Mediterranean for.

Ollioules itself is of far more attraction, to the lover of picturesque old streets and houses and crumbling historical monuments, than its gorge. The town bears still the true stamp of the middle ages, though the inhabitants will tell you that it has great hopes of becoming some day a popular resort like Nice, this being the future to which all the small Riviera towns aspire.

Old vaulted streets, leaning porched houses, with enormous gables and delicately sculptured corbels and window-frames, give quite the effect of mediævalism to Ollioules, though a hooting tram from Toulon makes a false note which is for ever sounding in one’s ears.

All the same, Ollioules, with the débris of its thirteenth-century château, its very considerable remains of city wall, and its _Place_, tree-shaded by high-growing palms, is a town to be loved, by one jaded with the round of resorts, for its many and varied old-world attractions.

Ollioules is built in the open air, at the end of the defile or gorge, in the midst of a country glowing with all the splendour and beauty of endless beds of hyacinths and narcissi, flowers which rank among the most beautiful in all the world, and which here, in this corner of old Provence, grow as luxuriantly as heather on the hills of Scotland or tulips in Holland. Violets, poppies, the mimosa, and tuberoses are also here in abundance.

Two hundred and fifty hectares, or more, in the immediate vicinity of Ollioules, are devoted to the culture of bulbs, and five million bulbs form an average crop, most of which is sent away by rail to Belgium, Holland (tell it not to a Dutchman), and England.

The origin of the name of the town is peculiar, as indeed is the derivation of many place-names. Savants think that it comes from olearium, meaning a place where oil was made and stored. This may be so, but olive-oil does not figure any more among the products of this particular _petit pays_.

Not only the rock-bound gorge but the whole basin of Ollioules is a wonderland of exotic and rare natural beauties. On one side, to the north, rise the volcanic heights of Evenos, crowned to-day with ruins which may be Saracenic, or _gallo-romain_, or prehistoric, perhaps,--it is impossible to tell.

George Sand has written with great appreciation of the whole neighbouring region in “Tamaris,” but even her graphic pen has not been able to reproduce the charming and distinguished characteristics of a region which, even to-day, is little or not at all known to the great mass of tourists who annually rush to the Riviera resorts from all parts of America and Europe. “_Tant pis_,” then, as Sterne said, but the way is here made plain for any who would go slowly over this well-worn road of history and cast a glance up and down the cross-roads as he comes to them.

The distance is not great from Marseilles to Hyères, but eighty kilometres, a little over fifty miles; but there is a wealth of interest to be had from a silent threading of the roadways of this delightful corner of maritime Provence which the partakers of conventional tours know nothing of.

Here in the environs of Ollioules, on the hillsides flanking its celebrated gorge, is found in profusion the _fleur d’or_, famed in the verses of Provençal poets. François Delille, one of the followers of the Félibres, in his “_Fleur de Provence_,” has sung its praises in unapproachable fashion, and there are some other fragment verses by a poet whose name has been forgotten, which seem worth quoting, since they recount an incident which may happen to any one who journeys by road along the coast of Provence:

_Le Voyageur au Voiturin._

“Arrête ton cheval, saute à bas, mon vieux faune: Et va, bon voiturin, du côte de la mer; Sur le bord de cette anse où le flot est si clair, Coupe, dans les rochers, coupe cette fleur jaune.”

_Le Voiturin._

“C’est une fleur sauvage, O seigneur étranger. La-bas nous trouverons des bouquets d’oranger.”

_Le Voyageur._

“Non! laisse l’oranger embaumer le rivage, Pour ces parfums si doux je suis barbare encore, Mais sur ma terre aussi poussent les landiers d’or Et j’aime la senteur de cette fleur sauvage!”

Such is the charm of the _ajonc_, “_la fleur d’or de Provence_.”

Beyond Ollioules is St. Nazaire-du-Var, a tiny port which resembles in many ways that of Bandol. It has some of the aspects of a _station des bains_, in the summer months, for it has a fine beach. The railways and the guide-books apparently have little knowledge of St. Nazaire for they call it Sanary, after the old Provençal name. The present authorities of the really attractive little town are doing their best to keep pace with the march of progress, and there are hotels, more or less grand, electric lights, and tram-cars.

The little port is exceedingly picturesque, and its quays are always animated with the comings and goings of a hundred or more fishing-boats, which of themselves smack nothing of modernity. The motor-boat has not yet taken the picturesqueness out of the life of these hardy fishermen of yore, though it is slowly making its way in some parts.

In reality St. Nazaire-du-Var exists no more. The development of St. Nazaire-de-Bretagne overshadowed its less opulent namesake and took most of the mail-matter addressed to the little Provençal port. The inhabitants of the latter protested and addressed who ever has the making and changing of place-names in France to be allowed to adopt its ancient patronymic of Sanary.

Some day a “Club Privé,” and “Promenades,” and “Places,” and “Squares” will come, and an effort will be made to stop the flood of English and American and German tourists, who are appropriating nearly every beauty-spot on the Riviera where there is a post-office and a telegraph station.

Above, on a hill to the eastward, is a chapel dedicated to Nôtre Dame de Pitié, greatly venerated by the fishermen and sailors of the town, but mostly remembered by travellers for the very remarkable outlook which is to be had from the platform of its great square tower. With its rectangular little houses glistening white in the sunlight, and red roofs, and great towering palms and eucalyptus, St. Nazaire resembles a great flowering bouquet, and when the simile is carried further, and the bouquet is tied up with a waving ribbon of yellow sand, and placed in a broad blue vase of the sea, the picture is one which, once seen, will be unforgettable.

Toward the horizon is seen a cone which bears the enigmatical name of Six-Fours. More majestic is Cap Sicié, which breaks the waves of the Mediterranean into myriads of flakes, and gives a warning to the ships lying in the basins at Marseilles that the sea is rising, and that one of those intermittent tempests, for which the Golfe de Lyon is noted, is due. Cap Nègre lies farther in, a black basalt wall which gives an accent of sombreness to the otherwise gay picture.