CHAPTER II.

OVER CAP SICIÉ

The great promontory of Cap Sicié is a peninsula, five kilometres across the “neck,” and jutting seaward double that distance.

Just beyond Sanary, or St. Nazaire-du-Var, is the great Baie de Sanary, snuggled close under the promontory height and forming a welcome shelter from the seas which pile up on the coast from Toulon to Marseilles.

There is a little excursion offshore which one should make before he descends on the great arsenal of Toulon, on the other side of the Cap; but unless the traveller is forewarned he is likely to overlook it altogether, and thereby miss what to many will be a new form of human happiness.

Travellers to Naples make the trip to Ischia, if they are not afraid of earthquakes; or to Capri, if they like the damp of the grottoes; but travellers _en route_ to Toulon may make the short trip to the Iles des Embiez, from the little haven of Le Brusc, and have something of the suggestion of both the former popular tourist points,--with an utter absence of tourists.

Embiez is not much of an island in point of size, and the map-makers scarcely know it at all. One makes his way from Le Brusc, through an expanse of calm and limpid water, on a flat-bottomed sort of craft which looks as though it might have degenerated from a punt.

The way is not long; it is astonishingly short for a sea voyage, and it is only with a previous knowledge of the shallows--or, rather, the deeps--that the craft can find its way across the scarcely hidden banks of yellow sand. Fifteen minutes of this voyaging brings one to the isle, and from its little jetty a _douanier_ accosts your boat to know if you have anything dutiable on board, as well as for your ship’s papers, and a doctor’s certificate. He need have no fears, however, for no one would ever take the trouble to smuggle anything into Embiez. “Nothing doing,” and the _douanier_ returns to his fishing off the jetty’s end.

The isle is a rock-surrounded mamelon which rises to a height of some sixty or seventy metres, and is as wild and savage and romantic as the most imaginative sketch ever outlined by Doré.

There is a fringe of small white houses, the dwellings of the workers in the salt-works of the isle, and of that lonesome _douanier_, while above, on an elevated plateau, is the Château de Sabran, which draws its name from one of the illustrious and ancient families of Provence.

It is all very picturesque, but there is nothing very archaic about the château, with the exception of one old tower. There are numerous evidences which point to the fact that some kind of fortifications were erected here in early times; the _douanier_ is divided in his opinion as to whether they were the work of Saracens or Barbary pirates, and the reader may take his choice. At any rate, there is an unspoiled setting right here at hand for any writer who would like to try to turn out as good a tale as “Treasure Island” or “Monte Cristo.”

Returning to the mainland, and following the highroad as it goes eastward to Toulon, one comes upon the curiously named little town of Six-Fours, situated on the very apex of the heights.

The very name of Six-Fours is enigmatic. It is certain that it was a mountain fortress in days gone by; and from that--and the intimation that there was once six forts or six towers here--one infers that its name was evolved from Six-Forts, which name was written in Latin Sex Furni and finally Six Fours. Another opinion--French antiquarians, like their brethren the world over, are prolific in opinions--is that the bizarre name was that of one of the lieutenants of Cæsar engaged in the blockade of Marseilles. One named Sextus Furnus, or Sextus Furnis, did occupy a mountain stronghold in that campaign, and it may have been the site where the village of Six-Fours now stands.

Six-Fours, so curiously named, and so little known outside its immediate neighbourhood, has many strange manners and customs. The genuine Six-Fourneens are six feet or more in height, and will not--or would not for a long time--marry any _étranger_, by which term they designate all outsiders.

Their speech and accent, too, are different from other Provençaux, and they have been called wild, savage, and ridiculous. This is mostly a libel, or else they have now outgrown these undesirable characteristics.

There is a Christmas custom at Six-Fours which is worth noting: a _bon feu_ (which easily enough shows the evolution of the English word bonfire) is lighted in the street on Christmas eve before the dwelling of the oldest inhabitant (the oldest inhabitant of last year’s celebration may or may not have died, so there is always the element of chance to give zest), followed by a collation paid for by public subscription. As this repast comes off, also, in the street, the effect is weirdly amusing. The children partake, too (which is right and proper), and “_par permission spéciale_” all are allowed to eat with their fingers, as there are seldom enough knives and forks to go round.

From the plateau height on which sits this decayed village a most expansive view is to be had. Before one is the promontory of Cap Sicié plunging abruptly beneath the Mediterranean waves. About and around are rose-bushes, gripping tenaciously the rocky crevices of the hills, here and there as thickly interwoven as chain mail, while in the valleys are occasional little cleared orchards where the olive-trees are ranged in rows like soldiers, though in the tree kingdom of the southland the olive is the dwarf, and, moreover, lacks the brilliant colouring of the fig or almond which mostly form its neighbours.

Off to the left are the roof-tops of La Seyne, and the smoky stacks of its shipyards and factories, while still farther to the southeast is the combination of the grime of Toulon with that luminous sky of iridescent Mediterranean blue. It is ravishing, all this, though perhaps not more so than similar panoramas elsewhere along the Riviera. On the whole, their like is not to be found elsewhere in the travelled world, at least not with such abundant contributory charms.

Six-Fours itself raises its ruins high in air, miserable, and silent, almost, as the grave, a mere wraith of a once lively and ambitious settlement. The decadence of man is a sad thing, but that of cities quite as sad, and to-day this ancient domain of the _seigneur-abbés_ of St. Victor de Marseilles is as impressive an example as one will find.

As one proceeds eastward he opens another vista quite unlike any other view to be had in all the world. The great Rade de Toulon, its batteries and forts, its suburbs, and its environs, all form an impressive ensemble of the work of nature and man.

The highroad continues on toward La Seyne, the great ship-building suburb, and another leads to Les Sablettes and Tamaris, directly on the water’s edge, and far enough removed from the smoke and industry of the great arsenal to belong to the real countryside.

The Rade de Toulon is one of the joys of the Mediterranean. Its splendid banks are cut into graceful curves, and the background of hills and mountains makes a joyful picture indeed, whether viewed from land or sea. The charming little bays of its outline are quite in harmony with the brilliant blue of the sky, and not even the smoke-pouring chimneys of the shipyards at La Seyne sound a false note, but rather they accent the natural beauties to a still higher degree.

Away beyond the Grande Rade are the ragged isles of the archipelago of Hyères, wave-battered and gleaming in the sunlight, while around the whole nebulous horizon are effects of brilliant colouring of land and sea hardly to be equalled, certainly not to be excelled. Wooded peninsulas come down and jut out into the sea, and, despite the air of activity which is over the whole neighbourhood, there is an idyllic charm about the remote suburbs which is indescribable.

Guarded seaward by grim forts, and admirably sheltered from the mistral, which blows over its head and out to sea, is Tamaris, whose fame first started from a four months’ residence here of George Sand. Like Alphonse Karr and Dumas, the elder, George Sand, if not the discoverer of a new and unpatronized _pied de terre_, gave the first impetus to Tamaris as a resort of not too alluring attractions, and yet all-sufficient to one who wanted to enjoy the quietness and beauties of nature to a superlative degree, all within a half-hour’s journey of a great city. So pleased was the great woman of French letters that she laid the scene of one of her last and most celebrated romances here. All the delicate plants of a latitude five hundred miles farther south here find a foothold, and flourish as soon as they have become acclimated and taken root. Hence it has become a “garden-spot,” in truth, and one which is too often neglected by Riviera tourists in general. There is small reason for this, and when one realizes that Tamaris is a first-class literary shrine as well--for the dwelling (the Maison Trucy) inhabited by Madame Sand still stands--there is even less.

The magic ring of Michel Pacha, the innovator of lighthouses within the waters of the Ottoman empire, has served to develop and enrich a little corner of this delightful bit of the tropics, and, where the cypress and pine once grew alone, are now found palm, orange, and lemon trees; and hedges and walls of the laurier-rose line the alleys which lead to the Oriental-looking château of this dignitary of the East. The effect is just the least bit garish and out of place, but like all groupings of nature and art on Mediterranean shores, it is undeniably effective, and the domain all in all looks not unlike a stage setting for the “Arabian Nights.”

Just back of Tamaris is, or was, the celebrated “Batterie des Hommes Sans Peur,” which so awakened the interest and curiosity of George Sand that she implored the authorities to make a memorial of the spot forthwith, and spend less time digging for prehistoric remains.

The construction of the battery was one of the first great exploits of the young Napoleon (1793), which, with the subsequent taking of the Petit-Gibraltar (as the present Fort Napoleon was then known), was one of the real history-making events of modern France.

Madame Sand marvelled that the site of this tiny battery had been so neglected. It was due to that distinguished lady that the exact location of the battery was made known, and, though still merely a ruined earthwork, may be reckoned as one of the patriotic souvenirs of a lurid page of history.

George Sand had the idea of buying these twenty metres square of ground, surrounding them with a paling and making a path thereto which should lead from the highway. Ultimately she intended to plant a simple stone with the following inscription: “_Ici Reposent les Hommes Sans Peur_.” This was never done, however, and so those only who have the memory of the incident well within their grasp ever even come across the site. There is something more than a legendary grandeur about it all, and those who are unfamiliar with the incident had best refer to any good life of Napoleon, and learn what really happened at the famous siege of Toulon.

Toulon is about the best guarded arsenal in all the world. The Caps Mouret, Notre Dame de la Garde, Sicié, and Sepet play nature’s part, and play it well, and the hand of man has added cannons wherever he could find a resting-place for them. “_Canons! encore canons, et toujours des canons!_” said a French commercial traveller at the _table d’hôte_, when the artist told him that she had been remonstrated with when making a sketch on the summit of an exceedingly beautiful hillside to the eastward of the city. This admonition was enough. Much better to take good advice than to languish in prison till your consul comes and gets you out,--which is just what has happened to inquisitive artists in France before now.

Toulon is warlike to the very core, and, in spite of an active historic past, there is scarcely a monument in the town to-day, except the old cathedral of Saint Marie Majeure, which takes rank among those which appeal for architectural worth alone. The arsenal is the chief attraction; remove it, and Toulon might become a great commercial centre, or even a “watering-place,” but with it the very atmosphere smacks of powder and shot.

The city is not unlovely as great cities go. It is modern, well-kept, and certainly well-beautified by trees and shrubs and flowers, and wide, straight streets, and, above all, it is blessed with a charming situation.

Of all the cities of the Mediterranean (always excepting Marseilles), Toulon is the most gay. It has not the feverish commercialism of Marseilles, but it has an up-to-dateness that is quite as much to be remarked. There are no _boulevards maritimes_ or great hotels, as at Cannes or Nice, neither are there any special tourist attractions to make Toulon a resort, but there are cafés galore and much gaiety of a convivial kind. “_Une ville régulière, d’aspect Américain_,” Toulon has been called, and it merits the appellation in some respects, with its straight streets and tall houses of brick or stone. A large number of great branching palms just saves the situation.

The great defect of Toulon is that the quarter where centres the life of the city is far away from the sea. To get a satisfactory view of the magnificent harbour, or the commercial port of the Vieille Darse, one has to go even farther afield and climb one or the other of the hillsides round about, when a truly great panorama spreads itself out.

La Seyne, the great ship-building suburb of Toulon, is a model of what a manufacturing town of its class should be, though it has no real meaning for the tourist for rest or pleasure. For the student of things and men, the case is somewhat different. For instance, you may read, posted up on the wall opposite the entrance to the ship-building establishment, that the _Gazetta del Popolo_ of Genoa has a correspondent at Toulon, this in big, staring red and green letters surmounting a more or less rude woodcut of an Italian soldier. From this one gathers that the Italian workmen are numerous hereabouts, as indeed they are, and almost everywhere else along the coast. As like as not the hotel _garçon_ serves your soup with an “_Ecco_,” instead of a “_Voilà!_” and sooner or later you come to realize that the hybrid speech which you hear on street corners is not Provençal but Franco-Italian.

Toulon, in history, makes a long and brilliant chapter, but a cataloguing even of the events can have no place here. Its prominence as a stronghold and bulwark of the French nation was due to Louis XII., the second husband of Anne of Bretagne, who, it is said, inspired his predecessor on the throne (and in her affections) to first appreciate the advantages of Brest as a stronghold of a similar character.

Ages before this Toulon was founded by the Phœnicians, it is supposed sometime before the tenth century. The royal purple of the East and the desire to possess it, or make it, was the prime cause; for the ancients found that the waters around Toulon gave birth to a mollusk which dyed everything with which it came in contact into a most brilliant purple. It seems a small thing to found a great city upon, and the industry is non-existent to-day, but such is the more or less legendary account.

After the Phœnicians Toulon fell into the background, and the possibilities of building here a great port which might rival Marseilles were utterly neglected.

It seems probable that the original name of the town was Telo, which in the itinerary of Antony is given as Telo-Martius, from an ancient temple to Mars, thus distinguishing it from a similar name applied to many other places in the Narbonnais.

Finally Toulon emerged from its semi-obscurity, and Guillaume de Tarente, Comte de Provence, in 1055, surrounded with wall “the place called Tholon or Tollon.”

Until the tenth century Toulon’s ecclesiastical history was more momentous than was its civic. It had been the seat of a bishop for a matter of six centuries, with St. Honorat, St. Gratien, and St. Cyprien as bishops, all within the first century of its existence.

The plan to make Toulon one of the great fortified places of the world was carried on assiduously by Richelieu, who commanded a certain Jacques Desmarets, professor of mathematics at the university at Aix, to make a plan which should show the Provençal coast-line in all its detail. The instructions read, “..._sur vélin, enluminé en or et representant la côte jusqu’à deux ou trois lieues dans les terres_.”

The general scheme was carried out further by Mazarin, the wily Italian who succeeded Richelieu. In company with Louis XIV., Mazarin visited Toulon, and then and there decided that it should take the first place in the kingdom as a stronghold for the navy.

Toulon then became the greatest naval arsenal the world had known. In 1670 it armed forty-two ships of the line, among them many three-deckers, which all lovers of the romance of the seas have come to accept as the most imposing craft then afloat, whatever may have been their additional virtues. Among those fitted for sea and armed at Toulon was the _Magnifique_, a vessel which excited universal enthusiasm all over Europe, not only because it mounted a hundred and four guns, but because the sculptor Puget had designed her decorations, and decorations on ships were much more ornate in those days than they are in the present vagaries of the “_art nouveau_.”

Puget lived at Toulon at the time, and had indeed already designed the caryatides which stand out so prominently in the Toulon’s Hôtel de Ville. His house in the Rue de la République, known by every one as the “Maison Puget,” is one of the shrines at which art-worshippers should not neglect to pay homage. It has some remarkably beautiful features, a fine stairway in wrought iron, an elaborate newel-post, and many similar decorations.

Back of Toulon is the great gray mass of the Faron, fortified, as is every height and point of view round about. From the summit of this great height (546 metres) one may see, on a clear day, Corsica and the Alps of Savoie. The fortifications are too numerous to call by name here, and, indeed, they are uninteresting enough to the lover of the romantically picturesque, regardless of their worth from a strategic point of view. Like the cannon, the forts are everywhere.

Formerly the port of Toulon was closed by sinking a great chain across the harbour-mouth. It went down with the sinking of the sun and only rose at daybreak. The guardianship of this defence was given to some “_homme de confiance_” of Toulon as a sort of deserved honour or glory. This was in the seventeenth century, and to-day, though the guard-ships and the search-lights of the forts do the same service, the name “_Chaine Vieille_” is still in the mouths of the old sailors and fishermen as they make their way to and fro from the Grande to the Petite Rade.

Toulon has among its great men of the past the name of the Chevalier Paul, perhaps first and foremost of all the seafarers of France since the day of Dougay-Trouin. He had fixed his residence in the valley of the Dardennes, with a roof over his head “_tout à fait digne d’un prince_.” In the month of February, 1660, the celebrated sailor received Louis XIV., Anne of Austria, the Duc d’Orléans, Cardinal Mazarin, “la grande Mademoiselle,” innumerable princes and seigneurs, four Secrétaires d’État, the ambassador of Venice, and the papal nuncio. This royal company was splendidly fêted, much after the manner of those assemblies held in the previous century in the châteaux of Touraine. The Chevalier bore until his death the title of supreme “Commandant de la Marine,” and when his death came, at the age of seventy, he made the poor of the city his heirs.

One memory of Toulon, which is familiar to students of history and romance, are the prisons and galleys of other days. Dumas draws a vivid picture of the life in the galleys in one of his little known but most absorbing tales, “Gabriel Lambert.”

To be sure, those who were condemned “_à ramer sur les galères_” were mostly culprits who deserved some sort of punishment, but the survival of the institution was one that one marvels at in these advanced centuries.

Really the galley, and the uses to which it was put at Toulon in the eighteenth century, was a survival of the galley of the ancients. It was a long slim craft, of light draught, propelled by a single, double, or treble bank of oars, and sometimes sails.

The punishment of the galleys, that is to say, the obligation to “_ramer sur les galères_,” was applied to certain classes of criminals who were known as _forçats_ or _galériens_. The crime of Gabriel Lambert, of whom Dumas wrote with such fidelity, was that of counterfeiting.

In 1749 there were sixteen _galères_ here, eight of them at “_practice_” at one time, giving occupation to thirty-seven hundred convicts who were quartered on old hulks moored to the quays or on shore in a convict prison.

Between Toulon and Hyères, lying back from the coast, in the valley of the Gapeau, is a bit of transplanted Africa, where the brilliant sun shines with all the vigour that it does on the opposite Mediterranean shore. The valley is perhaps the most important topographically west of the Rhône, at least until one reaches the Var at Nice. There is a sprinkling of small towns here and there, and more frequent country residences and vineyards, but there is an air of solitude about it that can but be remarked by all who travel by road.

One great highroad runs out from Toulon through Solliès-Pont, Cuers, Puget-Ville, Pignans, and Le Luc to Fréjus. The coast road leads to the same objective point, but the characteristics of the two are as different as can be. A more varied and more charming combination of scenic charms, than can be had by journeying out via one route and back by the other, can hardly be found in this world, unless one has in mind some imaginary blend of Switzerland and the Mediterranean.

The region is known as Les Maures, the name in reality referring to the mountain chain whose peaks follow the coast-line at a distance of from thirty to fifty kilometres.

The whole region known as Les Maures is in a state of semi-solitude; twenty-three thousand souls for an area of one hundred and twenty thousand hectares is a remarkable sparsity of population for most parts of France.

Cuers is the metropolis of the region and boasts of some three thousand inhabitants, and a great trade in the oil of the olive.

There is absolutely nothing of interest to the tourist in any of these little towns between Toulon and Fréjus. There is to be sure the usual picturesque church, which, if not grand or architecturally excellent, is invariably what artists call “interesting,” and there is always a picturesque grouping of roof-tops, clustered around the church in a manner unknown outside of France.

Occasionally one does see a small town in France which reminds him of Italy, and occasionally one that suggests Holland, but mostly they are French and nothing but French, though they be as varied in colour as Joseph’s coat, and as diversified in manners and customs as one would imagine of a country whose climate runs the whole gamut from northern snows to southern olive groves.

In reality, Cuers shares its importance with Les Solliès, whose curious name grew up from the memory of a Temple of the Sun, upon the remains of which is built the present church of Solliès-Ville.

Solliès-Pont owes its name to the _pont_, or bridge, by which the “Route Nationale” crosses the Gapeau. It is the centre of the cherry culture in the Var, and at the time of year when the trees are in blossom, the aspect of the surrounding hillsides would put cherry-blossoming Japan to shame. The crop is the first which comes into the market in France. The lovers of early fruits, in Paris restaurants and hotels, know the “_cerises du Var_” very well indeed. They buy them at the highest market prices, delightfully put up in boxes of poplar-wood and garnished with lace-paper. Annually Solliès-Pont despatches something like a hundred thousand cases of these first cherries of the year, each weighing from three to twelve kilos, and bringing--well, anything they can command, the very first perhaps as much as eight or ten francs a kilo. This for the first few straggling boxes which some fortunate grower has been able to pick off a well-sunned tree. Within a fortnight the price will have fallen to fifty centimes, and at the end of a month the traffic is all over, so far as the export to outside markets is concerned.

“Cherries are grown everywhere,” one says. Yes, but not such cherries as at Solliès-Pont.

Here at this little railway station in the Var one may see a whole train loaded with a hundred thousand kilos of the most luscious cherries one ever cast eyes upon.

The aspect of the region round about has nothing of the grayness of the olive orchards east and west; all this has given way to a flowering radiance and a brilliant green, as of an oasis in a desert.

The gathering of this important crop is conducted with more care than that of any other of the Riviera. The trees are not shaken and their fruit picked up off the ground, nor do agile lads climb in and out among the branches. Not even a ladder is thrust between the thick leaves of the trees, but a great straddling stepladder, like those used by the olive pickers of the Bouches-du-Rhône, is carried about from tree to tree, and gives a foothold to two, three, or even four lithe, young girls, whose graces are none the less for their gymnastics at reaching for the fruit head-high and at arm’s length.

One marvels perhaps--when he sees these boxes of luscious cherries in the Paris market--as to how they may have been packed with such symmetry. It is very simple, though the writer had to see it done at Solliès-Pont before he realized it. The boxes are simply packed from the top downwards, so to speak. The first layer is packed in close rows, the stems all pointing upwards, then the rest of the contents are put in without plan or design, and the cover fastened down. When the packages are opened, it is the bottom that is lifted, and thus one sees first the rosy-red globules, all in rows, like the little wooden balls of the counting machines.

The south of France is destined to provision a great part of Europe, and already it is playing its part well. The cherries of Solliès-Pont go--after Paris has had its fill--to England, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, and Russia, though doubtless only the “milords” and millionaires get a chance at them.

Besides the consumption of the fruit _au naturel_, the cherries of the Var are the most preferred of all those delicacies which are preserved in brandy, and a cocktail, of any of the many varieties that are made in America (and one place, and one only, in Paris--which shall be nameless), with one of the cherries of Solliès-Pont drowned therein, is a superdelicious thing, unexcelled in all the “made drinks” the world knows to-day.