CHAPTER VII.

Chapter 92,406 wordsPublic domain

A SEASCAPE: FROM THE RHÔNE TO MARSEILLES

The Bouches-du-Rhône, like the delta of the Mississippi, is a great sprawling area of sandbars and currents of brackish water. For miles in any direction, as the eye turns, it is as if a bit of water-logged Holland had been transported to the Mediterranean, with sand-dunes and a scrubby growth of furze as the only recognizable characteristics.

As a great and useful waterway, the Rhône falls conspicuously from the position which it might have occupied had nature given it a more regular and dependable flow of water.

The canals from Beaucaire through the Camargue and from Arles to the Golfe de Fos are the only things that make possible water communication between the Mediterranean and the towns and cities of the mid-Rhône valley.

The Golfe des Lions, or the Golfe de Lyon, as it is frequently called, is the great bay lying between the coast of the Narbonnaise and the headlands just to the eastward of Marseilles. It is a tempestuous body of water, when the north wind blows, and travellers by sea, in and out of Marseilles, have learned to dread it as if it were the Bay of Biscay itself.

Just eastward of the mouths of the Rhône is a smaller indentation in the coast-line, the Golfe de Fos, known to mariners as being the best anchorage between Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône, and which has received a local name of “Anse du Repos” and “Mouillage d’Aigues douces.”

Surrounding the Golfe de Fos, and indeed west of the Rhône, are numerous ponds and marshy bays, similar to the great inland sea of Berre. The Golfe de Fos is generally thought to be the ancient Mer Avatique, one of whose salty arms is known as “l’Estomac,” probably a corruption of an old Provençal expression, _lou stoma_, or perhaps because it is the site of a colony of the Marseillais known as Stoma Limne, which was established here a century before the beginning of the Christian era.

Later the Senate of Rome designated Marius as governor of the region, and he came with his legions and established himself here at the mouth of the Rhône. He even attempted the then gigantic work of cutting a free waterway from Arles to the sea, and thus arose--on this spot, beyond a doubt, if circumstantial history counts for anything--the Port des Fossés Mariennes which for a long time has been so great a speculation to French historians.

The port became the _faubourg maritime_ of Arles, as did the Piræus for Athens. It was at this time that the name of Lion, or Lyon, was given to the great bay which washes the coast of the ancient Narbonnaise. It grew up from the fact that the Arlesien shipping was ever in evidence on its waters, bearing aloft their flags and banners “blazoned with lions.” As the number of these ships of Arles was great, the name came gradually to be adopted. The explanation seems plausible, and the countless thousands who now traverse its waters in great steamships, coming and going from Marseilles, need no longer speculate as to the origin of the name.

The disappearance of the Roman Empire caused the decadence of the Fossis Marianis, as the name had been modified, and the invasion of the barbarians drove the inhabitants to the neighbouring heights, which they fortified. This Castrum de Fossis became in time the Château des Fossés Mariennes, and what is left of it, or at least the site, is so known to-day. In the middle ages the town became a Marquisat belonging to the Vicomtes de Marseille, but in 1393 it bought its freedom and became a _communauté_.

To-day the little town of Fos-sur-Mer is a queer mixture of the old and new, of indolence and industry; but the complex sky-line of its old château, seen over the marshes, is as fairylike and mediæval as old Carcassonne itself; which is saying the most that can be said of a crumbling old walled town. It is not so grand, nor indeed so well preserved, as Carcassonne, but it has all the characteristics, if in a lesser degree.

Fos has a wonderful industry in the manufacture of paper and cellulose from the alfa, a textile plant which grows in abundance on the high plateaux of Algeria. Added, in certain proportions, to the cane or bamboo of Provence, it produces a most excellent fibre for the fabrication of high-grade papers; in a measure a very good imitation of the fine vellum and parchment papers of Japan and China.

From Fos it is but a step to Port de Bouc, the more modern neighbour, and the gateway by which the products of the Fos of to-day reach the outside world.

Here, in miniature, are all the indications of a world-port. It is a picturesque waterside town, the tall chimneys of its factories, the masts and funnels of the ships at its quays, and the tall spars of the lateen-rigged “_tartanes_,” all producing a wonderfully serrated sky-line of the kind loved by artists; but, oh! so difficult for them to reproduce satisfactorily. Besides these features there is also the near-by fort and the lighthouse which gleams forth a sailor’s warning a dozen miles out to sea. The hum of industry and the generally imposing aspect of the port leads one to suppose, from a distance, that the town is vastly more populous than it really is; but for all that it is an interesting note in one’s itinerary along Mediterranean shores.

The whole range of hills south of Martigues, and bordering upon the Mediterranean itself, is a round of tiny hill towns, which, like St. Pierre and Chateauneuf, dot the landscape with their spires of wrought iron surmounting the belfries of their yellow stone churches and presenting a grouping quite foreign to most things seen in France. They are not Italian and they are not Spanish, neither are they any distinct French type; hence they can only be classed as exotics which have taken root from some previous importation.

One’s itinerary along the Provençal coast, from the mouths of the Rhône toward Marseilles, comes abruptly to a stop when he reaches the height of Cap Couronne, which rises just east of the entrance to the Étang de Caronte, and sees that wonderful panorama of the Golfe de Lyon, with the distant pall of smoky industry at its extreme eastern horizon.

The name Couronne is certainly apropos of this dominant headland, under whose flanks are innumerable natural shelters and anchorages. The application of the name has a more practical side, however. In Provençal the word “_cairon_” means limestone, and, since there have been for ages past great limestone quarries here, it is not difficult to recognize the origin of the name.

The dusts of the great routes of travel are left behind as one climbs the gentle slope of the Estaque range from Martigues. After having passed the rock-cut village of St. Pierre and ascended the incline on the opposite side of the valley, he finds himself on the height of Cap Couronne, and the Mediterranean itself bursts all at once upon his gaze, in much the same fashion as the dawn comes up at Mandalay.

Cap Couronne plunges abruptly at one’s feet, and the shadowy outlines of the distant flat shores of the Bouches-du-Rhône lie to the westward, while directly east is the most wonderfully light rose and purple promontory that one may see outside of Capri and the Bay of Naples. It is the eastern side of Marseilles, which itself, with its spouting chimneys, accents the brilliant landscape in a manner which, if not ideal, is, at least, not offensive.

Who among our modern artists could do this view justice? The blue of the cloudless sky; the ultramarine waves; and the shabby selvage of smoke, all blending so marvellously with the pink and purple of the setting sun. Turner might have done it in times past; doubtless could have done so; and Whistler--waiting until a little later in the evening--would have made a symphony of it; but any living artist, called to mind at the moment, would have bungled it sadly. It is one of those wide-open seascapes which the art-lover must see _au naturel_ in order to worship. Nothing on the Riviera--that cinematograph of magic panoramas--can equal or surpass the late afternoon view from Cap Couronne.

Before one descends upon Marseilles from the Estaque, he comes upon the little village of Carry.

Of the antiquity of the little fishing-port there is no question, but it is doubtful if the hordes of Marseillais who come here in summer, to eat _bouillabaisse_ on the verandas of its restaurants and hotels, know, or care, anything of this.

As the Incarrus Posito, it had an existence long before _bouillabaisse_ was ever thought of, at least by its present name. It was one of the advance-posts of the Massaliotes when Marseilles was the Massalia of the Greeks.

Carry, with its port, and the château of M. Philippe Jourde, a Frenchman who won his fortune on the field of commerce in the United States, is delightful, but it is not usually accounted one of the sights that is worth the while of the Riviera tourist to go out of his way to see.

Within the grounds of the château have been brought to light within recent years many monumental remains; one bearing the two following inscriptions bespeaks an antiquity contemporary with the early years of the building up of Marseilles:

Besides this, marbles, mosaics, pottery, coins, and even precious metals have been found. Carry may then have been something more than a fortress outpost, or a fishing-village; it may have been a Pompeii.

Almost at one’s elbow is Marseilles itself, brilliant and burning with the feverish energies of a great mart of trade, and bathed in the dark blue of the Mediterranean and the lighter blue of the skies. Beyond are the isles of the bay and the rocky promontories to the eastward, while to the northeast are the heights of the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes. Truly the kaleidoscopic first view of the “_Porte de l’Orient_” fully justifies any rhapsodies. There is but one other view in all France at all approaching it in splendour,--that of Rouen from the height of Bon Secours,--and that, in effect, is quite different.

One’s approach to Marseilles by rail from the north is equally a reminder of a theatrical transformation scene, such as one has when he reaches Rouen or Cologne; a sudden unfolding of new and strange beauties of prospect, which are nothing if not startling. The railway runs for many minutes in the obscurity of the Tunnel de la Nerthe before it finally debouches on the southern gorges of the Estaque Range, the same which flanks the coast all the way from Marseilles to the entrance to the Étang de Berre.

Pines and _boursailles_ and rocky hillocks, set out here and there with olive-trees, form the immediate foreground, while that distant horizon of blue, which is everywhere along the Mediterranean, forms a background which is softer and more sympathetic than that of any other known body of water, salt or fresh, great or small.

At the base of the first foot-hills of the Estaque lies Marseilles, a city enormously alive with industry and all the cosmopolitan life of one of the most important--if not the greatest--of all world-ports. Here human industry has transformed a naturally beautiful and commodious situation into a mighty hive of affairs, where its long, straight streets only end at the water’s edge, and the basins and docks are simply great rectangular gulfs, seemingly endless in their immensity. Great towering chimney-stacks of brick punctuate the landscape here and there, and the masts of vessels and the funnels of steamships carry still further the idea of energetic restlessness.

Offshore are the innumerable rocky islets, seemingly merely moored in the sea, around which skim myriads of sailing-vessels and steamers, quite in the ceaseless manner of cinematograph pictures, while an occasional black cloud of smoke indicates the presence of a great liner from the Far East, making port with its cargo of humanity and the silks and spices of the Orient.

The view of the waterside and offshore Marseilles, with the harmonious Mediterranean blue blending into all, is transplendent in its loveliness. Nothing is green or gray, as it is at Bordeaux, or Nantes, or Le Havre; and none of the fog or smoke of the great cities of mid-France, of Paris, of Lyons, or of St. Étienne is here visible; instead all is brilliant--garishly brilliant, if you like, but still harmoniously so--in a blend that compels admiration.

Marseilles is a great conglomerate city made up by the intermingling of the neighbouring villages, bourgs, and _petites villes_ until they have quite lost their own identity in the communion of the greater.

Some day the Rhône will empty itself into the great _Bassins_ of the port of Marseilles; that is, if the moving of the traffic of the port to the Étang de Berre at Martigues and Berre does not take place, which is unlikely. When the _chalands_ and _péniches du nord_ can come from Le Havre, from Rouen, from Antwerp, and from Paris direct to the quays of Marseilles, by way of the canals and the Rhône, an additional prosperity will have come to this greatest of all Mediterranean ports. No more will it be a struggle with Genoa and Triest; and Marseilles will grow still grander and more lively and cosmopolitan.

In her efforts in this direction Marseilles has found an ardent ally in Lyons, whose Chamber of Commerce has ever lent its aid toward this end, burying all jealousies as to which shall become the second city of France. Lyons, be it understood, great and industrious as it is, is at a distinct disadvantage in transportation matters by reason of its geographical position, although it already possesses at Port St. Louis, at the mouth of the Grand Rhône, a port of transhipment for all cumbersome goods which proceed by way of the towed convoys of the Rhône canals. With direct communication with Marseilles one handling will be saved and much money, hence all Lyonnais pray for this new state of affairs to be speedily brought about. The day when the _chalands_ of the Seine can meet the _navaires_ of La Joliette, Marseilles will surpass Antwerp and Hamburg, say the Marseillais.