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:
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:
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.”
La-bas nous trouverons des bouquets d’oranger.”
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.
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.