enlarge-imageA PanetièreA Panetière
A Panetière
Thepanetières, like the clocks, have a greatfascination for the tourist, and the desire to possess one has been known to have been so great as to warrant an offer of two hundred and fifty francs for an article which the present proprietor probably bought for twenty not many months before.
St. Rémy’s next-door neighbour, just across the ridge of the Alpines, is Les Baux.
Every traveller in Provence who may have heard of Les Baux has had a desire to know more of it based on a personal acquaintance.
To-day it is nothing but a scrappy, tumble-down ruin of a once proud city of four thousand inhabitants. Its foundation dates back to the fifth century, and five hundred years later its seigneurs possessed the rights over more than sixty neighbouring towns. It was only saved in recent years from total destruction by the foresight of the French government, which has stepped in and passed a decree that henceforth it is to rank as one of those “monuments historiques” over which it has spread its guardian wing.
Les Baux of the present day is nothing but a squalid hamlet, and from the sternness of the topography round about one wonders how its present small population gains its livelihood, unless it be that they live on goat’s milk andgoat’s meat, each of them a little strong for a general diet. As a picture paradise for artists, however, Les Baux is the peer of anything of its class in all France; but that indeed is another story.
The historical and architectural attractions of Les Baux are many, though, without exception, they are in a ruinous state. The Château des Baux was founded on the site of anoppidum gauloisin the fifth century, and in successive centuries was enlarged, modified, and aggrandized for its seigneurs, who bore successively the titles of Prince d’Orange, Comte de Provence, Roi d’Arles et de Vienne, and Empereur de Constantinople.
One of the chief monuments is the Église St. Vincent, dating from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and containing the tombs of many of the Seigneurs of Baux.
There is, too, a ragged old ruin of a Protestant temple, with a series of remarkable carvings, and the motto “Post tenebras lux” graven above its portal. The Palais des Porcelets, now the “communal” school, and the Église St. Claude, which has three distinct architectural styles all plainly to be seen, complete the near-by sights and scenes, all of whichare of a weather-worn grimness, which has its charms in spite of its sadness of aspect.
Not far distant is the Grotte des Fées, known in the Provençal tongue as “Lou Trau di Fado,” a great cavern some five hundred or more feet in length, the same in which Mistral placed one of the most pathetic scenes of “Mirèio.” Of it and its history, and of the great Christmas fête with its midnight climax, nothing can be said here; it needs a book to itself, and, as the French say, “c’est un chose à voir.”
WHENthe Rhône enters thatdépartementof modern France which bears the name Bouches-du-Rhône, it has already accomplished eight hundred and seventy kilometres of its torrential course, and there remain but eighty-five more before, through the many mouths of the Grand and Petit Rhône, it finally mingles the Alpine waters of its source with those of the Mediterranean.
Its flow is enormous when compared with the other inland waterways of France, and, though navigable only in a small way compared to the Seine, the traffic on it from the Mediterranean to Lyons, by great towed barges and canal-boats, and between Lyons and Avignon, in the summer months, by steamboat, is, after all, considerable. Queer-looking barges and towboats, great powerful craft that will tow anything that has got an end to it, as the river folk will tell you, and “bateaux longs,” make up the craft which one sees as the mighty river enters Provence.
The boatmen of the Rhône still call the right bankRiaume(Royaume) and the leftEmpi(Saint Empire), the names being a survival of the days when the kingdom of France controlled the traffic on one side, and the papal power, so safely ensconced for seventy years at Avignon, on the other.
The fall of the Rhône, which is the principal cause of its rapid current, averages something over six hundred millimetres to the kilometre until it reaches Avignon, when, for the rest of its course, considerably under a hundred kilometres, the fall is but twenty metres, something like sixty-five feet.
This state of affairs has given rise to a remarkable alluvial development, so that the plains of the Crau and the Camargue, and the lowlands of the estuary, appear like “made land” to all who have ever seen them. There is an appreciable growth of stunted trees and bushes and what not, but the barrenness of the Camargue has not sensibly changed in centuries, and it remains still not unlike a desert patch of Far-Western America.
Wiry grass, and another variety particularly suited to the raising and grazing of live stock,has kept the region from being one of absolute poverty; but, unless one is interested in raising little horses (who look as though they might be related to the broncos of the Western plains), or beef or mutton, he will have no excuse for ever coming to the Camargue to settle.
These little half-savage horses of the Camargue are thought to be the descendants of those brought from the Orient in ages past, and they probably are, for the Saracens were for long masters of thepays.
The difference between the Camargue and the Crau is that the former has an almost entire absence of those cairns of pebbles which make the Crau look like a pagan cemetery.
Like the horses, the cattle of the Camargue seem to be a distinct and indigenous variety, with long pointed horns, and generally white or cream coloured, like the oxen of the Allier. When the mistral blows, these cattle of the Camargue, instead of turning their backs upon it, face it, calmly chewing their cud. The herdsmen of the cattle have a laborious occupation, tracking and herding day and night, in much the same manner as the Gauchos of the Pampas and the cowboys of the Far West. They resemble the toreadors of Spain, too, and,in many of their feats, are quite as skilful and intrepid as are the Manuels and Pedros of the bull-ring.
enlarge-imageThe Bulls of Camargue
As one approaches the sea the aspect of the Camargue changes; the hamlets become less and less frequent, and outside of these there are few signs of life except the guardians of cattle and sheep which one meets here, there, and everywhere.
The flat, monotonous marsh is only relieved by the delicate tints of the sky and clouds overhead, and the reflected rays of the setting sun, and the glitter of the waves of the sea itself.
Suddenly, as one reads in Mistral’s “Mirèio,” Chant X., “sur la mer lointaine et clapoteuse, comme un vaisseau qui cingle vers le rivage,” one sees a great church arising almost alone. It is the church of Les Saintes Maries.
Formerly the little town of Les Saintes Maries, or village rather, for there are but some six hundred souls within its confines to-day, was on an island quite separated from the mainland. Here, history tells, was an ancient temple to Diana, but no ruins are left to make it a place of pilgrimage for worshippers at pagan shrines; instead Christians flock here in great numbers, on the 24th of May and the 22d of October in each year, from all over Provence and Languedoc, as they have since Bible times, to pray at the shrine of the three Marys in the fortress-church of Les Saintes Maries: Mary, the sister of the Virgin Mary, the mother of the apostles James and John, and Mary Magdalen.
enlarge-imageLes Saintes MariesLes Saintes Maries
Les Saintes Maries
The village of Les Saintes, as it is commonly called, is a sad, dull town, with no trees, no gardens, no “Place,” no market, and no port;nothing but one long, straight and narrow street, with short culs-de-sac leading from it, and one of the grandest and most singular church edifices to be seen in all France. Like the cathedrals at Albi and Rodez, it looks as much like a fortress as it does a church, and here it has not even the embellishments of a later decorative period to set off the grimness of its walls.
As one approaches, the aspect of this bizarre edifice is indeed surprising, rising abruptly, though not to a very imposing height, from the flat, sandy, marshy plain at its feet. The foundation of the church here was due to the appearance of Christianity among the Gauls at a very early period; but, like the pagan temple of an earlier day, all vestiges of this first Christian monument have disappeared, destroyed, it is said, by the Saracens. A noble—whose name appears to have been forgotten—built a new church here in the tenth century, which took the form of a citadel as a protection against further piratical invasion. At the same time a few houses were built around the haunches of the fortress-church, for the inhabitants of this part of the Camargue were only too glad to avail themselves of the shelter and protection which it offered.
In a short time apetite villehad been created and was given the name of Notre Dame de la Barque, in honour of the arrival in Gaul at this point of “...les saintes femmes Marie Magdeleine, Marie Jacobé, Marie Salomé, Marthe et son frère Lazare, ainsi que de plusieurs disciples du Sauveur.” They were the same who had been set adrift in an open boat off the shores of Judea, and who, without sails, oars, or nourishment, in some miraculous manner, had drifted here. The tradition has been well guarded by the religious and civic authorities alike, the arms of the town bearing a representation of a shipwrecked craft supported by female figures and the legend “Navis in Pelago.”
On the occasion of the fête, on the 24th of May, there are to be witnessed many moving scenes among the pilgrims of all ages who have made the journey, many of them on foot, from all over Provence. Like the pardons of Brittany, the fête here has much the same significance and procedure. There is much processioning, and praying, and exhorting, and burning of incense and of candles, and afterward adéfiléto the sands of the seashore, some two kilometres away, and a “bénédiction des troupeaux,” which means simply that the blessingsthat are so commonly bestowed upon humanity by the clergy are extended on these occasions to take in the animal kind of the Camargue plain, on whom so many of the peasants depend for their livelihood. It seems a wise and thoughtful thing to do, and smacks no more of superstition than many traditional customs.
After the religious ceremonies are over, the “fête profane” commences, and then there are many things done which might well enough be frowned down; bull-baiting, for instance. The entire spectacle is unique in these parts, and every whit as interesting as the most spectacular pardon of Finistère.
At the actual mouth of the Rhône is Port St. Louis, from which the economists expect great things in the development of mid-France, particularly of those cities which lie in the Rhône valley. The idea is not quite so chimerical as that advanced in regard to the possibility of moving all the great traffic of Marseilles to the Étang de Berre; but it will be some years before Port St. Louis is another Lorient or Le Havre.
In spite of this, Port St. Louis has grown from a population of eight hundred to that of a couple of thousands in a generation, which isan astonishing growth for a small town in France.
The aspect of the place is not inspiring. A signal-tower, a lighthouse, a Hôtel de Ville,—which looks as though it might be the court-house of some backwoods community in Missouri,—and the rather ordinary houses which shelter St. Louis’s two thousand souls, are about all the tangible features of the place which impress themselves upon one at first glance.
Besides this there is a very excellent little hotel, a veritablehôtel du pays, where you will get the fish of the Mediterranean as fresh as the hour they were caught; and themouton de la Camargue, which is the most excellent mutton in all the world (when cooked by a Provençalmaître); potatoes, of course, which most likely came in a trading Catalan bark from Algeria; and tomatoes and dates from the same place; to say nothing of melons—home-grown. It’s all very simple, but the marvel is that such a town in embryo as Port St. Louis really is can do it so well, and for this reason alone the visitor will, in most cases, think the journey from Arles worth making, particularly if he does iten auto, for the fifty odd kilometres are like a sanded, hardwoodfloor or a cinder path, and the landscape, though flat, is by no means deadly dull. Furthermore there is no one to say him nay if the driver chooses to make the journeyen pleine vitesse.
Bordering upon the Camargue, just the other side of the Rhône, is another similar tract: the Crau, a great, pebbly plain, supposed to have come into being many centuries before the beginning of our era. The hypotheses as to its formation are numerous, the chief being that it was the work of that mythological Hercules who cut the Strait of Gibraltar between the Mounts Calpe and Abyle (this, be it noted, is the French version of the legend). Not content with this wonder, he turned the Durance from its bed, as it flowed down from the Alps of Savoie, and a shower of stones fell from the sky and covered the land for miles around, turning it into a barren waste. For some centuries the tract preserved the name of “Champs Herculéen.” The reclaiming of the tract will be a task of a magnitude not far below that which brought it into being.
At all events no part of Gaul has as little changed its topography since ages past, and the strange aspect of the Crau is the marvel of all who see it. The pebbles are of all sizes larger than a grain of sand, and occasionallyone has been found as big as one’s head. When such a treasure is discovered, it is put up in some conspicuous place for the native and the stranger to marvel at.
Many other conjectures have been made as to the origin of this strange land. Aristotle thought that an earthquake had pulverized a mountain; Posidonius, that it was the bottom of a dried-out lake; and Strabon that the pebbly surface was due to large particles of rock having been rolled about and smoothed by the winds; but none have the elements of legend so well defined as that which attributes it as the work of Hercules.
The Crau, like the Camargue, is a district quite indescribable. All around is a lone, strange land, the only living things being the flocks of sheep and the herds of great, long-horned cattle which are raised for local consumption and for the bull-ring at Arles.
It is indeed a weird and strange country, as level as the proverbial billiard-table, and its few inhabitants are of that sturdy weather-beaten race that knows not fear of man or beast. There is an old saying that the native of the Crau and the Camargue must learn to fly instead of fight, for there is nothing for him to put his back against.
Far to the northward and eastward is a chain of mountains, the foot-hills of the mighty Alps, while on the horizon to the south there is a vista of a patch of blue sea which somewhere or other, not many leagues away, borders upon fragrant gardens and flourishing seaports; but in these pebbly, sandy plains all is level and monotonous, with only an occasional oasis of trees and houses.
The Crau was never known as a political division, but its topographical aspect was commented on by geographers like Strabon, who also remarked that it was strewn with a scant herbage which grew up between its pebbles hardly sufficient to nourish ataureau. Things have not changed much in all these long years, but there is, as a matter of fact, nourishment for thousands of sheep and cattle. St. Césaire, Bishop of Arles, also left a written record of pastures which he owned in the midst of acampo lapidio(presumably the Crau), and again, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, numerous old charters make mention ofPosena in Cravo. All this points to the fact that the topographical aspect of this barren, pebbly land—which may or may not be some day reclaimed—has ever been what it is to-day. Approximately twenty-five thousand hectaresof this pasturage nourish some fifty thousand sheep in the winter months. In the summer these flocks of sheep migrate to Alpine pasturage, making the journey by highroad and nibbling their nourishment where they find it. It seems a remarkable trip to which to subject the docile creatures,—some five hundred kilometres out and back. They go in flocks of two or three hundred, being guarded by a couple of shepherds called “bayles,” whose effects are piled in saddle-bags on donkey-back, quite in the same way that the peasants of Albania travel. The shepherds of the Crau are a very good imitation of the Bedouin of the desert in their habits and their picturesque costume. Always with the flock are found a pair of those discerning but nondescript dogs known as “sheep-dogs.” The doubt is cast upon the legitimacy of their pedigree from the fact that, out of some hundreds met with by the author on the highroads of Europe, no two seemed to be of the same breed. Almost any old dog with shaggy hair seemingly answered the purpose well.
The custom of sending the sheep to the mountains of Dauphiné for the summer months still goes on, but as often as not they are to-day sent by train instead of by road. The ancientpractice is apparently another reminiscence of the wandering flocks and herds of the Orient.
If it is ever reclaimed, the Crau will lose something in picturesqueness of aspect, and of manners and customs; but it will undoubtedly prove to the increased prosperity of the neighbourhood. The thing has been well thought out, though whether it ever comes to maturity or not is a question.
It was Lord Brougham—“le fervent étudiant de la Provence,” the French call him—who said: “Herodotus called Egypt a gift of the Nile to posterity, but the Durance can make ofla Crau une petite Egypte aux portes de Marseilles.” From this one gathers that the region has only to be plentifully watered to become a luxuriant and productive river-bottom.
WEarrived at Martigues in the early morning hours affected by automobilists, having spent the night a dozen miles or so away in the château of a friend. Our host made an early start on a shooting expedition, already planned before we put in an appearance, so we took the road at the witching hour of fiveA. M., and descended upon the Hôtel Chabas at Martigues before the servants were up. Some one had overslept.
However, we gave the great door of the stable a gentle shake; it opened slowly, but silently, and we drove the automobile noisily inside. Two horses stampeded, a dog barked, a cock crowed, and sleepy-headed old Pierre appeared, saying that they had no room, forgetful that another day was born, and that he had allowed two fat commercial travellers, who were to have left by the early train, to over-sleep.
enlarge-imageÉglise de la Madeleine, MartiguesÉglise de la Madeleine, Martigues
Église de la Madeleine, Martigues
As there was likely to be room shortly, we convinced Pierre (whose name was really Pietro, he being an Italian) of the propriety of making us some coffee, and then had leisure to realize that at last we were at Martigues—“La Venise Provençale.”
Martigues is a paradise for artists. So far as its canals and quays go, it is Venice without the pomp and glory of great palaces; and the life of its fishermen and women is quite as picturesque as that of the Giudecca itself.
Wonderful indeed are the sunsets of a May evening, on Martigues’s Canal and Quai des Bourdigues, or from the ungainly bridge which crosses to the Ferrières quarter, with the sky-scraping masts of thetartanesacross the face of the sinking sun like prison bars.
Great ungainly tubs are the boats of the fisherfolk of Martigues (all except thetartanes, which are graceful white-winged birds). The motor-boat has not come to take the picturesqueness away from the slow-movingbêtes, which are more like the dory of the Gloucester fishermen, without its buoyancy, than anything else afloat.
Before the town, though two or three kilometres away, is the Mediterranean, and back ofit the Étang de Berre, known locally as “La Petite Mer de Berre.”
Here is a little corner of France not yet overrun by tourists, and perhaps it never will be. Hardly out of sight from the beaten track of tourist travel to the south of France, and within twenty odd miles of Marseilles, it is a veritable “darkest Africa” to most travellers. To be sure, French and American artists know it well, or at least know the lovely little triplet town of Martigues, through the pictures of Ziem and Galliardini and some others; but the seekers after the diversions of the “Côte d’Azur” know it not, and there are no tea-rooms and no “bière anglaise” in the bars or cafés of the whole circuit of towns and villages which surround this little inland sea.
The aspect of this little-known section of Provence is not wholly as soft and agreeable as, in his mind’s eye, one pictures the country adjacent to the Mediterranean to be. The hills and the shores of the “Petite Mer” are sombre and severe in outline, but not sad or ugly by any means, for there is an almost tropical glamour over all, though the olive and fig trees, umbrella-pines and gnarled, dwarf cypresses, with juts and crops of bare gray stone rising up through the thin soil, are quite in contrastwith the palms and aloes of the Riviera proper.
At the entrance to the “Petite Mer,” or, to give it its official name, the Étang de Berre, is a little port which bears the vague name of Port de Bouc.
Port de Bouc itself is on the great Golfe de Fos, where the sun sets in a blaze of colour for quite three hundred days in the year, and in a manner unapproached elsewhere outside of Turner’s landscapes. Perhaps it is for this reason that the town has become a sort of watering-place for the people of Nîmes, Arles, and Avignon. There is nothing of the conventional resort about it, however, and the inhabitants of it, and the neighbouring town of Fos, are mostly engaged in making bricks, paper, and salt, refining petrol, and drying the codfish which are landed at its wharves by great “trois-mâts,” which have come in from the banks of Terre Neuve during the early winter months. There is a great ship-building establishment here which at times gives employment to as many as a thousand men, and accordingly Port de Bouc and Fos-sur-Mer, though their names are hardly known outside of their own neighbourhoods, form something of a metropolisto-day, as they did when the latter was a fortifiedcité romaine.
The region round about has many of the characteristics of the Crau, a land half-terrestrial and half-aquatic, formed by the alluvial deposits of the mighty Rhône and the torrential rivers of its watershed.
At Venice one finds superb marble palaces, and a history of sovereigns and prelates, and much art and architecture of an excellence and grandeur which perhaps exceeds that at any other popular tourist point. Martigues resembles Venice only as regards its water-surrounded situation, its canal-like streets and the general air of Mediterranean picturesqueness of the life of its fisherfolk and seafarers.
Martigues has an advantage over the “Queen of the Adriatic” in that none of its canals are slimy or evil-smelling, and because there is an utter absence of theatrical effect and, what is more to the point, an almost unappreciable number of tourists.
enlarge-imageHouse of M. Ziem, MartiguesHouse of M. Ziem, Martigues
House of M. Ziem, Martigues
It is true that Galliardini and Ziem have made the fame of Martigues as an “artists’ sketching-ground,” and as such its reputation has been wide-spread. Artists of all nationalities come and go in twos and threes throughout the year, but it has not yet been overrun at any time bytourists. None except the Marseillais seem to have made it a resort, and they only come out on bicycles oren autoto eat “bouillabaisse” of a special variety which has made Martigues famous.
Ziem seems to have been one of the pioneers of the new school, high-coloured paintings which are now so greatly the vogue. This is not saying that for that reason they are any the less truthful representations of the things they are supposed to present; probably they are not; but if some one would explain why M. Ziem laid out an artificial pond in the gardens of his house at Martigues, put up Venetian lantern-poles, and anchored a gondola therein, and in another corner built a mosque, or whatever it may be,—a thing of minarets and towers and Moorish arches,—it would allay some suspicions which the writer has regarding “the artist’s way of working.”
It does not necessarily mean that Ziem did not go to Africa for his Arab or Moorish compositions, or to Venice for his Venetian boatmen and his palace backgrounds. Probably he merely used the properties as accessories in an open-air studio, which is certainly as legitimate as “working-up” one’s pictures in a sky-lighted atelier up five flights of stairs; andthe chances are this is just where Ziem’s brilliant colouring comes from.
Martigues in its manners and customs is undoubtedly one of the most curious of all the coast towns of France. It is truly a gay little city, or rather it is three of them, known as Les Martigues, though the sum total of their inhabitants does not exceed six thousand souls all told.
Martigues at first glance appears to be mostly peopled by sailors and fishermen, and there is little of the super-civilization of a great metropolis to be seen, except that “all the world and his wife” dines at the fashionable hour of eight, and before, and after, and at all times, patronizes the Café de Commerce to an extent which is the wonder of the stranger and the great profit of the patron.
enlarge-imageMartiguesMartigues
Martigues
No café in any small town in France is so crowded at the hour of the “apéritif,” and all the frequenters of Martigues’s most popular establishment have their own special bottle of whatever of the varnishy drinks they prefer from among those which go to make up the list of the Frenchman’s “apéritifs.” It is most remarkable that the cafés of Martigues should be so well patronized, and they are no mere longshorecabarets, either, but have walls ofplate glass, and as many varieties of absinthe as you will find in a boulevard resort in Paris.
The Provençal historians state that Les Martigues did not exist as such until the middle of the thirteenth century, and that up to that time it consisted merely of a few families of fisherfolk living in huts upon the ruins of a former settlement, which may have been Roman, or perhaps Greek. This first settlement was on the Ile St. Geniez, which now forms the official quarter of the triple town.
Martigues is all but indescribable, its threequartiersare so widely diversified in interest and each so characteristic in the life which goes on within its confines,—Jonquières, with its shady Cours and narrow cobblestoned streets; the Ile, surrounded by its canals and fishing-boats, and Ferrières, a more or less fastidious faubourg backed up against the hillside, crowned by an old Capucin convent.
For a matter of fifteen hundred years there has been communication between the Étang de Berre and the Mediterranean, and the Martigaux have ever been alive to keeping the channel open. Through this canal the fish which give industry and prosperity to Martigues make their way with an almost inexplicable regularity. A migration takes place fromthe Mediterranean to the Étang from February to July, and from July to February they pass in the opposite direction.
Their capture in deep water is difficult, and the Martigaux have ingeniously built narrow waterways ending in a cul-de-sac, through which the fish must naturally pass on their passage between the Étang and the sea. The taking of the fish under such conditions is a sort of automatic process, so efficacious and simple that it would seem as though the plan might be tried elsewhere.
The name given to the sluices or fish thoroughfares isbourdigues, and the fishermen are known asbourdigaliers, a title which is not known or recognized elsewhere.
Thebourdiguefishery is a monopoly, however, and many have been the attempts to break down the “vested interests” of the proprietors. Originally these rights belonged to the Archbishop of Arles, and later to the Seigneurs de Gallifet, Princes of Martigues, when the town was made a principality by Henri IV. It has continued to be a private enterprise unto to-day, and has been sanctioned by the courts, so there appears no immediate probability of the general populace of Martigues being able to participate in it.
There is a delicate fancy evolved from the connection of Martigues’s three sister faubourgs orquartiers. In the old days each had a separate entity and government, and each had a flag of its own; that of Jonquières was blue; the Ile, white; and Ferrières, red. There was an intense rivalry between the inhabitants of the three faubourgs; a rivalry which led to the beating of each other with oars and fishing-tackle, and other boisterous horse-play whenever they met one another in the canals or on the wharves. The warring factions of the threequartiersof Martigues, however, finally came to an understanding whereby the blue, white, and red banners of Jonquières, the Ile and Ferrières were united in one general flag. The adoption of the tricolour by the French nation was thus antedated, curiously enough, by two hundred years, and the tricolour of France may be considered a Martigues institution.
In the Quartier de Ferrières are moored thetartanesandbalancelles, those great white-winged, lateen-rigged craft which are the natural component of a Mediterranean scene. Those hailing from Martigues are the aristocrats of their class, usually gaudily painted and flying high at the masthead a red and yellowstriped pennant distinctive of their home port.
In the fish-market of Martigues the traveller from the north will probably make his first acquaintance with the tunny-fish orthonof the Mediterranean. He is something like the tarpon of the Mexican Gulf, and is a gamy sort of a fellow, or would be if one ever got him on the end of a line, which, however, is not the manner of taking him. He is caught by the gills in great nets of cord, as thick and heavy as a clothes-line, scores and hundreds at a time, and it takes the strength of many boatloads of men to draw the nets.
Thethonis the most unfishlike fish that one ever cast eyes upon. He looks like a cross between a porpoise and a mackerel in shape, and is the size of the former. It is the most beautifully modelled fish imaginable; round and plump, with smoothly fashioned head and tail, it looks as if it were expressly designed to slip rapidly through the water, which in reality it does at an astonishing rate. Its proportions are not graceful or delicately fashioned at all; they are rather clumsy; but it is perfectly smooth and scaleless, and looks, and feels too, as if it were made of hard rubber.
In short thethonis the most unemotional-lookingthing in the whole fish and animal world, with no more realism to it than if it were whittled out of a log of wood and covered with stove-polish. Caught, killed, and cured (by being cut into cubes and packed in oil in little tins), thethonforms a great delicacy among the assortment ofhors-d’œuvreswhich the Paris and Marseilles restaurant-keepers put before one.
One of the great features of Martigues is its cookery, its fish cookery in particular, for thebouillabaisseof Martigues leads the world. It is far better than that which is supplied to “stop-over” tourists at Marseilles,en routeto Egypt, the East, or the Riviera.
Thackeray sang the praises ofbouillabaissemost enthusiastically in his “Ballad of the Bouillabaisse,” but then he ate it at a restaurant “on a street in Paris,” and he knew not the real thing as Chabas dishes it up at Martigues’s “Grand Hôtel.”
Chabas is known for fifty miles around. He is not a Martigaux, but comes from Cavaillon, the home of all good cooks, or at least one may say unreservedly that all the people of Cavaillon are good cooks: “les maîtres de la cuisine Provençale” they are known to allbons-vivants.
Neither is madame a Martigaux; she is an Arlesienne (and wears the Arlesienne coiffe at all times); Arles is a town as celebrated for its fair women as is Cavaillon for its cooks.
Together M. and Madame Chabas hold a big daily reception in thecuisineof the hotel, formerly the kitchen of an old convent. M. Paul is a “handy man;” he cooks easily and naturally, and carries on a running conversation with all who drop in for a chat. Most cooks are irascible and cranky individuals, but not so M. Paul; the more, the merrier with him, and not a drop too much oil (or too little), not a taste too much of garlic, nor too much saffron in thebouillabaisse, nor too much salt or pepper on therôtior thelégumes. It’s all chance apparently with him, for like all good cooks he never measures anything, but the wonder is that he doesn’t get rattled and forget, with the mixed crew ofpensionnairesand neighbours always at his elbow, warming themselves before the same fire that heats his pots and pans and furnishes the flame for the greatbrocheon which sizzle the well-bastedpetits oiseaux.
Bouillabaisseis always theplat-du-jourat the “Grand Hôtel,” and it’s the most wonderfully savoury dish that one can imagine—as Chabas cooks it.
Outside a Provençal cookery-book one would hardly expect to find a recipe forbouillabaissethat one could accept with confidence, but on the other hand no writer could possibly have the temerity to write of Provence and not have his say about the wonderful fish stew known to lovers of good-living the world over. It is more or less a risky proceeding, but to omit it altogether would be equally so, so the attempt is here made.
“La bouillabaisse,” of which poets have sung, has its variations and its intermittent excellencies, and sometimes it is better than at others; but always it is a dish which gives off an aroma which is the very spirit of Provence, an unmistakable reminiscence of Martigues, where it is at its best.
When thebouillabaisseis made according to thevieilles règles, it is as exquisite a thing to eat as is to be found among all the famous dishes of famous places. One goes to Burgundy to eatescargots, to Rouen forcaneton, and to Marguery’s for soles, but he puts the memory of all these things behind him and far away when he first tastesbouillabaissein the place of its birth.
Here is the recipe in its native tongue so that there may be no mistaking it:
“Poisson de la Méditerranée fraîchement pêché, avec les huiles vierges de la Provence. Thon, dorade, mulet, rouget, rascasses, parfumés par le fenouil et de laurier, telles sont les bases de cette soupe, colorée par le safran, que toutes les ménagères de la littoral de Provence s’entendent à merveille à préparer.”
As before said, not many tourists (English or American) frequent Martigues, and those who do come all have leanings toward art. Now and then a real “carryall and guide-book traveller” drifts in, gets a whiff of the mistral, (which often blows with deadly fury across the Étang) and, thinking that it is always like that, leaves by the first train, after having bought a half-dozen picture post-cards and eaten a bowl ofbouillabaisse.
The type exists elsewhere in France, in large numbers, in Normandy and Brittany for instance, but he is arara avisat Martigues, and only comes over from his favourite tea-drinking Riviera resort (he tells you) “out of curiosity.”
Martigues is practically the gateway to all the attractions of the wonderful region lying around the Étang de Berre, and of the littoral between Marseilles and the mouths of the Rhône. It is not very accessible by rail, however,and a good hard walker could get there from Marseilles almost as quickly on foot as by train.
The ridiculous little train of double-decked, antiquated cars, and a still more antiquated locomotive, takes nearly an hour to make the journey from Pas-de-Lanciers. Some day the dreaded mistral will blow this apology for rapid transit off into the sea, and then there will come an electric line, which will make the journey from Marseilles in less than an hour, instead of the three or four that it now takes.
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MARTIGUESis the metropolis of the towns and villages which fringe the shore of the Étang de Berre, a sort of an inland sea, with all the attributes of both a salt and fresh water lake.
Around Martigues, in the spring-time, all is verdant and full of colour, and the air is laden with the odours of aromatic buds and blossoms. At this time, when the sun has not yet dried out and yellowed the hillsides, the spectacle of the background panorama is most ravishing. Almond, peach, and apricot trees, all covered with a rosy snow of blossoms, are everywhere, and their like is not to be seen elsewhere, for in addition there is here a contrasting frame of greenish-gray olive-trees and punctuating accents of red and yellow wild flowers that is reminiscent of California.
Surrounding the “Petite Mer de Berre” are a half-dozen of unspoiled little towns and villages which are most telling in their beauty andcharms: St. Mitre, crowning a hill with a picturesquely roofed Capucin convent for a near neighbour, and with some very substantial remains of its old Saracen walls and gates, is the very ideal of a mediæval hill town; Istres, with its tree-grown chapel, its fortress-like church and its “classic landscape,” is as unlike anything that one sees elsewhere in France as could be imagined; while Miramas, St. Chamas, and Berre, on the north shores of the Étang, though their names even are not known to most travellers, are delightful old towns where it is still possible to live a life unspoiled by twentieth-century inventions and influences.
If the mistral is not blowing, one may make the passage across the Étang, from Martigues to Berre, in one of the local craft known as a “bête,” a name which sounds significant, but which really means nothing. If the north wind is blowing, the journey should be made by train, around the Étang via Marignane. The latter route is cheaper, and one may be saved an uncomfortable, not to say dangerous, experience.
One great and distinct feature of the countryside within a short radius of Marseilles, within which charmed circle lie Martigues and all the surrounding towns of the Étang deBerre, are thecabanons, the modest villas (sic) of these parts, seen wherever there is an outlook upon the sea or a valleyed vista. They cling perilously to the hillsides, wherever enough level ground can be found to plant their foundations, and their gaudy colouring is an ever present feature in the landscape of hill and vale.
Thecabanonis really themaison de campagneof thepetit bourgeoisof the cities and towns. It is like nothing ever seen before, though in the Var, east of Marseilles, the “bastide” is somewhat similar. In its proportions it resembles the log cabin of the Canadian backwoods more than it does the East Indian bungalow, though it is hardly more comfortable or roomy than the wigwam of the red man. Indeed, how could it be, when it consists of but four walls, forming a rectangle of perhaps a dozen feet square, and a roof of red tiles?
If, like the Japanese, the inhabitant of thecabanonlikes to carry his household gods about with him, why, then it is quite another thing, and there is some justice in the claim of its occupant that he is enjoying lifeen villégiature.
“Le cabanon: c’est unique et affreux!” said Taine, and, though he was a great grumbler when it came to travel talk, and the above is an unfair criticism of a most intolerant kind, thecabanonreally is ludicrous, though often picturesque.
The simple stone hut, with the stones themselves roughly covered with pink or blue stucco, sits, always, facing the south. Before it is a tiny terrace and, since there are often no windows, the general housekeeping is done under an awning, or a lean-to, or a “tonnelle.”
It is not a wholly unlovely thing, acabanon, but it gets the full benefit of the glaring sunlight on its crude outlines, and, though sylvan in its surroundings, it is seldom cool or shady, as a country house, of whatever proportions or dimensions, ought to be.
Some figures concerning the Étang de Berre are an inevitable outcome of a close observation, so the following are given and vouched for as correct. It is large enough to shelter all the commercial fleet of the Mediterranean and all the French navy as well. For an area of over three thousand hectares, there is a depth of water closely approximating forty feet. Between the Étang and the Mediterranean are the Montagnes de l’Estaque, which for a length of eight kilometres range in heightfrom three hundred to fifteen hundred feet, and would form almost an impenetrable barrier to a fleet which might attack the ships of commerce or war which one day may take shelter in the Étang de Berre. This, if the naval powers-that-be have their way, will some day come to pass. All this is a prophecy, of course, but Elisée Reclus has said that the non-utilization of the Étang de Berre was ascandale économique, which doubtless it is.
In spite of the name “Étang,” the “Petite Mer de Berre” is a veritable inland harbour orrade, closed against all outside attack by its narrow entrance through the elongated Étang de Caronte. That its strategic value to France is fully recognized is evident from the fact that frequently it is overrun by a practising torpedo-boat fleet. What its future may be, and that of the delightful little towns and cities on its shores, is not very clear. There is the possibility of making it the chief harbour on the south coast of France, but hitherto the influences of Marseilles have been too strong; and so this vast basin is as tranquil and deserted as if it were some inlet on the coast of Borneo, and, except for the little lateen-rigged fishing-boats which dot its surface day in and day out throughout the year, not a mast of agoéletteand not a funnel of a steamship ever crosses its horizon,—except the manœuvring torpedo-boats.
The Marseillais know this “Petite Mer” and its curious border towns and villages full well. They come to Martigues to eatbouillabaisseof even a more pungent variety than they get at home, and they go to Marignane forla chasse,—though it is only “petits oiseaux” and “plongeurs” that they bag,—and they go to St. Chamas and Berre for the fishing, until the whole region has become a Sunday meeting-place for the Marseillais who affect what they call “le sport.”