neighbourhood, come to look on and listen. The simple, intelligible
service, the quiet fervour of the assembly, might well impress a
sceptical beholder. Even more impressive is the inscription over the
door. A tablet records how the first Protestant church was pulled down
by order of the king after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and
rebuilt on the declaration of religious liberty by the National
Assembly. Gazing on that inscription and the little crowd of
worshippers, a sentence of Tacitus came into my mind. Recording how not
only the biographers of good men were banished or put to death, but
their works publicly burnt by order of Domitian, the historian, whose
sentences are volumes condensed, adds: "They fancied, forsooth"--he is
speaking of the tyrant and his satellites--"that all records of these
actions being destroyed, mankind could never approve of them." An
illusion shared by enemies of intellectual liberty, from the Caesars to
their latest imitator, unhappily not wholly dispelled in our own day.
Whether the homeward journey is made through the Landes by way of
Bayonne and Bordeaux, or through the Eastern Pyrenees by way of
Perpignan, we are brought face to face with scenes of strangest
transformation. In the former region the agency has been artificial, the
shifting sands being fixed and solidified by plantations on a gigantic
scale, and large tracts rendered fertile by artificial irrigation; in
the latter, Nature has prepared the field, the more laborious portion of
the husbandman's task is already done.
"The districts of sand, as white as snow and so loose as to blow," seen
by Arthur Young towards the close of the last century, can hardly be
said to exist in our own day. Even within twenty-five years the changes
are so great as to render entire regions hardly recognizable. The
stilts, or _chanques_, of which our word "shanks" is supposed to be the
origin, become rarer and rarer. The creation of forests and sinking of
wells, drainage, artificial manures and canals are rapidly fertilizing a
once arid region; with the aspect of the country a proportionate change
taking place in the material condition of the people.
No less startling is the transformation of lagoon into salt marsh, and
marsh into cultivable soil, witnessed between the Spanish frontier,
Perpignan and Nîmes.
Quitting Cerbère, the little town at which travellers from Barcelona
re-enter French territory, we follow the coast, traversing a region long
lost to fame and the world, but boasting of a brilliant history before
the real history of France began.
We are here in presence of geological changes affected neither by shock
nor convulsion, nor yet by infinitesimally slow degrees. A few
centuries have sufficed to alter the entire contour of the coast and
reverse the once brilliant destinies of maritime cities. With the
recorded experience of mediaeval writers at hand, we can localize
lagoons and inland seas where to-day we find belts of luxuriant
cultivation. In a lifetime falling short of the Psalmist's threescore
years and ten observations may be made that necessitate the
reconstruction of local maps.
The charming little watering-place of Banyulssur-Mer, reached soon after
passing the Spanish frontier, is the only place on this coast, except
Cette, without a history. The town is built in the form of an
amphitheatre, its lovely little bay surrounded by rich southern
vegetation. The oleanders and magnolias in full bloom, gardens and
vineyards, are no less strikingly contrasted with the barrenness and
monotony that follows, than Banyuls itself, spick and span, brand-new,
with the buried cities scattered on the way, ancient as Tyre and Sidon,
and once as flourishing. There is much sadness yet poetic charm in the
landscape sweeps of silvery-green olive or bluish salicornia against a
pale-blue sky, dull-brown fishing villages bordering sleepy lagoons,
stretches of white sand, with here and there a glimpse of the purple,
rock-hemmed sea. Little of life animates this coast, in many spots the
custom-house officer and a fisherman or two being the sole inhabitants,
their nearest neighbours removed from them by many miles. Only the
flamingo, the heron, and the sea-gull people these solitudes, within the
last few years broken by the whistle of the locomotive. We are following
the direct line of railway between Barcelona and Paris.
The first of the buried cities is the musically-named Elne, anciently
Illiberis, now a poor little town of the department of the Eastern
Pyrenees, hardly, indeed, more than a village, but boasting a wondrous
pedigree. We see dull-brown walls, ilex groves, and above low-lying
walls the gleaming sea. This apparently deserted place occupies the site
of city upon city. Seaport, metropolis, emporium had here reached their
meridian of splendour before the Greek and the Roman set foot in Gaul.
Already in Pliny's time the glories of the Elne had become tradition. We
must go farther back than Phoenician civilization for the beginnings of
this town, halting-place of Hannibal and his army on their march towards
Rome. The great Constantine endeavoured to resuscitate the fallen city,
and for a brief space Elne became populous and animated. With other once
flourishing seaports it has been gradually isolated from the sea, and
the same process is still going on.
Just beyond Perpignan a lofty tower, rising amid vineyards and pastures,
marks the site of Ruscino, another ancient city and former seaport. The
Tour de Roussillon is all that now remains of a place once important
enough to give its name to a province. Le Roussillon, from which was
formed the department of the Pyrénées Orientales, became French by the
treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. Here also the great Carthaginian halted,
and here, we learn, he met with a friendly reception.
Monotonous as are these wide horizons and vast stretches of marsh and
lagoon, they appeal to the lover of solitude and of the more pensive
aspects of nature. The waving reeds against the pale sky, the sweeps of
glasswort and terebinth, show delicate gradations of colour; harmonious,
too, the tints of far-off sea and environing hills. Not cities only seem
interred here: the railway hurries us through a world in which all is
hushed and inanimate, as if, indeed, mankind no less than good fortune
had deserted it. The prevailing uniformity is broken by the
picturesquely placed little town of Salses and the white cliffs of
Leucate. Strabo and Pomponius Mela describe minutely the floating
islands or masses of marine plants moving freely on the lake of Salses.
Here, as elsewhere, the coastline is undergoing slow but steady
modification, yet we are in presence of phenomena that engaged the
attention of writers two thousand years ago.
From this point till we approach Cette the region defies definition. It
is impossible to determine nicely where the land ends and the sea
begins. The railway follows a succession of inland salt lakes and
lagoons, with isolated fishermen's cabins, reminding us of
lake-dwellings. In some places the hut is approached by a narrow strip
of solid ground, on either side surrounded by water, just admitting the
passage of a single pedestrian. The scene is unspeakably desolate. Only
sea-birds keep the fisher-folk company; only the railway recalls the
busy world far away.
Of magnificent aspect is Narbonne, the Celtic Venice, as it rises above
the level landscape. The great seaport described by Greek historians six
centuries before our own era, the splendid capital of Narbonese Gaul,
rival of the Roman Nîmes and of the Greek Arles, is now as dull a
provincial town as any throughout France. Invasions, sieges, plagues,
incendiaries, most of all religious persecutions, ruined the mediæval
Narbonne. The Jewish element prevailed in its most prosperous phase, and
M. Renan in his history of Averroës shows how much of this prosperity
and intellectual pre-eminence was due to the Jews. The cruel edicts of
Philip Augustus against the race proved no less disastrous here than the
expulsion of Huguenots elsewhere later. The decadence of Narbonne as a
port is due to natural causes. Formerly surrounded by lagoons affording
free communication with the sea, the Languedocian Venice has gradually
lost her advantageous position. The transitional stage induced such
unhealthy climatic conditions that at one period there seemed a
likelihood of the city being abandoned altogether. In proportion as the
marsh solidified the general health improved. Day by day the slow but
sure process continues, and when the remaining salt lakes shall have
become dry land, this region, now barren and desolate, will blossom like
the rose. The hygienic and atmospheric effects of the _Eucalyptus
globulus_ in Algeria are hardly more striking than the amelioration
wrought here in a natural way. The Algerian traveller of twenty-five
years ago now finds noble forests of blue gum tree, where, on his first
visit, his heart was wrung by the spectacle of a fever-stricken
population. On the coast of Languedoc the change has been slower. It has
taken not only a generation but a century to transform pestilential
tracts into zones of healthfulness and fertility.
An interesting fact, illustrating the effect of physical agencies upon
human affairs, must be here mentioned. Till within the last few years
this town counted a considerable Protestant community. The ravages of
the phylloxera in the neighbouring vineyards caused a wholesale exodus
of vine-growers belonging to the Reformed Church, and in 1886 the number
had dwindled to such an extent that the services of a pastor were no
longer required. The minister in charge was transferred elsewhere.
The dull little town of Agde is another ancient site. Its name is alike
a poem and a history. The secure harbourage afforded by this sheltered
bay won for the place the name of Good Fortune, [Greek: agathae tuchae],
whence Agathe, Agde. A Greek settlement, its fine old church was in part
constructed of the materials of a temple to Diana of Ephesus. Agde
possesses interest of another kind. It is built of lava, the solitary
peak rising behind it, called Le Pic de St. Loup, being the southern
extremity of that chain of extinct volcanoes beginning with Mont Mezenc
in the Cantal. A pathetic souvenir is attached to this lonely crater. At
a time when geological ardour was rare, a Bishop of Agde, St. Simon by
name, devoted years of patient investigation to the volcanic rocks in
his diocese. The result of his studies were recorded in letters to a
learned friend, but the Revolution stopped the poor bishop's
discoveries. He perished by the guillotine during the Terror. The
celebrated founder of socialism in France was his nephew.
XI
AN OLIVE FARM IN THE VAR
The friendly visit of a few Russian naval officers lately put the
country into as great a commotion as a hostile invasion. I started
southward from Lyons on the 12th October, 1893, amid scenes of wholly
indescribable confusion; railway stations a mere compact phalanx of
excited tourists bound for Toulon, with no immediate prospect of getting
an inch farther, railway officials at their wits' end, carriage after
carriage hooked on to the already enormously long train, and yet crowds
upon crowds left behind. Every train was, of course, late; and on the
heels of each followed supplementary ones, all packed to their utmost
capacity. As we steamed into the different stations "Vive la Russie!"
greeted our ears. The air seemed filled with the sound; never surely was
such a delirium witnessed in France since the fever heat of 1789!
At Valence, Montélimar, Avignon, Arles, the same tumult reigned; but
before reaching the second place, the regulation number of carriages,
twenty-five, had been exceeded, and as hardly one per cent of the
travellers alighted, we could only pass by the disconcerted multitudes
awaiting places. And a mixed company was ours--the fashionable world,
select and otherwise, the demi-monde in silks and in tatters,
musicians, travelling companies of actors and showmen, decorated
functionaries, children, poodles, all bound for the Russian fleet!
At Marseilles, a bitter disappointment awaited some, I fear, many. No
sooner were we fairly within the brilliantly-lighted, crowded station,
and before the train had come to a standstill, than a stentorian voice
was heard from one end of the platform to the other, crying--
"LOOK TO YOUR PURSES!"
And as the gorged carriages slowly discharged their burden, the stream
of passengers wending towards the door marked "Way out," a yet louder
and more awe-inspiring voice came from above, the official being perched
high as an orator in the pulpit, repeating the same words--
"ATTENTION À VOTRE PORTE-MONNAIE!"
The dismay of the thwarted pickpockets may be better imagined than
described. Many, doubtless, had come from great distances, confident of
a golden harvest. Let us hope that the authorities of Toulon were
equally on the alert. Marseilles no more resembles Lyons, Bordeaux,
Nantes, than those cities resemble each other. Less elegant than Lyons,
less majestic than Bordeaux, gayer by far than Nantes, the capital of
Southern France has a stamp of its own. Today, as three thousand years
ago, Marseilles may be called the threshold of the East. In these hot,
bustling, noisy streets, Paris is quiet by comparison; London a Trappist
monastery! Orientals, or what our French neighbours call exotics, are so
common that no one looks at them. Japanese and Chinese, Hindus,
Tonquinois, Annamites, Moors, Arabs, all are here, and in native dress;
and writing letters in the salon of your hotel, your _vis-à-vis_ at the
_table d'hôte_, your fellow sightseers, east and west, to-day as of old,
here come into friendly contact; and side by side with the East is the
glowing life of the South. We seem no longer in France, but in a great
cosmopolitan mart that belongs to the whole world.
The Marseillais, nevertheless, are French; and Marseilles, to their
thinking, is the veritable metropolis. "If Paris had but her
Cannebière," they say, "she would be a little Marseilles!"
Superbly situated, magnificently endowed as to climate, the _chef-lieu_
of the Bouches du Rhône must be called a slatternly beauty; whilst
embellishing herself, putting on her jewels and splendid attire, she
has forgotten to wash her face and trim her hair! Not in Horatian
phrase, dainty in her neatness, Marseilles does herself injustice. Lyons
is clean swept, spick and span as a toy town; Bordeaux is coquettish as
her charming Bordelaise; Nantes, certainly, is not particularly careful
of appearances. But Marseilles is dirty, unswept, littered from end to
end; you might suppose that every householder had just moved, leaving
their odds and ends in the streets, if, indeed, these beautifully-shaded
walks can be so called. The city in its development has laid out alleys
and boulevards instead of merely making ways, with the result that in
spite of brilliant sky and burning sun, coolness and shadow are ever to
be had. The Cannebière, with its blue sky, glowing foliage and gay,
nonchalant, heterogeneous crowds, reminds me of the Rambla of Barcelona.
Indeed, the two cities have many points of resemblance. Marseilles is
greatly changed from the Marseilles I visited twenty-five years ago, to
say nothing of Arthur Young's description of 1789. The only advantage
with which he accredited the city was that of possessing newspapers. Its
port, he wrote, was a horsepond compared to that of Bordeaux; the number
of country houses dotting the hills disappointingly small. At the
present time, suburban Marseilles, like suburban London, encroaches
year by year upon the country; another generation, and the sea-coast
from Toulon to the Italian frontier will show one unbroken line of
country houses. Of this no one can doubt who sees what is going on in
the way of building.
But it is not only by beautiful villas and gardens that the city has
embellished itself. What with the lavishness of the municipality, public
companies, and the orthodox, noble public buildings, docks, warehouses,
schools, churches, gardens, promenades, have rendered Marseilles the
most sumptuous French capital after Paris. Neither Lyons, Bordeaux,
Nantes, can compare with it for sumptuosity. In the Palais de
Longchamps, the splendour of municipal decoration reaches its acme; the
horsepond Arthur Young sneered at now affords accommodation of 340
acres, with warehouses, said to be the finest in the world; last, but
not least, comes the enormous Byzantine Cathedral not yet finished,
built at the cost of a quarter of a million sterling. Other new churches
and public buildings without number have sprung up of late years, the
crowning glory of Marseilles being its Palais de Longchamps.
This magnificent group of buildings may be called a much enlarged and
much more grandiose Trocadéro. Worthily do these colossal Tritons and
sea-horses commemorate the great achievement of modern Marseilles;
namely, the conveying of a river to its very doors. Hither, over a
distance of fifty-four miles, are brought the abundant waters of the
Durance; as we stand near, their cascades falling with the thunder of
our own Lodore. But having got the river and given the citizens more
than enough water with which to turn their mills, supply their domestic
wants, fertilize suburban fields and gardens, the Town Council seem
satisfied. The streets are certainly, one and all, watered with rushing
streams, greatly to the public health and comfort. A complete system of
drainage is needed to render the work complete. When we learn that even
Nice is not yet drained from end to end, we need not be astonished at
tardy progress elsewhere. Sanitation is ever the last thing thought of
by French authorities. Late in the afternoon we saw two or three men
slowly sweeping one street. No regular cleaning seems to take place. Get
well out of the city, by the sea-shore, or into the Prado--an avenue of
splendid villas--and all is swept and garnished. The central
thoroughfares, so glowing with life and colour, and so animated by day
and night, are malodorous, littered, dirty. It is a delightful drive by
the sea, over against the Château d'If, forts frowning above the rock,
the deep blue waves, yellowish-brown shore, and green foliage, all in
striking contrast.
We with difficulty realize that Marseilles is not the second city in
France. The reason is obvious. Lyons lies less compactly together, its
thickly-peopled Guillotière seems a town apart; the population of Lyons,
moreover, is a sedentary one, whilst the Marseillais, being seafarers,
are perpetually abroad. The character, too, is quite different, less
expansive, less excitable, less emotional in the great silk-weaving
capital, here gay, noisy, nonchalant. Nobody seems to find the cares of
the day a burden, all to have some of the sunshine of the place in their
composition. "Mon bon," a Marsellais calls his neighbour; there is no
stillness anywhere. Everybody is "Mon bon" to everybody.
The out-of-door, rollicking, careless life, more especially strikes a
northerner. We seem here as remote from ordinary surroundings as if
suddenly transported to Benares. The commercial prosperity of the first
French sea-port is attested by its lavish public works, and number of
country houses, a disappointing handful in Arthur Young's time. Hardly a
householder, however modest his means, who does not possess a cottage or
châlet; the richer having palatial villas and gardens. Nothing can
convey a greater notion of ease and wealth than the prospect of suburban
Marseilles, its green hills, rising above the sea, thickly dotted with
summer houses in every part.
All who wish to realize the advance of French cities since 1870-71
should visit Marseilles. Only those who knew it long ago can measure the
change, and greater changes still are necessary ere its sanitary
conditions match climate and situation.
From Marseilles to Nice, from the land of the olive to that of the palm,
is a long and wearisome journey. That tyrannical monopoly, the
Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée Railway Company, gives only slow trains, except
to travellers provided with through tickets; and these so inconveniently
arranged, that travellers unprovided with refreshments, have no
opportunity of procuring any on the way. Whenever we travel by railway
in France we are reminded of the crying need for competition. The
all-omnipotent P.-L.-M. does as it pleases, and it is quite useless for
travellers to complain. Every inch of the way points to the future of
the Riviera--a future not far off. A few years hence and the sea-coast
from Marseilles to Mentone will be one unbroken line of hotels and
villas. The process is proceeding at a rapid rate. When Arthur Young
made this journey a century ago, he described the country around Toulon
thus: "Nine-tenths are waste mountain, and a wretched country of pines,
box, and miserable aromatics." At the present time, the brilliant red
soil, emerald crops, and gold and purple leafage of stripped vine, make
up a picture of wondrous fertility. At every point we see vineyards of
recent creation; whilst not an inch of soil between the olive trees is
wasted. On the 28th of October the landscape was bright with autumn
crops, some to be _répiqué_, or planted out according to the Chinese
system before mentioned.
The first thing that strikes the stranger at Nice is its Italian
population. These black-eyed, dark-complexioned, raven-haired,
easy-going folks form as distinct a type as the fresh-complexioned,
blue-eyed Alsatian. That the Niçois are French at heart is self-evident,
and no wonder, when we compare their present condition with that of the
past. We see no beggars or ragged, wretched-looking people. If the
municipal authorities have set themselves the task of putting down
mendicity, they have succeeded. French enterprise, French capital is
enriching the population from one end of the Alpes Maritimes to the
other. At the present time there must be tens of thousands of workmen
employed in the building of hotels and villas between Marseilles and
Ventimille. That the Riviera will finally be overbuilt no one can
doubt; much of the original beauty of the country is already destroyed
by this piling up of bricks and mortar, more beauty is doomed. But
meantime work is brisk, wages are high, and the Post Office savings bank
and private banks tell their own tale.
Of course the valetudinarians contribute to the general prosperity, a
prosperity which it is difficult for residents in an English
watering-place to realize. Thus I take up a Hastings newspaper to find a
long list of lodging-house keepers summoned for non-payment of taxes.
Arrived at Nice, a laundress employed by my hostess immediately came to
see if I had any clothes for her. On bringing back the linen she
deposited it in my room, saying I could pay her when fetching the next
bundle. I let her go, but called her back, thinking that perhaps the
poor woman had earned nothing for months and was in distress. My hostess
afterwards informed me with a smile that this good woman had £2,500 in
the bank. I could multiply instances in point.
If the condition of the working classes has immensely improved, the cost
of living has not stood still. A householder informed me that prices of
provisions, servants' wages, house rent and other items of domestic
economy have tripled within the last twenty years. There is every
prospect that this increase will continue. Last winter hotels and
boarding-houses at Nice were all full; fast as new ones are built, they
fill to overflowing. And, of course, the majority of visitors are rich.
No others should come; they are not wanted.
In studying the rural population we must bear in mind one fact--namely,
the line of demarcation separating the well-to-do peasants of the plain
from the poor and frugal mountaineer. Follow the mule track from Mentone
to Castillon, and we find a condition of things for squalor and poverty
unmatched throughout France. Visit an olive-grower in the valley of the
Var, and we are once more amid normal conditions of peasant property. My
first visit was to the land of Goshen.