Rambles on the Riviera

by M. F. Mansfield

Besides this there is a very excellent little hotel, a veritable hôtel du pays, where you will get the fish of the Mediterranean as fresh as the hour they were caught; and the mouton de la Camargue, which is the most excellent mutton in all the world (when cooked by a Provençal maître); 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 it en auto, for the fifty odd kilometres are like a sanded, hardwood floor 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 journey en 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 occasionally one 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 a taureau. 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 a campo lapidio (presumably the Crau), and again, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, numerous old charters make mention of Posena 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 hectares of 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 ancient practice 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.