Marignane, on the shores of the Étang de Bolmon,—an offshoot of that wonderfully fascinating Étang de Berre,—was, perhaps, the ancient Maritima Colonia Avaticorum, and Martigues, its grander and better known neighbour, may have borne the title of Maritima Colonia Anatiliorum. As a mere matter of title, it is a fine distinction anyway, but everything points to the fact that the ancients had a great port somewhere on the shores of this landlocked Étang. Just where this may have been, and what its name was, is not so clear to-day, for there is scarcely more than a dozen feet of water in the shallow parts of the Étang, and this fact of itself would seem to preclude that it was ever a rival of the great ports of the Mediterranean of other days. The speculation, at any rate, will give food for thought to any who are interested, and whether this same Étang ever becomes, as is prophesied, a great series of ports and docks which will more than rival Marseilles, does not matter in the least. To-day the Étang de Berre is quite unspoiled in all the charm and novelty of its environment and of the little salt-water towns which surround it.
CHAPTER VII.
A SEASCAPE: FROM THE RHÔNE TO MARSEILLES
THE Bouches-du-Rhône, like the delta of the Mississippi, is a great sprawling area of sandbars and currents of brackish water. For miles in any direction, as the eye turns, it is as if a bit of water-logged Holland had been transported to the Mediterranean, with sand-dunes and a scrubby growth of furze as the only recognizable characteristics.
As a great and useful waterway, the Rhône falls conspicuously from the position which it might have occupied had nature given it a more regular and dependable flow of water.
The canals from Beaucaire through the Camargue and from Arles to the Golfe de Fos are the only things that make possible water communication between the Mediterranean and the towns and cities of the mid-Rhône valley.
Bouches-du-Rhône to Marseilles
The Golfe des Lions, or the Golfe de Lyon, as it is frequently called, is the great bay lying between the coast of the Narbonnaise and the headlands just to the eastward of Marseilles. It is a tempestuous body of water, when the north wind blows, and travellers by sea, in and out of Marseilles, have learned to dread it as if it were the Bay of Biscay itself.
Just eastward of the mouths of the Rhône is a smaller indentation in the coast-line, the Golfe de Fos, known to mariners as being the best anchorage between Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône, and which has received a local name of “Anse du Repos” and “Mouillage d’Aigues douces.”