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.
Fishing-boats at Tamaris
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.”