From La Foux and Grimaud one rapidly advances toward the Estérel, that sheltering range of reddish, rocky mountains which makes Cannes and La Napoule what they are.
St. Tropez and its tall white houses are left behind, and the shores of the Golfe are followed until one comes to the most ancient town of Ste. Maxime. Unlike St. Tropez, Ste. Maxime, though only thirty minutes away by boat, across the mouth of the Golfe, has not the penetrating mistral for a scourge. On the other hand one does get the sun in his eyes when he wishes to view the sea, and has not that magically coloured curtain of the Estérel, with all its varied reds and browns, before his eyes. One cannot have everything as he wishes, even on the Riviera. If he has the view, he often has also the mistral; and, if he finds a place that is really sheltered from the mistral, it has a more or less restricted view, and a climate which the doctors and invalids call “relaxing,” whatever that arbitrary term may mean.
Here in the Golfe de St. Tropez, at St. Tropez, at La Foux, and at Ste. Maxime, one sees again those great tartanes and balancelles, the great white-winged craft which fly about the Mediterranean coasts of France with all the idyllic picturesqueness of old.
There are still twenty kilometres before one reaches Fréjus, the first town of real latter-day importance since passing Toulon, and this, too, in spite of its great antiquity. Other of the coast towns have risen or degenerated into mere resorts, but Fréjus holds its own as the centre of affairs for a very considerable region.
CHAPTER VI.
FRÉJUS AND THE CORNICHE D’OR
TWENTY kilometres beyond Ste. Maxime one comes to the Golfe de Fréjus and its neighbouring towns of Fréjus and St. Raphaël, the former the ville commerçant and the latter the ville d’eau.
As with Arles, on the banks of the Rhône, one may well say of Fréjus that the town and its environs form a veritable open-air museum. It will be true to add also, in this case, that the museum has a far greater area than at Arles, for Fréjus, and the antiquities directly connected with it, cover a radius of at least forty kilometres.
The Romans, the great builders of baths and aqueducts, set a great store by water, and indeed classed it as among the greatest blessings of mankind. No labour was too great, and expense was never thought of, when it came to a question of building these great artificial waterways which, even unto to-day, are known as aqueducts the world over. One of their greatest works of the kind led to Fréjus, and two of its arches stand gaunt and grim to-day in the midst of a fence-paled field. There is also a sign attached to one of the fence-posts which reads as follows:
DEFENSE ABSOLUE
DE PENETRER
DANS LA PROPRIÉTÉ
This sign-board does not look as durable as the moss-grown old arches over which it stands sentinel; perhaps some day the stress of time (or some other reason) will cause it to disappear.