Winged Wheels in France

by Michael Myers Shoemaker

During the morning hours our route lies through many old towns; each of which has its memories. This one of Salon holds the castle of the astrologist Nostradamus and in her church of St. Laurent he lies buried.

From Salon our way leads directly west and we skim along for twenty miles through the flat land but see nothing of the Rhone until we reach and pass through Arles. Then we bring up suddenly upon its very brink with its yellow floods rolling southward at our feet.

On our right are the gateways of the famous old city of Arles, but my eyes are drawn off and away across the river and out over the fantastic land of the Camargue, a land more akin to Africa than to Europe,—that great "Field of Reeds" between the two branches of the Rhone, only a few feet above the level of the sea, where the ibis, Egyptian vulture, and the flamingo are to be found. The whole is so low and so covered with salt that it glistens and glitters under the morning's sunlight, while the air quivers and shifts above it, and is full of the mirage, taking on strange forms and fantastic shapes as the eye wanders over it.

THE PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. TROPHIMUS, ARLES
By permission of Messrs. Neurdein

The people out there are as wild as the cattle which roam its plains, and their manners and customs as oriental as those of the Arabs who invaded the land centuries ago, while its one town, Les Saintes-Maries, has all the characteristics of an African town of the desert, and there Mary Magdalene, Mary of Salome, and Mary the mother of James, landed to escape persecution.

We cannot go further into the Camargue now and so turn to where, on our right, the entrance to the ancient city of Arles is guarded by two great low round towers, beyond which stretches a vista of narrow shadowy streets full of attractions and inviting exploration. The main features of the old Roman town are too well known to justify description, but every street holds some relic of the past worth inspection, and on our way to the very comfortable inn, where we dine in plenty, my eyes are constantly on the alert and yet much is missed. There are two inns in this city of Arles situated at right angles to each other in the same corner of the public square and it would appear that whichever the traveller selects he will be subjected to the pitying glances of the proprietor of the rival establishment watching from the door of his own house; however, I find nothing to complain of either in the house I enter or in the dinner service.

The day is one of blinding sunshine as we draw up before the amphitheatre. Its great arches glitter against the blue sky and the white city all around us is as silent as a tomb. There are two pictures which must arise to the thoughts here: one, that of the place in the voluptuous splendour of its Roman days. The vast crowds thronging every space; the silver netting to protect them from the beasts in the arena; the fountains in these arches casting up scented waters; the sunlight filtering through awnings of gorgeous silks; the heat; the smell of perfumes and of fresh blood; the roar of the beasts and the murmur of the multitudes,—all these made Rome what she then was and kept the people from thinking. The other picture is so widely different that it is difficult to believe it can be of this same structure, choked from the summit to far underground with the hovels of the poor, every archway closed up, the whole centre a veritable rabbit warren—thousands of outcasts found their homes in this spot. To enter it was scarcely possible save to the initiated, to leave it also was well nigh impossible. A murderer from the town had but to disappear here and all trace of him vanished. If any ventured to pursue him they never returned to tell of what they had seen. Upon this mass of vileness the plague descended in 1640—It came many more times to Arles—none were allowed to come out and the dead and living crowded the place to its utmost hidden recesses. Finally they were summoned forth to quarters beyond the town and only the dying and the dead were left to occupy this amphitheatre of Arles. We have the scene of those horrors and of former gorgeousness to ourselves to-day and we wander in and out at pleasure.