The rivers of Provence are strangely fascinating; perhaps because they so dominate and ensoul the country, and because of their tumultuous flowing. The really fascinating thing for the living is life!
The river Asse is so impetuous that a proverb has grown up about it: "l'Asse; fou qui la passe."
"And fleet Durance ...
Rugged in gait as wild of appetite...."
The Rhone has a little wind all to herself; the west wind that is called lou rosau, the Provençal name for the river being la Rose.
The Rhone and the Durance are very different in character, though it would take some telling to make the distinction clear. Both are swift and strong, but the Durance is always a wild mountain creature, clear and singing, while the Rhone is more humanised, more experienced, more profound in the still passion of its flowing.
Its calm is perfect, its storm tremendous. Rohan le taureau is a name well deserved when the mistral descends from the mountains, waking the "majestic music" of the river; impetuous, stormy, but always with that mysterious under-note of calm that seems to belong to all great things. Even the stern St. Jerome called the persuasive Hilarius "the Rhone of eloquence," because nothing could resist the seductive power of his language.
"His waves like herded cows that roar and bound" is one of Mistral's many descriptions of the river which has inspired poet after poet and traveller after traveller with a sense of its splendid power and beauty.
It is to the rivers, those patient builders, that the Gulf of Lyons owes its curious formation which is of extraordinary interest to the geologist as well as to the historian and the artist.
It was when the glacial epoch of the world was just over and the great glaciers were breaking up along the valleys that lead down to the Mediterranean that the present contours of the Gulf of Lyons began to form. It is the old story of river-borne material forming deltas and bars, but in this case, perhaps because of the great number of rivers—(the Tech, the Aude, the Olbe, the Hérault, the Vidourle, the Durance, and above all the Rhone)—there has arisen a sort of twin-coast; a double shore enclosing a complicated series of lagoons or étangs producing a labyrinth of land and lake; "ephemeral isles," and wandering waterways, long stretches of sand-dunes—shores that fly before the wind—great swamps and deserts such as the Rhone-enclosed island of the Camargue and the plain of the Crau. In its desolate way, this coast of many changes and fortunes is one of the most interesting features of the country.