A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

The olive—The orange—The sumac—The crau of the Gapeau—Contrast between the old town and the new—Shelter or no shelter—The family of Fos—The peninsula of Giens—Saltings—Ancient value of salt—Pomponiana—S. Pierre a’ Al-Manar—A false alarm—The League—Razats and Carcists—Castle held by the Carcists—Surrender—Churches of S. Paul and S. Louis—The Iles de Hyères—The reformatory in Ile du Levant—Mutiny—Horrible scenes—Sentences.

IT will be at Hyères, probably, that the visitor to the Riviera first realises that he has come amidst tropical vegetation, for here he will first see palms, agaves, and aloes in full luxuriance. Moreover, the olive, which has been seen, but not in its full luxuriance, reaches its finest development on the red soil north of the branch line, where it parts from the main line at La Pauline.

OLIVE TREES

The olive is without question the most important tree on this coast; it prevails, and gives its colour to the country everywhere, except in the Montagnes des Maures and the Estérel. This is a most difficult tree for an artist to deal with, as it forms no masses of foliage; the small pointed leaves, dull green above, pale below, are so disposed that the foliage can be represented only by a series of pencil scratches. The trunk has a tendency to split into three or four parts in the ground. The vitality of the olive is remarkable. After a century, it may be after more, the core of the trunk decays, and the tree parts into sections, and lives on through the ever-vital bark. The bark curls about the decayed sections, and forms a fresh tree. Consequently, in place of one huge ancient olive, one finds three or four younger trees, but all with a look on them as if they were the children of old age, growing out of the same root. And when this second generation dies, the vitality of the root remains unimpaired; it throws up new shoots, and thus the life of the tree, like that of an ancient family, is indefinitely prolonged. The healthy olive tree, well fed on old rags and filth of every description, to which it is exceedingly partial, is very beautiful; but the beauty of the olive tree comes out in winter and early spring; when the deciduous trees are in leaf and brilliant green, it looks dull and dowdy. The olive flowers from April to June, and the fruit requires about six months to reach maturity. The harvest, accordingly, is in winter. The berry becomes black finally, and falls from the tree in December and January. The oil from the fully matured olives is more abundant, but is not so good in quality as that expressed from the berry whilst still green. The olives, when gathered, are taken to the mills, which are rude, picturesque buildings, planted in the ravines to command water power; but occasionally the crushing is done by horses turning the mills. The olives are crushed by stone rollers; the pulp is put into baskets and saturated with hot water, and subjected to great pressure. The juice then squeezed out is carried into vats, where the oil floats on the surface and is skimmed off.

The wood of the olive is used for fuel, and for boxes and other ornaments that are hand-painted.

The tree requires good nourishment if it is to be well cropped, and it is most partial to a dressing of old rotten rags. All the filthy and decayed scraps of clothing cast by the Neapolitan peasantry are carried in boats to the coast and are eagerly bought as manure.

At Hyères, moreover, we come on the orange and the lemon. The orange was originally imported from China into Spain, and thence passed to Italy and the Riviera. Oranges are said to live four or five hundred years. S. Dominic planted one in the garden at Sta. Sabina, at Rome, in 1200, that still flourishes. Hale and fruit-bearing also is that at Fondi, planted by Thomas Aquinas in 1278. Nevertheless, it is certain that old orange-trees have disappeared from Hyères. Whether they were killed by the severe winter of 1864, or whether by a disease, is doubtful. The trees one sees now are none of them ancient, and do not attain a height above nine feet. The name orange comes from the Sanskrit, and the Portuguese, who introduced the orange to Europe, borrowed the name from the Hindus. In 1516 Francis I. was present during a naval sham fight at Marseilles, where oranges were used as projectiles. Oranges had been grown sufficiently long at Hyères to have attained a great size in the sixteenth century, for when there, Charles IX., his brother the Duke of Anjou, and the King of Navarre, by stretching their hands, together hooped round the trunk of one tree that bore 14,000 oranges. Thereupon was cut in the bark, “Caroli regis amplexu glorior.” But there are no such orange-trees as that now at Hyères. Probably that was of a more hardy nature and of inferior quality to the orange-tree now grown. In fact, the present strain of oranges cultivated is a late importation, not earlier than about 1848. When a horticulturist of Marseilles imported it, it was next brought to Bordighera; from thence it passed to San Remo, to Ventimiglia, and thence to Nice. The orange, and above all the lemon, is very sensitive to cold, and the frost of February, 1905, blighted nearly every tree along the coast, turning the leaves a pale straw colour. Only in very sheltered spots did they retain their green and gloss.

About Solliés-Pont the sumac is grown for the sake of its tannin. The leaves only are used, but for them the branches are cut off. When these are dry they are stripped of their foliage by women and children. The leaves are then pounded to powder, and are packed in sacks and sent away. Thirty per cent. of the matter in the dried sumac leaves is tannin.