“It forms by itself,” says Elisée Reclus, “an orographic system sharply limited. Its mass of granite, gneiss, and schist is separated from the surrounding limestone mountains by profound and wide valleys, those of the Aille, the Argens, and the Gapeau. In fact, it constitutes an ensemble as distinct from the rest of Provence as if it were an island separated from the continent.”
The forms of the mountains are rounded, and there are no bold crags; but it is scooped out into valleys that descend rapidly to the sea and to little bays; and these scoopings afford shelter from winter winds and cold, facing the sun, and walled in from every blast.
I know a farm kitchen where a pair of curved settees are drawn about the fire, and the gap between the settees is closed in the evening by a green baize curtain. The family sits on a winter night in this cosy enclosure, the men with their pipes and jugs of cider, the women knitting and sewing; all chattering, singing, laughing.
Now the southern face of the Maures is precisely such a snuggery formed by Nature. The mountains curve about to focus the sun’s rays; and the cork woods, evergreen, kill all glare. Here the date trees ripen their fruit; here the icy blasts do not shrivel up the eucalyptus, and smite down the oranges.
The pity is, there are as yet no well-established winter resorts at Lavandou, Cavalière, and, above all, Cavalaire—places more adapted to delicate lungs than Hyères, exposed to the currents of wind over the Crau; than that blow-hole S. Raphael, planted between the cheeks of the Maures and l’Estérel; than Cannes, where the winds come down from the snows over the plains of the Siagne; than Nice, with the Paillon on one side and the Var on the other.
But for the English visitor in these suntraps three things are lacking—a lawn-tennis ground, a lending library, and an English chapel. Inevitably the Bay of Cavalaire will, in the future, become a great refuge for invalids. But that this may become so, above all, what is needed is a bunch of thorns applied to the tail of the engine that runs the train along the line from Hyères to S. Raphael by the coast. From Hyères to that place is just fifty miles, and the quick trains do it in four, the slow in five hours.
The mountains are mantled in cork wood, save the bald heads of some, and the making of corks is the main industry of the scattered villages.
The cork tree (Quercus suber) retains its leaves for two years. It has two envelopes of bark, which are quite distinct. The inner cannot be removed without destroying the life of the tree.
Virgin cork is not of much value; it is employed only for nets, and has no elasticity.