Perhaps the reader will desire to understand who the wind-bag men were who had hurried to the rescue of Æmilius. For the comprehension of this particular, something must be said relative to the physical character of the country.
The mighty Rhône that receives the melted snows of the southern slope of the Bernese Oberland and the northern incline of the opposed Pennine Alps receives also the drain of the western side of the Jura, as well as that of the Graian and Cottian Alps. The Durance pours in its auxiliary flood below Avignon.
After a rapid thaw of snow, or the breaking of charged rain clouds on the mountains, these rivers increase in volume, and as the banks of the Rhône below the junction of the Durance and St. Raphael are low, it overflows and spreads through the flat alluvial delta. It would be more exact to say that it was wont to overflow, rather than that it does so [pg 47]now. For at present, owing to the embankments thrown up and maintained at enormous cost, the Rhône can only occasionally submerge the low-lying land, whereas anciently such floods were periodical and as surely expected as those of the Nile.
The overflowing Rhône formed a vast region of lagoons that extended from Tarascon and Beaucaire to the Gulf of Lyons, and spread laterally over the Crau on one side to Nîmes on the other. Nîmes itself stood on its own river, the Vistre, but this fed marshes and “broads” that were connected with the tangle of lagoons formed by the Rhône.
Arelate, the great emporium of the trade between Gaul and Italy, occupied a rocky islet in the midst of water that extended as far as the eye could reach. This tract of submerged land was some sixty miles in breadth by forty in depth, was sown with islets of more or less elevation and extent. Some were bold, rocky eminences, others were mere rubble and sand-banks formed by the river. Arelate or Arles was accessible by vessels up and down the river or by rafts that plied the lagoons, and by the canal constructed by Marius, that traversed them from Fossoe Marino. As the canal was not deep, and as the current of the river was strong, ships were often unable [pg 48]to ascend to the city through these arteries, and had to discharge their merchandise on the coast upon rafts that conveyed it to the great town, and when the floods permitted, carried much to Nemausus.
As the sheets of water were in places and at periods shallow, the rafts were made buoyant, though heavily laden, by means of inflated skins and bladders placed beneath them.
As the conveyance of merchandise engaged a prodigious number of persons, the raftsmen had organized themselves into the guild of Utriculares, or Wind-bag men, and as they became not infrequently involved in contests with those whose interests they crossed, and on whose privileges they infringed, they enlisted the aid of lawyers to act as their patrons, to bully their enemies, and to fight their battles against assailants. Among the numerous classic monumental inscriptions that remain in Provence, there are many in which a man of position is proud to have it recorded that he was an honorary member of the club of the inflated-skin men.
Nemausus owed much of its prosperity to the fact that it was the trade center for wool and for skins. The Cevennes and the great limestone plateaux that abut upon them nourished countless [pg 49]herds of goats and flocks of sheep, and the dress of everyone at the period being of wool the demand for fleeces was great; consequently vast quantities of wool were brought from the mountains of Nîmes, whence it was floated away on rafts sustained by the skins that came from the same quarter.
The archipelago that studded the fresh-water sea was inhabited by fishermen, and these engaged in the raft-carriage. The district presented a singular contrast of high culture and barbarism. In Arles, Nîmes, Narbonne there was a Greek element. There was here and there an infusion of Phœnician blood. The main body of the people consisted of the dusky Ligurians, who had almost entirely lost their language, and had adopted that of their Gaulish conquerors, the Volex. These latter were distinguished by their fair hair, their clear complexions, their stalwart frames. Another element in the composite mass was that of the colonists. After the battle of Actium, Augustus had rewarded his Egypto-Greek auxiliaries by planting them at Nemausus, and giving them half the estates of the Gaulish nobility. To these Greeks were added Roman merchants, round-headed, matter-of-fact looking men, destitute of imagination, but full of practical sense.
These incongruous elements that in the lapse of centuries have been fused, were, at the time of this tale, fairly distinct.