Читать книгу Rambles on the Riviera - M. F. Mansfield - Страница 8

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WHEN the Rhône enters that département of modern France which bears the name Bouches-du-Rhône, it has already accomplished eight hundred and seventy kilometres of its torrential course, and there remain but eighty-five more before, through the many mouths of the Grand and Petit Rhône, it finally mingles the Alpine waters of its source with those of the Mediterranean.

Its flow is enormous when compared with the other inland waterways of France, and, though navigable only in a small way compared to the Seine, the traffic on it from the Mediterranean to Lyons, by great towed barges and canal-boats, and between Lyons and Avignon, in the summer months, by steamboat, is, after all, considerable. Queer-looking barges and towboats, great powerful craft that will tow anything that has got an end to it, as the river folk will tell you, and “bateaux longs,” make up the craft which one sees as the mighty river enters Provence.

The boatmen of the Rhône still call the right bank Riaume (Royaume) and the left Empi (Saint Empire), the names being a survival of the days when the kingdom of France controlled the traffic on one side, and the papal power, so safely ensconced for seventy years at Avignon, on the other.

The fall of the Rhône, which is the principal cause of its rapid current, averages something over six hundred millimetres to the kilometre until it reaches Avignon, when, for the rest of its course, considerably under a hundred kilometres, the fall is but twenty metres, something like sixty-five feet.

This state of affairs has given rise to a remarkable alluvial development, so that the plains of the Crau and the Camargue, and the lowlands of the estuary, appear like “made land” to all who have ever seen them. There is an appreciable growth of stunted trees and bushes and what not, but the barrenness of the Camargue has not sensibly changed in centuries, and it remains still not unlike a desert patch of Far-Western America.

Wiry grass, and another variety particularly suited to the raising and grazing of live stock, has kept the region from being one of absolute poverty; but, unless one is interested in raising little horses (who look as though they might be related to the broncos of the Western plains), or beef or mutton, he will have no excuse for ever coming to the Camargue to settle.

These little half-savage horses of the Camargue are thought to be the descendants of those brought from the Orient in ages past, and they probably are, for the Saracens were for long masters of the pays.

The difference between the Camargue and the Crau is that the former has an almost entire absence of those cairns of pebbles which make the Crau look like a pagan cemetery.

Like the horses, the cattle of the Camargue seem to be a distinct and indigenous variety, with long pointed horns, and generally white or cream coloured, like the oxen of the Allier. When the mistral blows, these cattle of the Camargue, instead of turning their backs upon it, face it, calmly chewing their cud. The herdsmen of the cattle have a laborious occupation, tracking and herding day and night, in much the same manner as the Gauchos of the Pampas and the cowboys of the Far West. They resemble the toreadors of Spain, too, and, in many of their feats, are quite as skilful and intrepid as are the Manuels and Pedros of the bull-ring.

As one approaches the sea the aspect of the Camargue changes; the hamlets become less and less frequent, and outside of these there are few signs of life except the guardians of cattle and sheep which one meets here, there, and everywhere.

The flat, monotonous marsh is only relieved by the delicate tints of the sky and clouds overhead, and the reflected rays of the setting sun, and the glitter of the waves of the sea itself.

Suddenly, as one reads in Mistral’s “Mirèio,” Chant X., “sur la mer lointaine et clapoteuse, comme un vaisseau qui cingle vers le rivage,” one sees a great church arising almost alone. It is the church of Les Saintes Maries.

Formerly the little town of Les Saintes Maries, or village rather, for there are but some six hundred souls within its confines to-day, was on an island quite separated from the mainland. Here, history tells, was an ancient temple to Diana, but no ruins are left to make it a place of pilgrimage for worshippers at pagan shrines; instead Christians flock here in great numbers, on the 24th of May and the 22d of October in each year, from all over Provence and Languedoc, as they have since Bible times, to pray at the shrine of the three Marys in the fortress-church of Les Saintes Maries: Mary, the sister of the Virgin Mary, the mother of the apostles James and John, and Mary Magdalen.

Les Saintes Maries

The village of Les Saintes, as it is commonly called, is a sad, dull town, with no trees, no gardens, no “Place,” no market, and no port; nothing but one long, straight and narrow street, with short culs-de-sac leading from it, and one of the grandest and most singular church edifices to be seen in all France. Like the cathedrals at Albi and Rodez, it looks as much like a fortress as it does a church, and here it has not even the embellishments of a later decorative period to set off the grimness of its walls.

As one approaches, the aspect of this bizarre edifice is indeed surprising, rising abruptly, though not to a very imposing height, from the flat, sandy, marshy plain at its feet. The foundation of the church here was due to the appearance of Christianity among the Gauls at a very early period; but, like the pagan temple of an earlier day, all vestiges of this first Christian monument have disappeared, destroyed, it is said, by the Saracens. A noble—whose name appears to have been forgotten—built a new church here in the tenth century, which took the form of a citadel as a protection against further piratical invasion. At the same time a few houses were built around the haunches of the fortress-church, for the inhabitants of this part of the Camargue were only too glad to avail themselves of the shelter and protection which it offered.

In a short time a petite ville had been created and was given the name of Notre Dame de la Barque, in honour of the arrival in Gaul at this point of “...les saintes femmes Marie Magdeleine, Marie Jacobé, Marie Salomé, Marthe et son frère Lazare, ainsi que de plusieurs disciples du Sauveur.” They were the same who had been set adrift in an open boat off the shores of Judea, and who, without sails, oars, or nourishment, in some miraculous manner, had drifted here. The tradition has been well guarded by the religious and civic authorities alike, the arms of the town bearing a representation of a shipwrecked craft supported by female figures and the legend “Navis in Pelago.”

On the occasion of the fête, on the 24th of May, there are to be witnessed many moving scenes among the pilgrims of all ages who have made the journey, many of them on foot, from all over Provence. Like the pardons of Brittany, the fête here has much the same significance and procedure. There is much processioning, and praying, and exhorting, and burning of incense and of candles, and afterward a défilé to the sands of the seashore, some two kilometres away, and a “bénédiction des troupeaux,” which means simply that the blessings that are so commonly bestowed upon humanity by the clergy are extended on these occasions to take in the animal kind of the Camargue plain, on whom so many of the peasants depend for their livelihood. It seems a wise and thoughtful thing to do, and smacks no more of superstition than many traditional customs.

After the religious ceremonies are over, the “fête profane” commences, and then there are many things done which might well enough be frowned down; bull-baiting, for instance. The entire spectacle is unique in these parts, and every whit as interesting as the most spectacular pardon of Finistère.

At the actual mouth of the Rhône is Port St. Louis, from which the economists expect great things in the development of mid-France, particularly of those cities which lie in the Rhône valley. The idea is not quite so chimerical as that advanced in regard to the possibility of moving all the great traffic of Marseilles to the Étang de Berre; but it will be some years before Port St. Louis is another Lorient or Le Havre.

In spite of this, Port St. Louis has grown from a population of eight hundred to that of a couple of thousands in a generation, which is an astonishing growth for a small town in France.

The aspect of the place is not inspiring. A signal-tower, a lighthouse, a Hôtel de Ville,—which looks as though it might be the court-house of some backwoods community in Missouri,—and the rather ordinary houses which shelter St. Louis’s two thousand souls, are about all the tangible features of the place which impress themselves upon one at first glance.

Besides this there is a very excellent little hotel, a veritable hôtel du pays, where you will get the fish of the Mediterranean as fresh as the hour they were caught; and the mouton de la Camargue, which is the most excellent mutton in all the world (when cooked by a Provençal maître); potatoes, of course, which most likely came in a trading Catalan bark from Algeria; and tomatoes and dates from the same place; to say nothing of melons—home-grown. It’s all very simple, but the marvel is that such a town in embryo as Port St. Louis really is can do it so well, and for this reason alone the visitor will, in most cases, think the journey from Arles worth making, particularly if he does it en auto, for the fifty odd kilometres are like a sanded, hardwood floor or a cinder path, and the landscape, though flat, is by no means deadly dull. Furthermore there is no one to say him nay if the driver chooses to make the journey en pleine vitesse.

Bordering upon the Camargue, just the other side of the Rhône, is another similar tract: the Crau, a great, pebbly plain, supposed to have come into being many centuries before the beginning of our era. The hypotheses as to its formation are numerous, the chief being that it was the work of that mythological Hercules who cut the Strait of Gibraltar between the Mounts Calpe and Abyle (this, be it noted, is the French version of the legend). Not content with this wonder, he turned the Durance from its bed, as it flowed down from the Alps of Savoie, and a shower of stones fell from the sky and covered the land for miles around, turning it into a barren waste. For some centuries the tract preserved the name of “Champs Herculéen.” The reclaiming of the tract will be a task of a magnitude not far below that which brought it into being.

At all events no part of Gaul has as little changed its topography since ages past, and the strange aspect of the Crau is the marvel of all who see it. The pebbles are of all sizes larger than a grain of sand, and occasionally one has been found as big as one’s head. When such a treasure is discovered, it is put up in some conspicuous place for the native and the stranger to marvel at.

Many other conjectures have been made as to the origin of this strange land. Aristotle thought that an earthquake had pulverized a mountain; Posidonius, that it was the bottom of a dried-out lake; and Strabon that the pebbly surface was due to large particles of rock having been rolled about and smoothed by the winds; but none have the elements of legend so well defined as that which attributes it as the work of Hercules.

The Crau, like the Camargue, is a district quite indescribable. All around is a lone, strange land, the only living things being the flocks of sheep and the herds of great, long-horned cattle which are raised for local consumption and for the bull-ring at Arles.

It is indeed a weird and strange country, as level as the proverbial billiard-table, and its few inhabitants are of that sturdy weather-beaten race that knows not fear of man or beast. There is an old saying that the native of the Crau and the Camargue must learn to fly instead of fight, for there is nothing for him to put his back against.

Far to the northward and eastward is a chain of mountains, the foot-hills of the mighty Alps, while on the horizon to the south there is a vista of a patch of blue sea which somewhere or other, not many leagues away, borders upon fragrant gardens and flourishing seaports; but in these pebbly, sandy plains all is level and monotonous, with only an occasional oasis of trees and houses.

The Crau was never known as a political division, but its topographical aspect was commented on by geographers like Strabon, who also remarked that it was strewn with a scant herbage which grew up between its pebbles hardly sufficient to nourish a taureau. Things have not changed much in all these long years, but there is, as a matter of fact, nourishment for thousands of sheep and cattle. St. Césaire, Bishop of Arles, also left a written record of pastures which he owned in the midst of a campo lapidio (presumably the Crau), and again, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, numerous old charters make mention of Posena in Cravo. All this points to the fact that the topographical aspect of this barren, pebbly land—which may or may not be some day reclaimed—has ever been what it is to-day. Approximately twenty-five thousand hectares of this pasturage nourish some fifty thousand sheep in the winter months. In the summer these flocks of sheep migrate to Alpine pasturage, making the journey by highroad and nibbling their nourishment where they find it. It seems a remarkable trip to which to subject the docile creatures,—some five hundred kilometres out and back. They go in flocks of two or three hundred, being guarded by a couple of shepherds called “bayles,” whose effects are piled in saddle-bags on donkey-back, quite in the same way that the peasants of Albania travel. The shepherds of the Crau are a very good imitation of the Bedouin of the desert in their habits and their picturesque costume. Always with the flock are found a pair of those discerning but nondescript dogs known as “sheep-dogs.” The doubt is cast upon the legitimacy of their pedigree from the fact that, out of some hundreds met with by the author on the highroads of Europe, no two seemed to be of the same breed. Almost any old dog with shaggy hair seemingly answered the purpose well.

The custom of sending the sheep to the mountains of Dauphiné for the summer months still goes on, but as often as not they are to-day sent by train instead of by road. The ancient practice is apparently another reminiscence of the wandering flocks and herds of the Orient.

If it is ever reclaimed, the Crau will lose something in picturesqueness of aspect, and of manners and customs; but it will undoubtedly prove to the increased prosperity of the neighbourhood. The thing has been well thought out, though whether it ever comes to maturity or not is a question.

It was Lord Brougham—“le fervent étudiant de la Provence,” the French call him—who said: “Herodotus called Egypt a gift of the Nile to posterity, but the Durance can make of la Crau une petite Egypte aux portes de Marseilles.” From this one gathers that the region has only to be plentifully watered to become a luxuriant and productive river-bottom.