CHAPTER V

THE CITIES OF THE LAGOONS

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."

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.

On the outer beach break the waves of the Mediterranean; the inner is bathed by the smooth waters of the great chain of lagoons, blue, lonely, strangely bright and still.

This lake system in the early centuries was the scene of active navigation and commerce, and on its shores were brilliant cities. A canal or grau connected the lagoons with the sea, and these avenues in the prosperous days were kept carefully open so that the sea could enter and keep the water fresh and moving, and so perfectly wholesome.

Gradually, as one by one the great ports fell into decay, the canals were neglected and the lakes became stagnant, silting up and so developing into poisonous morasses, till the whole dismal regions in the Middle Ages became a place of death.

Let any traveller cross the Camargue on some calm afternoon in winter, leaving the wonderful dark walls and towers of Aigues Mortes behind him on the marshy plain, and he will probably be disinclined to admit that any important changes can have taken place since those unhappy days. Nevertheless vast improvements have been made, at any rate as regards hygienic conditions; and though still dangerous in the hot season, these swampy spaces cannot rival the old appalling death-roll which in certain times of the year would summon so many victims from the marsh-encircled towns that there were not sufficient hands left to bury them.

At Aigues Mortes the people used to say that the fever held its spring assizes, and there were out of 1,500 inhabitants never less than five or six deaths per day.

Aigues Mortes is but one of the Dead Cities of the coast; some of these are still existing in that sadly pensive way in which once active and famous centres survive their time of glory; while others are ruined or have altogether disappeared.

The series begins at Port Vendre (Portus Veneris), following the coast eastward past Narbonne, Aigues Mortes, Marseilles (the most famous of all, with its PhocÆan colonists) to Olba, whose site every traveller passes on his dusty way to the Riviera.

Many of these ancient cities are now inland, but formerly they were still on the shore; as, for instance, Rousillon (the ancient Roscino), Narbonne, and Illiberis. This last is so ancient that Pomponius Mela and Pliny are quoted as having referred to it as "once a great and glorious city." In their day it was reduced to a small village. Its name is thought to be Iberic or Basque, and signifies a new town (Illi beris).

One seems never able to get back far enough to arrive at the beginning of Illiberis, for the city that was already decayed in Pliny's time had a predecessor called Pyrene, named after the daughter of the king of the mysterious Ligurian race of Bebrykes. Pyrene had for a lover no less a person than Hercules, and she gave her name to the capital of the Bebryke Kingdom and to the great chain of mountains that dominate it.

These vast masses of the Pyrenees seem to be the only fixed thing in this region of deltas; this strange, lone land, which rises and flees in a mist before one's eyes, gathering now here, now there in restless dunes, encroaching on the sea at this point, falling back at that; always wandering and wild; shifting, drifting against the walls of ancient cities; stirring, shivering in forgotten corners, by forsaken ways and shrines; silting up round old wrecks or ruins of years ago, till an island or a mount is born out of the waste; giving way before the rush of some swollen current, as it breaks forth into a fresh channel with bright, victorious waves bearing new fortunes to whole regions along the coast.

Among the many races that have populated this shore, besides the great and far-reaching Ligurians and Iberians, there were the agricultural Volscians in the fifth century and the Sordares or Sordi, another traditional half-fabulous people who belonged chiefly to the country about Rousillon, the ancient Roscino.

The whole coast was haunted by the Phoenicians from the earliest times; and the Volscians held a large part of the region for centuries, cultivating the land in quiet bucolic fashion. Narbonne, Agatha (Agde), Brescon, Forum Dimitti (Frontigen), St. Gilles, Maguelonne, Aigues Mortes, were among these old cities or ruins, of which Narbonne alone is of much importance to-day.

When they were flourishing, the country was more or less covered with vegetation; and of a dream-like loveliness these twin-shores must have been with their fair cities dotting the green shores; towers and palaces repeating themselves in the stillness of the lagoons; gliding ships richly laden threading the waterways, passing and repassing; a fresh little wind coming in from the sea, and the vast blue of those waters stretching forth to the edge of the world!

The most ancient of the dead cities, those whose origin recedes far back before the Roman occupation, are generally a few miles inland, and mark the old line of the coast.

Narbonne, the famous capital of Gallia, was, like all the Celtic cities, sombre and severe in aspect, with mortarless walls of enormous blocks of stone. The people of Marseilles who traded with Narbonne "found no charm in these marshy solitudes beaten by all the winds in the midst of the indefinite and shallow lagoons, which rendered almost unapproachable the grey walled town whose sadness contrasted strikingly with the magnificence of the elegant Massilia."

Since then the Romans have occupied Narbonne, the Visigoths and Saracens have devastated it. This, the first Roman colony in Gaul, was civilised and Romanised by Fabius Maximus, a bold undertaking in the newly conquered country inhabited by wild Ligurians and Celts. But the Roman genius for government and colonisation produced its usual brilliant results. Theatres, amphitheatres, baths, temples and palaces sprang up in the Celtic city which the traders from Marseilles had thought so gloomy, and for many a long day Narbonne was the most important of flourishing ports in Gaul always excepting Marseilles the immortal.

At Narbonne have been found "monumental stones" with small caps carved upon them. When a Roman left in his will that certain of his slaves should be liberated, a cap was carved upon their tombs, and so it has become "the cap of liberty," the symbol of a freedom greater than the freest Roman ever dreamt of.

There were also found in the burial-places of children little rude clay toys representing pigs and horses.

More striking and unexpected than these discoveries, however, were those of several tombs said to have been found in the city with inscriptions proving that some Pagans at least believed in immortality, for the survivors speak of looking forward joyfully to reunion in another life with their lost ones.

The towns of Agde and Brescon, or Blascon, follow next in the chain of dead cities, both situated on volcanic islands at the mouth of the HÉrault. If the speculations of etymologists have brought them to a correct conclusion, the name of Blascon proves the Phoenicians to have known something of geology. For Blascon is thought to be derived from the Pnician root balangon, to devour with fire; so that these ubiquitous traders must have recognised volcanic soil when they saw it.

Agde (Agatha Tyche—Good Fortune—from the happy position of its port, nautically considered) was a Greek colony from Marseilles carrying with it the cult of Hellas. A temple to Diana of Ephesus was erected on the coast, this goddess being the tutelar deity of the mother city. A few columns of the temple are said still to remain.

Agde was called the Black Town by Marco Polo; and by many a luckless traveller in the Middle Ages, a Cavern of Thieves.

Across the whole of this district between the cities, great roads used to run; the Domitian Way being founded on a primitive Ligurian or Celtic road, and extending from Carthagena through Gallia Narbonensis as far as the Rhone.

The Aurelian Way was another of these routes running further westward, but as to its exact course, no profane outsider may dare to pronounce. It is a subject that destroys all peace in antiquarian circles.

It has been remarked[4] that all names on a certain line of route, ending at BÉziers in Languedoc, are Celtic, while all south of that route are Latin. Among the first we find Ugernum (Beaucaire), Nemausus (Nimes), Ambrossus (Ambrusian), Sostatio (Castelnau), Cessero (St. Thibery), RiterrÆ (BÉziers).[5] The second or Latin names comprise Franque Vaux (Francavallis), Aigues Mortes (AcquÆ MortuÆ), Saint Gilles (Fanum Sancti Ægidii), Vauvert (Vallis Viridis), Villeneuve (Villa Nova), Mirevaux (Mira Vallis), and so forth.

From their names, therefore, one may judge whether these towns were built before or after the Roman occupation, and thence whether the district was above water at that time, or at least whether it was possible for human habitation. It appears that this historical theory tallies precisely with the geology of the district, and that the whole country—even including the Alpilles, whose peaks formed islands at the beginning of our era—was covered with the sea. Mont Majour, near Arles—where is now a magnificent ruined castle characteristic of the country—the Montagnette de Tarascon, a curious little limestone height among whose recesses is perched a strange old monastery, and one or two other places, form the sole exceptions.

The old beach far inland can be traced easily by the line of sand-dunes often covered with Parasol Pines and white poplars. This line, therefore, marks the scene of some of the great changes and events of French history.

On the coast between sea and lagoon lies Maguelonne, a dead city indeed, but one of the most romantic spots in the South of France. Its fortress-church, gloomily shrouded by a grove of pines, stands on the lonely island, listening, one might fancy, to the incessant beat of the waters on the deserted shores—sole remnant of a great city.

Aigues Mortes with its wonderful walls untouched since they were built by Philip le Hardi; St. Gilles, in the Camargue (famous for its exquisite church), built perhaps on the site of the Greek city Heraclea, which had disappeared even in Philip's time; Arles, "the Gallic Rome," the residence of Roman Emperors and the capital of a later kingdom—these, too, belong to the astonishing list which might lengthen itself almost indefinitely.

Each town, moreover, is the scene of geological changes, of racial, social, and historical romance which would take a lifetime to learn and volumes to relate.

It is a strange, sad story—if truly the decadence of what we call prosperous cities and the desolation of brilliant sights be sad.

"Scarcely two thousand years," says LenthÉric, "have sufficed to convert these lagoons, formerly navigable, into sheets of pestilential water, to annihilate this immemorial vegetation, to transform into arid steppes this gracious archipelago of luxuriant wooded isles, and to outline this coast with a desolating dryness and an implacable monotony."

But at least it is peaceful: at least it is free from the fret and fume and tragedy of human life!