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THIS book makes no pretence at being a work of historical or archÆological importance; nor yet is it a conventional book of travel or a glorified guide-book. It is merely a record of things seen and heard, with some personal observations on the picturesque, romantic, and topographical aspects of one of the most varied and beautiful touring-grounds in all the world, and is the result of many pleasant wanderings of the author and artist, chiefly by highway and byway, in and out of the beaten track, in preference to travel by rail.

The French Riviera proper is that region bordering upon the Mediterranean west of the Italian frontier and east of Toulon. Nowadays, however, many a traveller adds to the delights of a Mediterranean winter by breaking his journey at one or all of those cities of celebrated art, NÎmes, Arles, and Avignon; or, if he does not, he most assuredly should do so, and know something of the glories of the past civilization of the region which has a far more Æsthetic reason for being than the florid Casino of Monte Carlo or the latest palatial hotel along the coast.

For this reason, and because the main gateway from the north leads directly past their doors, that wonderful group of ProvenÇal cities and towns, beginning with Arles and ending with Aix-en-Provence, have been included in this book, although they are in no sense “resorts,” and are not even popular “tourist points,” except with the French themselves.

Particularly are the byways of Old Provence unknown to the average English and American traveller; the wonderful Pays d’Arles, with St. RÉmy and Les Baux; the Crau; that fascinating region around the Étang de Berre; the coast between Marseilles and Toulon (and even Marseilles itself); the Estaque; Les Maures; and the EstÉrel; and yet none of them are far from the beaten track of Riviera travel.

Of the region of forests and mountains that forms the background of the Riviera resorts themselves almost the same thing can be said. The railway and the automobile have made it all very accessible, but ninety per cent., doubtless, of the travellers who annually hie themselves in increasing numbers to Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, and Menton know nothing of that wonderful mountain country lying but a few miles back from the sea.

The town-tired traveller, for pleasure or edification, could not do better than devote a part of the time that he usually gives to the resorts of convention to the exploring of any one of a half-dozen of these delightful petits pays: Avignon and Vaucluse, with memories of Petrarch and his Laura; the pebbly Crau, south of Arles; and the fringe of delightful little towns surrounding the Étang de Berre.

Any or all of these will furnish the genuine traveller with emotions and sensations far more pleasurable than those to be had at the most blasÉ resort that ever opened a golf-links or set up a roulette-wheel, which, to many, are the chief attractions (and memories) of that strip of Mediterranean coast-line known as the Riviera.

The scheme of this book had long been thought out, and much material collected at odd visits, but at last it could be delayed no longer, and the whole was threaded together by hundreds of miles of travel, en automobile, through the highways and byways of the region.

The pictures were made “on the spot,” and, as living, tangible records of things seen, have, perhaps, a quality of appealing interest that is not possessed by the average illustration.

The result is here presented for the value it may have for the traveller or the stay-at-home, it being always understood that no great thing was attempted and little or nothing presented that another might not see or learn for himself.

The reason for being, then, of this book is that it does give a little different view-point of the attractions of Maritime Provence and the Mediterranean Riviera from that to be hitherto gleaned in any single volume on the subject, and as such it is to be hoped that it serves its purpose sufficiently well to merit consideration.

F. M.

ChÂteauneuf-les-Martigues, January, 1906.