all the products of the
earth and the hands of man, and drawn by long tandem lines, three,
four, five, and even six horses to a single cart. Added to this, the
exits and entrances are all up and down hill, and, accordingly, the
roadways of suburban Marseilles are a terror to stranger
automobilists and an eternal regret to those who live near-by.

We went up the Rhone in a howling mistral, against it, mark you, for
it pleases the Ruler of the universe to have that cyclonic breeze of
the Rhone valley, one of the three plagues of Provence, blow always
from the north.

We left Martigues in an extraordinary and unusual fog, reminiscent of
London, except that it was not black and sooty. It was dense,
however; dense as if it were enshrouding the Grand Banks, and of the
same impenetrable, milky consistency. To be sure the morning sun had
not had an opportunity as yet to burn it off--automobilists on tour
are early birds, and the autumn sun rises late.

Up around the eastern shore of the Etang de Berre we went, and,
crossing the Tete Noire, passed Salon just as a pale yellow light
struggled through the rifts just topping the Maritime Alps off to the
eastward. We could not see the mountains, but we knew they were
there, for we still had lingering memories of a long pull we once
made off in that direction, with an old crock of an automobile of
primitive make in the early days of the sport, or the art, whichever
one chooses to call it, though it unquestionably was an art then to
keep an automobile going at all.

By the time Arles was reached the sun was burning with a midsummer
glare, as it does here for three hundred or more days in the year.

At Arles one is in the very cauldron of the atmosphere of things
Provencal, art, letters, history, and romance, all of which are kept
alive by the _Felibres_ and their fellows.

Mistral, the poet, is the master-singer of them all, and whether he
chants of his "Own glad Kingdom of Provence," at Maillane among the
olive-trees, far inland, or of:

"The peace which descends upon the troubled ocean
And he his wrath forgets,
Flock from Martigues the boats with wing-like motion,
And fishes fill their nets,"

it is all the same; the subtle, penetrating atmosphere and sentiment
of Provence is over all.

Arles is the head centre. It is a city of monumental and celebrated
art, and one may spend a day, a week, or a month, wandering in and
out and about its old Roman arena (still so