Few Mediterranean harbours are savoury places. It will be remembered that "there shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea;" and accordingly, when the drainage of a town or a district is led into the harbours, there it stays. Marseilles enjoys a most unenviable notoriety in this respect. The horrible fluid beneath you becomes, in the summer time, despite its salt, absolutely putrid; and I was told that there had been instances in which it bred noisome and abhorrent insects and reptiles--that, literally and absolutely, "slimy things did crawl, with legs, upon the slimy sea." As for the stench, the richness of the steam of fat gases perpetually rising, must be smelt to be appreciated. The Marseillaise, however, have sturdy noses, which do not yield to trifles. They say the dirt preserves the ships, and besides, adds Dumas--a great favourer of the ancient colony of the Greeks--"what a fool a man must be, who, under such a glorious sky, turns his eyes down to gaze on mud and water!" The harbour of Cette is not quite so bad, but it has no particular transparency of water to recommend it. Brave its foulness, however, and go and visit the quays for the fishing-boats, as they are returning from their night's toil. Mark the Catalan craft--you will perhaps remember that the redoubted Monte Christo's first love was a Catalan girl, of a Catalan village near Marseilles:--did you ever see more exquisitely-formed boats afloat on the water? They swim apparently on the very surface--the curve of the gunwale rising to a gondola peak at stem and stern; but yet they are most buoyant sea-boats, and I suspect their speed, particularly in light winds, would put even that of the Yankee pilot-boats to a severe test. Look, too, at their cargoes, as the slippery masses are being shovelled up in glancing, gleaming spadefuls, to the quays. Did you ever see such odd fish? Respectable haddocks, decent and well-to-do cods, and unpretending soles, would never be seen in such strange, eccentric company--among fellows with heads bigger than bodies, and eyes in their backs, and tails absurdly misplaced, and feelers or legs where no fish with well-regulated minds would dream of having such appendages--never was there seen such a strange _omnium gatherum_ of piscatory eccentricities as the fishes of the Mediterranean.