Truly, Porquerolles is unspoiled as yet, and the marvel is that it has not become an “artist’s sketching-ground” before now. It has many claims in this respect besides its natural beauties and attractions, one, not unappreciated by artists, being that it is not likely to be overrun by tourists. The reason for this is that the _Courrier des Iles d’Hyères_, as the diminutive steamer which arrives three times a week is called, is subsidized by the ministry for war, and the captain has the right to refuse passage to civilians when his craft is overloaded with travelling soldiers and sailors, whom the French government, presumably from motives of economy, prefers to move in this way from point to point among the various forts along the coast. [Illustration: _The Peninsula of Giens_] Four or five other islets make up the group which geographers and map-makers know as the Iles d’Hyères, but which the sentimental Provençaux best like to think of as the Iles d’Or; but their characteristics are quite the same as Porquerolles. There is here a picturesque fort called Alicastre, derived from Castrum Ali, a souvenir, it is said, of a Saracen chief who once entrenched himself here. Local report has it that the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned here at one time, but the nearest that history comes to this is to place his imprisonment at Ste. Marguerite and the Château d’If. From the sea, as one comes by boat from Toulon, the Presqu’ile de Giens looks as though it were an island and had no connection with the land, for the neck connecting it with the mainland is invisible, both from the eastward and the westward, while the rocks of the tip end of the peninsula are abruptly imposing as they rise from the sea-level to a moderate but jagged height. As one approaches closer he notes the capricious scallops of the shore-line of this bizarre but beautiful jutting point, and congratulates himself that he did not make his way overland. A little village is in the extreme south, its whitewashed houses shepherded by a little church and the ruins of an old fortress-château. The town is as nothing, but the view is most soothing and tranquil in its impressive beauty and quiet charm. Nothing is violent or exaggerated, but the components of many ideal pictures are to be had for the turning of the head. Giens is another “artist’s sketching-ground” which has been wofully neglected. The eastern shore is less savage and there are some attempts at agriculture, but on the whole Giens and its peninsula are but a distant echo of anything seen elsewhere. The quadrilateral walls of the old château, a semaphore, and a coast-guard station form, collectively, a beacon by sea and by land, and, as one makes his way to the mainland along the narrow causeway, he is reminded of that sandy ligature which binds Mont St. Michel with Pontorson, on the boundary of Brittany and Normandy.