Only on this square and on the quays are there any of the modern attributes of twentieth-century life; the narrow but cleanly streets away from the waterside are as calm and somnolent as they were before the advent of electricity and automobiles; indeed, an automobile would have a hard time of it in some of these narrow _ruelles_. The near-by panorama seen from the quays, or the end of the stone pier-head, is superb. The whole contour of the Golfe is a marvel of graceful curves, backed up with sloping, well-wooded hills and, still farther away, by the massive black of the Maures, the hill of St. Raphaël, and the red and brown tints of the Estérel, while still more distant to the northward, hanging in a soft film of vapour, are the peaks of the snowy Alps. By following the old side streets, crowded with overhanging porches and projecting buttresses, with here and there a garden wall half-hiding broad-leafed fig-trees and palms, one reaches the Promenade des Lices, a remarkably well-placed and appointed promenade, shaded with great plane-trees, in strong contrast to the occasional pines and laurels. St. Tropez’s history is ancient enough to please the most blasé delver in the things of antiquity. It may have been the Gallo-Grec Athenopolis, or it may have been the Phœnician Heraclea Caccabaria; but, at all events, its present growth came from a foundation which followed close upon the death of the martyr St. Tropez in the second century. St. Tropez, in the days when sailing-ships had the seas to themselves, was possessed of a traffic and a commerce which, with the advent of the building of great steamships, lapsed into inconsequential proportions. The yards where the wooden ships were built and fitted out are deserted, and a part of the population has gone back to the land or taken to fishing; others--the young men--becoming _garçons de café_ or _valets de chambre_ in the great tourist hotels of the coast; or, rather, they did look upon these occupations as a bright and rosy future, until the coming of the automobile, since when the peasant youth of France aspires to be a chauffeur or _mécanicien_. A new industry has recently sprung up at St. Tropez, the manufacture of electric cables, but it has not the picturesqueness, nor has it as yet reached anything like the proportions, of the old hempen cordage industry. [Illustration: _Ruined Chapel near St. Tropez_]