This cork-bark industry means a fortune to Les Maures and its rather scanty population. The discovery, or real development, of the industry was due to a lonesome shepherd, who, finding how soft and compressible the bark of the _chêne-liège_ really was, manufactured a few corks to pass the time while watching his flocks, taking them at the first opportunity to town, to see if he could find a market, which, needless to say, he did immediately. The account has something of a legendary flavour about it, but no doubt the discovery was made in just such a way. Cogolin has another industry which, in its way, is considerable,--the manufacture of briar pipes, though mostly it is the gathering of the briar-roots which makes the industry, the actual fashioning of the pipes themselves being carried on most extensively at St. Claude in the Jura, to which point many train-loads of the roots are sent each year. Just why the industry should be carried on so far from the source of supply of the raw material is one of the problems that economists are trying always to solve, but the traffic clings tenaciously to the customs of old. When Les Maures goes in for the manufacture of briar pipes on a large scale there will be a new and increased prosperity for the inhabitants; this in spite of the growing consumption of the deadly cigarette, which, in France, is made of something which looks amazingly like cabbage-stalk--and a poor quality at that. The contempt for French tobacco is of long duration. It is recalled that a certain minister under Charles X. was invited to smoke smuggled tobacco at a friend’s house, and was implored to use his influence to the substituting of the same grade of tobacco for the poisonous cabbage-leaf then grown in France. His reply was appreciative but non-committal, and so the thing has gone on to this day, and the French public smokes uncomplainingly a very ordinary tobacco. Three kilometres distant sits Grimaud, snug and serene on the terrace of a mountainside, overlooking Cogolin and the Golfe, and all its environment. The little town has all the characteristics of its neighbours, with perhaps a superabundance of shade-trees for a place which has not very ample streets and squares. At the apex of the ascending _ruelles_ is a cone which is surmounted by the pathetic ruins of the old château of the Grimaldi. Without grandeur and without life, this château is in strong contrast with the palace of the present members of the ancient house of Grimaldi, the Prince of Monaco and his family.