In spite of the expectations of a former generation of landlords and landowners, St. Raphaël, progressive as it has been, has never grown up on the lines upon which it was planned. The grand boulevards and avenues came as a matter of course, and the great hotels, and, ultimately, the inevitable casino and its attendant attractions; but, nevertheless, St. Raphaël has remained a _ville des villas_, and the population has mostly gone to the suburban hillsides, especially around Valesclure, where new houses are springing up like mushrooms, all built of that white sandstone which flashes so brilliantly in the sunlight against the background of the green-clad, reddish-brown Estérel. The Estérel is a coast range of mountains as different from Les Maures, their neighbour to the westward, as could possibly be, in colour, in outline, and in climatic influences, and these to no little extent have a decided effect on the manners and customs of the people who live in the neighbourhood. The contrast between the mountains of Les Maures and the Estérel is most marked. The former are more sober and less accentuated than the latter range, and there is more of the culture of the olive to be noted in the valleys, and of the oak on the hillsides. In the Estérel all is brilliant, with a colouring that is more nearly a deep rosy red than that of any other rock formation to be seen in France. Coupled with the blue of the Mediterranean, the reddish rocks, the green hillsides, and the delicate skies make as fantastic a colour-scheme as was ever conceived by the artist’s brush. The Route d’Italie passes to the north of the Estérel crest, and is one of those remarkable series of roadways which cross and recross France, and may be considered the direct descendants of the military roads laid out by the Romans, and developed and perfected by Napoleon. To-day a generously endowed department of the French government tenderly cares for them, with the result that the roads of France have become one of the most precious possessions of the nation. Until very recent times the great mountain and forest tract of the Estérel had remained unknown and untravelled, save so far as the railway followed along the coast, and the great Route d’Italie bounded it on the north, or at least bounded the mountain slopes. All this has recently been changed, and, where once were only narrow foot-paths and roads, made use of by the shepherds and peasants, there are a broad and elegant highway flanking the indentations of the coast-line, and many interior routes crossing and recrossing one of the most lovely and unspoiled wildwoods still to be seen in France. There are other parts much more wild, the Cevennes or the Vivarais, for instance; but they have not a tithe of the grandeur and beauty of the red porphyry rocks of the Estérel combined with the blue waters of the Mediterranean and the forest-covered flanks of its mountain range.