One might think that no part of modern France was at all solitary and unknown; but one has only to recall Stevenson’s charming “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,” to realize that then there were regions which English readers and travellers knew not of, and the same is almost true to-day. Provence has been the fruitful field for antiquarians and students of languages, manners, customs, and political and church history, of all nationalities, for many long years; but the large numbers of travellers who annually visit the sunny promenades of Nice or Cannes never think for a moment of spending a winter at Martigues, the Provençal Venice, or at Nîmes, or Arles, or Avignon, where, if the “mistral” does blow occasionally, the surroundings are quite as brilliant as on the coast itself, the midday sun just as warm, and the sundown chill no more frigid than it is at either Cannes or Nice. Truly the whole Mediterranean coast, from Barcelona to Spezzia in Italy, together with the cities and towns immediately adjacent, forms a touring-ground more varied and interesting even than Touraine, often thought the touring-ground _par excellence_. The Provençal Riviera itinerary has, moreover, the advantage of being more accessible than Italy or Spain, the Holy Land or Egypt, and, until one has known its charms more or less intimately, he has a prospect in store which offers more of novelty and delightfulness than he has perhaps believed possible so near to the well-worn track of southern travel. CHAPTER II. THE PAYS D’ARLES The Pays d’Arles is one of those minor sub-divisions of undefined, or at least ill-defined, limits that are scattered all over France. Local feeling runs high in all of them, and the Arlesien professes a great contempt for the Martigaux or the inhabitant of the Pays de Cavaillon, even though their territories border on one another; though indeed all three join hands when it comes to standing up for their beloved Provence. There are sixty towns and villages in the Pays d’Arles, extending from Tarascon and Beaucaire to Les Saintes Maries, St. Mitre, and Fos-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean, and eastward to Lambesc, the _pays_ enveloping La Crau and the Étang de Berre within its imaginary borders. Avignon and Vaucluse are its neighbours on the north and northeast, and, taken all in all, it is as historic and romantic a region as may be found in all Europe. The literary guide-posts throughout Provence are numerous and prominent, though they cannot all be enumerated here. One may wander with Petrarch in and around Avignon and Vaucluse; he may coast along Dante’s highway of the sea from the Genoese seaport to Marseilles; he may tarry with Tartarin at Tarascon; or may follow in the footsteps of Edmond Dantes from Marseilles to Beaucaire and Bellegarde; and in any case he will only be in a more appreciative mood for the wonderful works of Mistral and his fellows of the Félibres.