The Crau was never known as a political division, but its topographical aspect was commented on by geographers like Strabon, who also remarked that it was strewn with a scant herbage which grew up between its pebbles hardly sufficient to nourish a _taureau_. Things have not changed much in all these long years, but there is, as a matter of fact, nourishment for thousands of sheep and cattle. St. Césaire, Bishop of Arles, also left a written record of pastures which he owned in the midst of a _campo lapidio_ (presumably the Crau), and again, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, numerous old charters make mention of _Posena in Cravo_. All this points to the fact that the topographical aspect of this barren, pebbly land--which may or may not be some day reclaimed--has ever been what it is to-day. Approximately twenty-five thousand hectares of this pasturage nourish some fifty thousand sheep in the winter months. In the summer these flocks of sheep migrate to Alpine pasturage, making the journey by highroad and nibbling their nourishment where they find it. It seems a remarkable trip to which to subject the docile creatures,--some five hundred kilometres out and back. They go in flocks of two or three hundred, being guarded by a couple of shepherds called “_bayles_,” whose effects are piled in saddle-bags on donkey-back, quite in the same way that the peasants of Albania travel. The shepherds of the Crau are a very good imitation of the Bedouin of the desert in their habits and their picturesque costume. Always with the flock are found a pair of those discerning but nondescript dogs known as “sheep-dogs.” The doubt is cast upon the legitimacy of their pedigree from the fact that, out of some hundreds met with by the author on the highroads of Europe, no two seemed to be of the same breed. Almost any old dog with shaggy hair seemingly answered the purpose well. The custom of sending the sheep to the mountains of Dauphiné for the summer months still goes on, but as often as not they are to-day sent by train instead of by road. The ancient practice is apparently another reminiscence of the wandering flocks and herds of the Orient. If it is ever reclaimed, the Crau will lose something in picturesqueness of aspect, and of manners and customs; but it will undoubtedly prove to the increased prosperity of the neighbourhood. The thing has been well thought out, though whether it ever comes to maturity or not is a question. It was Lord Brougham--“_le fervent étudiant de la Provence_,” the French call him--who said: “Herodotus called Egypt a gift of the Nile to posterity, but the Durance can make of _la Crau une petite Egypte aux portes de Marseilles_.” From this one gathers that the region has only to be plentifully watered to become a luxuriant and productive river-bottom. CHAPTER V. MARTIGUES: THE PROVENÇAL VENICE