Around Martigues, in the spring-time, all is verdant and full of colour, and the air is laden with the odours of aromatic buds and blossoms. At this time, when the sun has not yet dried out and yellowed the hillsides, the spectacle of the background panorama is most ravishing. Almond, peach, and apricot trees, all covered with a rosy snow of blossoms, are everywhere, and their like is not to be seen elsewhere, for in addition there is here a contrasting frame of greenish-gray olive-trees and punctuating accents of red and yellow wild flowers that is reminiscent of California. Surrounding the “Petite Mer de Berre” are a half-dozen of unspoiled little towns and villages which are most telling in their beauty and charms: St. Mitre, crowning a hill with a picturesquely roofed Capucin convent for a near neighbour, and with some very substantial remains of its old Saracen walls and gates, is the very ideal of a mediæval hill town; Istres, with its tree-grown chapel, its fortress-like church and its “classic landscape,” is as unlike anything that one sees elsewhere in France as could be imagined; while Miramas, St. Chamas, and Berre, on the north shores of the Étang, though their names even are not known to most travellers, are delightful old towns where it is still possible to live a life unspoiled by twentieth-century inventions and influences. If the mistral is not blowing, one may make the passage across the Étang, from Martigues to Berre, in one of the local craft known as a “_bête_,” a name which sounds significant, but which really means nothing. If the north wind is blowing, the journey should be made by train, around the Étang via Marignane. The latter route is cheaper, and one may be saved an uncomfortable, not to say dangerous, experience. One great and distinct feature of the countryside within a short radius of Marseilles, within which charmed circle lie Martigues and all the surrounding towns of the Étang de Berre, are the _cabanons_, the modest villas (_sic_) of these parts, seen wherever there is an outlook upon the sea or a valleyed vista. They cling perilously to the hillsides, wherever enough level ground can be found to plant their foundations, and their gaudy colouring is an ever present feature in the landscape of hill and vale. The _cabanon_ is really the _maison de campagne_ of the _petit bourgeois_ of the cities and towns. It is like nothing ever seen before, though in the Var, east of Marseilles, the “_bastide_” is somewhat similar. In its proportions it resembles the log cabin of the Canadian backwoods more than it does the East Indian bungalow, though it is hardly more comfortable or roomy than the wigwam of the red man. Indeed, how could it be, when it consists of but four walls, forming a rectangle of perhaps a dozen feet square, and a roof of red tiles?