A SEASCAPE: FROM THE RHÔNE TO MARSEILLES The Bouches-du-Rhône, like the delta of the Mississippi, is a great sprawling area of sandbars and currents of brackish water. For miles in any direction, as the eye turns, it is as if a bit of water-logged Holland had been transported to the Mediterranean, with sand-dunes and a scrubby growth of furze as the only recognizable characteristics. As a great and useful waterway, the Rhône falls conspicuously from the position which it might have occupied had nature given it a more regular and dependable flow of water. The canals from Beaucaire through the Camargue and from Arles to the Golfe de Fos are the only things that make possible water communication between the Mediterranean and the towns and cities of the mid-Rhône valley. [Illustration: _Bouches-du-Rhône to Marseilles_] The Golfe des Lions, or the Golfe de Lyon, as it is frequently called, is the great bay lying between the coast of the Narbonnaise and the headlands just to the eastward of Marseilles. It is a tempestuous body of water, when the north wind blows, and travellers by sea, in and out of Marseilles, have learned to dread it as if it were the Bay of Biscay itself. Just eastward of the mouths of the Rhône is a smaller indentation in the coast-line, the Golfe de Fos, known to mariners as being the best anchorage between Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône, and which has received a local name of “Anse du Repos” and “Mouillage d’Aigues douces.” Surrounding the Golfe de Fos, and indeed west of the Rhône, are numerous ponds and marshy bays, similar to the great inland sea of Berre. The Golfe de Fos is generally thought to be the ancient Mer Avatique, one of whose salty arms is known as “l’Estomac,” probably a corruption of an old Provençal expression, _lou stoma_, or perhaps because it is the site of a colony of the Marseillais known as Stoma Limne, which was established here a century before the beginning of the Christian era. Later the Senate of Rome designated Marius as governor of the region, and he came with his legions and established himself here at the mouth of the Rhône. He even attempted the then gigantic work of cutting a free waterway from Arles to the sea, and thus arose--on this spot, beyond a doubt, if circumstantial history counts for anything--the Port des Fossés Mariennes which for a long time has been so great a speculation to French historians.