Pines and _boursailles_ and rocky hillocks, set out here and there with olive-trees, form the immediate foreground, while that distant horizon of blue, which is everywhere along the Mediterranean, forms a background which is softer and more sympathetic than that of any other known body of water, salt or fresh, great or small. At the base of the first foot-hills of the Estaque lies Marseilles, a city enormously alive with industry and all the cosmopolitan life of one of the most important--if not the greatest--of all world-ports. Here human industry has transformed a naturally beautiful and commodious situation into a mighty hive of affairs, where its long, straight streets only end at the water’s edge, and the basins and docks are simply great rectangular gulfs, seemingly endless in their immensity. Great towering chimney-stacks of brick punctuate the landscape here and there, and the masts of vessels and the funnels of steamships carry still further the idea of energetic restlessness. Offshore are the innumerable rocky islets, seemingly merely moored in the sea, around which skim myriads of sailing-vessels and steamers, quite in the ceaseless manner of cinematograph pictures, while an occasional black cloud of smoke indicates the presence of a great liner from the Far East, making port with its cargo of humanity and the silks and spices of the Orient. The view of the waterside and offshore Marseilles, with the harmonious Mediterranean blue blending into all, is transplendent in its loveliness. Nothing is green or gray, as it is at Bordeaux, or Nantes, or Le Havre; and none of the fog or smoke of the great cities of mid-France, of Paris, of Lyons, or of St. Étienne is here visible; instead all is brilliant--garishly brilliant, if you like, but still harmoniously so--in a blend that compels admiration. Marseilles is a great conglomerate city made up by the intermingling of the neighbouring villages, bourgs, and _petites villes_ until they have quite lost their own identity in the communion of the greater. Some day the Rhône will empty itself into the great _Bassins_ of the port of Marseilles; that is, if the moving of the traffic of the port to the Étang de Berre at Martigues and Berre does not take place, which is unlikely. When the _chalands_ and _péniches du nord_ can come from Le Havre, from Rouen, from Antwerp, and from Paris direct to the quays of Marseilles, by way of the canals and the Rhône, an additional prosperity will have come to this greatest of all Mediterranean ports. No more will it be a struggle with Genoa and Triest; and Marseilles will grow still grander and more lively and cosmopolitan.