To-day the whole topography of the romance, so far as it refers to Marseilles, is all spread out for the enthusiast in brilliant relief; all as if one were himself a participant in the joyousness of the home-coming of the good ship _Pharaon_. The old port from whose basin runs the far-famed Cannebière was the Lacydon of antiquity, and was during many centuries the glory and fortune of the town. To-day the old-time traffic has quite forsaken it, but it is none the less the most picturesque seaport on the Mediterranean. It is to-day, even as it was of yore, thronged with all the paraphernalia of ships and shipping of the old-school order. It is always lively and brilliant, with flags flung to the breeze and much cordage, and fishing-tackle, and what not belonging to the little sailing-craft which to-day have appropriated it for their own, leaving the great liners and their kind to go to the newer basins and docks to the westward. Virtually the Vieux Port is a museum of the old marine, for, except the great white-hulled, ocean-going yachts, which seem always to be at anchor there, scarce a steam-vessel of any sort is to be seen, save, once and again, a fussy little towboat. Most of the ships of the Vieux Port are those indescribably beautiful craft known as _navaires à voiles de la Mediterranée_, which in other words are simply great lateen-rigged, piratical-looking craft, which, regardless of the fact that they are evidently best suited for the seafaring of these parts, invariably give the stranger the idea that they are something of an exotic nature which has come down to us through the makers of school histories. They are as strange-looking to-day as would be the caravels of Columbus or the viking ships of the Northmen. All the Mediterranean types of sailing craft are found here, and their very nomenclature is picturesque--_bricks_, _goelettes_, _balancelles_, _tartanes_ and _barques de pêche_ of a variety too great for them all to have names. For the most part they all retain the slim, sharp prow, frequently ornamented with the conventional figurehead of the old days, a bust, or a three-quarters or full-length female figure, or perhaps a _guirlande dorée_.