The Forêt de Sainte Baume is one of those unspoiled wildwoods scattered about France which do much to make travel by road interesting and varied. To be sure Sainte Baume is on the road to nowhere; but it makes a pleasant excursion to go by train from Marseilles to Auriol, and thence by carriage to St. Zacharie and Sainte Baume. It will prove one of the most delightful trips in a delightful itinerary, and furthermore has the advantage of not being overrun with tourists. St. Zacharie, like many other of the tiny hill towns of Provence, looks like a bit of transplanted Italy. The village is small, almost to minute proportions, but it has a pottery industry which is renowned for the beauty of its wares. There is also a church which was built in the tenth century, and moreover there is a most excellent hotel, the Lion d’Or. The surrounding hills are either thickly wooded or absolutely bare, and accordingly the scenic contrast is most remarkable, from the point of view of the lover of the unconventionally picturesque. [Illustration: _Convent Garden, St. Zacharie_] As for the Forêt de Sainte Baume itself, it is thickly grown with great oaks, poplars, aspens, lichen-grown beeches, sycamores, cypresses, pines, and all the characteristic undergrowth of a virgin forest, which this virtually is, for no forest tract in France has been less spoiled or better cared for. In addition nearly all the medicinal plants of the pharmacopœia are also found, and such exotics as mistletoe and orchids as would delight the heart of a botanist jaded with the commonplaces of a northern forest. At the entrance to the wood is the Hôtellerie de la Sainte Baume, served by monks and nuns, who will cater for visitors in a most satisfactory manner--the women on one side and men on the other--and give them veritable monastic fare, a little preserved fish, an omelette, rice, perhaps, cooked in olive-oil, and a full-bodied red or white wine _ad lib._, and all for a ridiculously small sum. The grotto of Sainte Baume, well within the forest, was, according to tradition, the resting-place for thirty-three years of Mary Magdalen, and accordingly it has become a place of pilgrimage for the faithful at Pentecost, la Fête Dieu, and the Fête de Ste. Madeleine (22d July). The grotto (from which the name comes, _baume_ being the Provençal for _baoumo_, meaning grotto) has a length of some twenty metres and a width of twenty-five with a height of perhaps six or seven. It is a damp, dark sort of a cave, with water always trickling from the roof, though a cistern on the floor never seems to run over. The falling drops make an uncanny sound, if one wanders about by himself, and he marvels at the fact that it has become a religious shrine so famous as to have been visited by Louis and Marguerite de Provence, Louise de Savoie, Claude de France, Marguerite, Duchesse d’Alençon, and a whole galaxy of royal personages, including Louis XIV., and Gaston d’Orleans.