Directly in front of La Ciotat, at the foot of the Côte de Saint Cyr, on the eastern shore of the bay, was an old Greek colony known to geographers as Tauroentum. Rich and powerful in its own right, Tauroentum rivalled its neighbour Marseilles, but the fleets of Pompey and Cæsar had one of those old-time sea-fights off its quays, and the city, having suffered greatly at the time, never recovered its prosperity, and the more opulent and powerful Marseilles became the metropolis for all time. The monumental remains to be observed to-day are mostly covered with the sands of time, and only the antiquarian and archæologist will get pleasure or satisfaction from any fragmentary evidences which may be unearthed. The subject is a vast and most interesting one, no doubt, but the enthusiast in such matters is referred to Lentheric’s great work on “La Provence Maritime.” La Ciotat, with its workmen’s houses and its shipyard, will not detain one long. One will be more interested in making his way eastward along the coast, when every kilometre will open up new splendours of landscape. Opposite La Ciotat is the hamlet of Les Lèques, well sheltered in the bay of the same name. Lamartine, _en route_ for the Orient, compared it with enthusiasm to the Bay of Naples, a simile which has been used with regard to many another similar spot, but hardly with as much of appropriateness as here. Said Lamartine: “_C’est un de ces nombreux chefs-d’œuvre que Dieu a répandus partout_.” From Les Lèques it is but a step to Bandol, a place not mentioned in the note-books of many travellers, though to the French it is already recognized as a “_station hivernale et de bains de mer_.” This is a pity, for it will soon go the way of the other resorts. Bandol is a small town of the Var, possessed of a remarkably beautiful and sheltered site, and, since it numbers but a trifle over two thousand souls, and has no palace hotels as yet, it may well be accounted as one of the places on the beaten track of Riviera travel which has not yet become wholly spoiled. Bandol’s principal business is the growing of immortelles and artichokes, with enough of the fishing industry to give a liveliness and picturesqueness to the wharves of the little port. It is a wonderfully warm corner of the littoral, here in the immediate environs of Bandol, and palms, banana-trees, the eucalyptus, and many other subtropical shrubs and plants thrive exceedingly. There is nothing of the rigour of winter to blight this warm little corner; only the mistral--which is everywhere (Monaco perhaps excepted)--or its equally wicked brother, _le vent d’est_, ever makes disagreeable a visit to this warm-welcoming little coast town. A clock-tower, or belfry, an old château,--the construction of Vauban,--and a jetty, which throws out its long tentacle-like arm to sea, make up the chief architectural monuments of the town.