Curiously enough there seems to be a diversity of opinion as to the colour that a crown of immortelles shall take. Not all of them are sent out in the golden colour nature gave them. Some are dyed purple and others black, and then, indeed, all their beauty has departed. The natives think so, too, but dealers in funeral supplies in Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles--who have about the worst artistic sense of any class of Frenchmen who ever lived--have got the idea that their clients like variety, and that bright yellow is too gay for a symbol of mourning. Bandol sits in a great amphitheatre surrounded by wooded hillsides set out here and there with plantations of olive and mulberry trees and vines. Harvest loads of grapes and olives form the chief characteristics of the traffic by the highways and byways throughout Provence, but in no section are they more brilliant and gay with colour than along the coast from Marseilles to Hyères. Bandol is thought to have been one of those numerous nameless ports referred to by the Roman historians, but it is necessary to arrive at the end of the sixteenth century to find any mention of it by name. Nostradamus recounts that a certain Capitaine Boyer of Ollioules, who had rendered great service to the king during the troubles with the League, was given “_en fief et à paye-morte, à luy et à sa postérité, le fort de Bendort (Bandol), situé au bord de la mer_.” Later this same Boyer was appointed governor of the Château de la Garde at Marseilles, and received, in addition, certain valuable rights connected with the tunny fishing on the Provençal coasts, which enterprise ultimately placed him in a position of great affluence. The old château of Bandol, built on a bed of basalt, has the following pleasant _mot_ connected with it: “Le gouverneur de cette roche, Retournant un jour par le coche, A, depuis environ quinze ans, Emporté la clé dans sa poche.” Ten kilometres beyond Bandol is Ollioules, which is mentioned in the guide-books as being the gateway to the celebrated Gorges d’Ollioules, which, like most gorges and cañons, is of surprising spectacular beauty. This is a classic excursion for the residents of Toulon, who on Sunday flock to the site of this tortuous savage gorge, and breathe in some of those same delights which a mountaineer finds in a deep-cut cañon in the Rockies. There is nothing so very stupendous about this gorge, but it looks well in a photograph, and satisfies the Toulonais to their highest expectations, and altogether is a very satisfactory sort of a ravine, if one does not care for the beauties of the coast-line itself,--which is what most of us come to the Mediterranean for.