Solliès-Pont owes its name to the _pont_, or bridge, by which the “Route Nationale” crosses the Gapeau. It is the centre of the cherry culture in the Var, and at the time of year when the trees are in blossom, the aspect of the surrounding hillsides would put cherry-blossoming Japan to shame. The crop is the first which comes into the market in France. The lovers of early fruits, in Paris restaurants and hotels, know the “_cerises du Var_” very well indeed. They buy them at the highest market prices, delightfully put up in boxes of poplar-wood and garnished with lace-paper. Annually Solliès-Pont despatches something like a hundred thousand cases of these first cherries of the year, each weighing from three to twelve kilos, and bringing--well, anything they can command, the very first perhaps as much as eight or ten francs a kilo. This for the first few straggling boxes which some fortunate grower has been able to pick off a well-sunned tree. Within a fortnight the price will have fallen to fifty centimes, and at the end of a month the traffic is all over, so far as the export to outside markets is concerned. “Cherries are grown everywhere,” one says. Yes, but not such cherries as at Solliès-Pont. Here at this little railway station in the Var one may see a whole train loaded with a hundred thousand kilos of the most luscious cherries one ever cast eyes upon. The aspect of the region round about has nothing of the grayness of the olive orchards east and west; all this has given way to a flowering radiance and a brilliant green, as of an oasis in a desert. The gathering of this important crop is conducted with more care than that of any other of the Riviera. The trees are not shaken and their fruit picked up off the ground, nor do agile lads climb in and out among the branches. Not even a ladder is thrust between the thick leaves of the trees, but a great straddling stepladder, like those used by the olive pickers of the Bouches-du-Rhône, is carried about from tree to tree, and gives a foothold to two, three, or even four lithe, young girls, whose graces are none the less for their gymnastics at reaching for the fruit head-high and at arm’s length. One marvels perhaps--when he sees these boxes of luscious cherries in the Paris market--as to how they may have been packed with such symmetry. It is very simple, though the writer had to see it done at Solliès-Pont before he realized it. The boxes are simply packed from the top downwards, so to speak. The first layer is packed in close rows, the stems all pointing upwards, then the rest of the contents are put in without plan or design, and the cover fastened down. When the packages are opened, it is the bottom that is lifted, and thus one sees first the rosy-red globules, all in rows, like the little wooden balls of the counting machines.