We shall now return to Cannes and follow the route eastwards along the coast of the Mediterranean. This takes us first by the fine sheltered roadstead of Golfe Jouan to the city of ANTIBES, which stands upon a rocky peninsula jutting out into the sea, and enclosing a sheltered bay and harbour, defended on the opposite point by a great star-shaped fortification called the Fort Carré, erected by Vauban. The town itself is surrounded with walls, and strongly fortified in the style of the seventeenth century, of which it is a good and little altered specimen. The views of the town from the sea coast are charming (Fig. 206). Surrounded on the land side with its great stone ravelins and bastions, and protected on the south by its rocky seaboard, with the snowy peaks of the Maritime Alps forming a background, and the bright blue of the Mediterranean in the foreground, a finer picture can hardly be imagined. The town of Antibes is of very ancient origin. According to M. Lenthéric, a sacred stone of the Phœnicians has here been found, with a Greek inscription, giving proof of the ancient worship of the Hellenes having been observed in this locality in the fifth century B.C. This town was also an important station under the Romans. In very early Christian times it became the see of a bishop, [Illustration: FIG. 206. ANTIBES (_from W._)] but being greatly exposed to the attacks of the Saracen Corsairs, from whom it suffered severely, the see was in 1243 removed for security to Grasse. There were originally four bishoprics in this part of the Riviera, viz.:--Nice, Antibes (afterwards Grasse), Vence, and Fréjus. The whole are now comprised in the two dioceses of Nice and Fréjus.