Condrieu is a dead little town now. As a seat of thieving industry its importance disappeared centuries ago; and its importance as a boating town--whence were recruited a large proportion of the Rhone boatmen--vanished in the dawn of the age of steam. They were good fellows, those Condrieu boatmen, renowned for their bravery and their honesty throughout the river's length. Because of their leather-seated breeches they were nicknamed "Leather-tails"; but their more sailor-like distinction was their tattooing: on the fore-arm a flaming heart pierced with an arrow, symbol of their fidelity and love; on the breast a cross and anchor, symbols of their faith and craft. From Roman times downward until railways came, the heavy freighting of central France has been done by boat upon the Rhone--in precisely the same fashion that flat-boat freighting was carried on upon the Mississippi and its tributaries--and three or four of the river towns were peopled mainly by members of the boating guilds. Trinquetaille, the western suburb of Arles, still shows signs of the nautical tastes of its inhabitants in the queer sailor-like exterior and interior adornments of its houses: most noticeable of which is the setting up on a house-top of a good-sized boat full-rigged with mast and sails. The survivors of the boating period nowadays are few. Five years ago I used to see whenever I crossed to Trinquetaille a little group of old boatmen sitting at the end of the bridge on a long bench that was their especial property. They moved stiffly and slowly; their white heads were bowed breastward; their voices were cracked with age. Yet they seemed to be cheery together, as they basked in the hot sunshine--that warmed only comfortably their lean old bodies--and talked of ancient victories over sand-bars and rapids: and the while looked southward over the broad Rhone water toward the sea. No doubt they held in scorn their few successors--one where of old were a hundred--who navigate the Rhone of to-day, clipped of its perils by dykes and beacons, in boats driven by steam.