It should be remembered that historical and geological evidence prove that the flat marshy country called the Carmargue was in Roman times a beautiful district of rivers, tree-grown islands, and extensive seaways. No doubt there were marshes at the mouth of the Rhone then, but that mouth was a long way north of the present outlet, and the area must have been comparatively small before some of the large inlets were silted up and became fever-breeding swamps. Everywhere one goes in the Carmargue, from Arles to Aigues-Mortes, St. Gilles or Les Saintes-Maries, the same tale is told of prosperous ports becoming land-locked and fever-stricken. To-day the flat treeless land is cultivated where the swamps have dried up, but it is a sad desert even under a cloudless sky. In the summer there is dust everywhere, and in the winter the ground has a tendency to become a morass. ARLES is entered from the west side through the old suburb of Trinquetaille, the business quarter of the Roman city, and the Rhone is then crossed on a semi-suspension bridge of lattice girders, on which, when the mistral blows, it is scarcely possible to keep one’s feet. It is on the east side of the river--the official and patrician quarter--that the thrilling relics of Greek and Roman Arles survive. In the importance of these ancient monuments Arles is a close rival to Nîmes, and in some ways Arles is pre-eminent. The origin of the name is generally considered [Illustration: TOWN PLAN NO. 22.--ARLES.] to be the Celtic ‘Ar-lath,’ meaning a wet place, and its position at the mouth of the Rhone, with the island which is now the corner of the Carmargue opposite, was so advantageous to traders that, long before the Romans conquered Provence, earlier even than the founding of Marseilles by the Greeks from Phocæa, there was a busy commercial town at Arles, well known to the Phœnician traders of the Mediterranean. When the Romans found it necessary to conquer Provence they found a Greek city at Arles, and the ruins of the beautiful theatre, built before the Roman occupation was a reality, impress on the mind the change which took place, for within a few paces of the theatre there stands the amphitheatre--the time-defying evidence of the power of Rome. The amphitheatres and most of the other Roman remains in Provence are due to the Imperial policy of ‘panem et circenses,’ and what the huge arenas really meant is vividly brought to mind by Mr. Theodore Cook.