The village of Tourves has an obelisk by the fine ruined Château de Valbelle, on a ridge to the left. On the steep hillsides one sees miles of terraces, where vineyards have been patiently extracted from the formerly arid slopes. Brignoles is a small town, with a long, narrow street, and the hotel is often a convenient resting-place for _déjeuner_. The dried plums of Brignoles have long been famous. They were eaten by the Duc de Guise, it will be remembered, just before his assassination (p. 98). A twelfth-century house, with windows divided by columns, and the Sous-Préfecture, which was formerly the winter palace of the Counts of Provence, sacked by Charles V., are the only antiquities of the town. Flassans is a comparatively new village on the road, with an abandoned one, now roofless and with broken walls, on the hill to the left. A conspicuous wooden cross and a little chapel by the ruined houses seem to suggest that something had to be done to keep restless spirits under proper control. Le Luc has a narrow, shady street, with large plane-trees by a fountain, where there are often picturesque groups fetching water. The Maure Mountains lie to the south, covered with pine, or showing crags of grey and orange rock. The coast-road from Fréjus to Hyères, round the bays of these mountains, is an exquisitely beautiful one, and those who have time should include this in their tour when staying at St. Raphaël or Valescure. Passing through Le Muy in a serpentine fashion, with a very sharp and narrow turning, the road comes out into the flat alluvial plain of the River Argens, with the pine-clad Estérels on the left as one runs into FRÉJUS This is a place of vanished glories, having the atmosphere of ancient importance inseparable from ports abandoned by the sea, which was their life-blood. Fréjus was the last harbour on the great Roman road from Rome to Provence--_the Via Aurelia_--which at this point turned inland to Aix. Its importance was therefore seen by Julius Cæsar, who built the town called after him _Forum Julii_, and now contracted into Fréjus. By the remains to be seen to-day the work appears to have been done hurriedly, for strength rather than beauty, but the interest of the place is scarcely diminished in the knowledge of this probability.