Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/128

98 The forms of the mountains are rounded, and there are no bold crags; but it is scooped out into valleys that descend rapidly to the sea and to little bays; and these scoopings afford shelter from winter winds and cold, facing the sun, and walled in from every blast. I know a farm kitchen where a pair of curved settees are drawn about the fire, and the gap between the settees is closed in the evening by a green baize curtain. The family sits on a winter night in this cosy enclosure, the men with their pipes and jugs of cider, the women knitting and sewing; all chattering, singing, laughing. Now the southern face of the Maures is precisely such a snuggery formed by Nature. The mountains curve about to focus the sun's rays; and the cork woods, evergreen, kill all glare. Here the date trees ripen their fruit; here the icy blasts do not shrivel up the eucalyptus, and smite down the oranges. The pity is, there are as yet no well-established winter resorts at Lavandou, Cavalière, and, above all, Cavalaire—places more adapted to delicate lungs than Hyères, exposed to the currents of wind over the Crau; than that blow-hole S. Raphael, planted between the cheeks of the Maures and l'Estérel; than Cannes, where the winds come down from the snows over the plains of the Siagne; than Nice, with the Paillon on one side and the Var on the other. But for the English visitor in these suntraps three things are lacking—a lawn-tennis ground, a lending library, and an English chapel. Inevitably the Bay of Cavalaire will, in the future, become a great refuge for invalids. But that this may become so, above all, what is needed is a bunch of thorns applied to the tail of the engine that runs the train along the line from Hyères