Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/148

114 The Argens, which has flowed from west to east, receiving the drainage of the Montagnes des Maures, receives also the Parturby and the Endre from the limestone, and then turns about and runs almost due south, but with an incline to the east. It forms a wide basin, once a long arm of sea, but now filled up with deposit, and with festering lagoons sprinkled over its surface; the two great mountain chains from east and west contract, and force the winds that come down from the north, and the snows of the Alps, to concentrate their malice on S. Raphael. If you love a draught, then sit before a roaring fire, with an open window behind you. If you desire a draught on a still larger scale, go to S. Raphael. Perhaps the speculators who invented this Station Hivernale thought that it was necessary to add something more, in order to attract patients to the place, and Valescure was established among pine woods. The aromatic scent of the terebinth, its sanatory properties, so highly estimated, so experimentally efficacious in pulmonary disorders, etc., etc. Valescure is just as certainly exposed to winds as is S. Raphael. As to pines and eucalyptus, they can be had elsewhere, in combination with shelter.

However, let me quote M. Leutheric, who has a good word to say for S. Raphael:—

"Few regions of Provence present conditions of landscape and climate (!!) more seductive. The little town of Saint Raphael is placed beyond the zone of infection from the marshes of Fréjus. It stretches gracefully along the shore at the foot of the savage chain "of the Estérel. On all sides pointed rocks of red porphyry pierce the sombre foliage of cork trees and pines. The coast is fringed by sandbanks,