Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/186

148 trap, basalt, and blue quartzite porphyry. Beside this is the new red sandstone and the Bunter sandstone. Variety of soil gives variety of vegetation; plantations of mimosa, not over a quarter of a century old, thrive on the primitive rocks, and are mixed with cork trees, umbrella pines, oaks, bushes of cistus, laurestinas, myrtle, rosemary, heath, broom, and in the spring gleam the white spears of the asphodel. It is a district in which geologist, botanist, and artist will revel alike.

"The group of the Estérel," says Lenthéric, "differs in form, in colour, in origin, from all the littoral mountains of the Provengal coast. It is entirely composed of primitive eruptive rocks; its highest summits may not reach above 1’800 feet; but all its ridges are pointed, and of a redness of fire. The crests of the mountains are bald and savage. The cliffs are abrupt, torn into projecting and retreating angles, and form on the sea-face an inaccessible fortification, defended by an archipelago of islets and reefs of almost polished porphyry, over which the waves have broken during many centuries without having been able to produce upon them any appreciable marks of geological erosion. The outline, the denticulation, the anfractuosities of the shore, the fiords and the rocky caverns into which the sea plunges, are little different to-day from what they were at the opening of historic times, even, one may say, at the beginning of our own geologic period."

This wild and wondrous region was occupied by a Ligurian tribe of Suelteri, who have left their name, much corrupted, to the district. The Romans found it difficult to conquer them, but they carried the Aurelian Road along the coast, where runs now the New Corniche Way.