The Mistral was approaching and every owner of an establishment was ordering this maneuver in order to withstand the icy hurricane that overturns tables, snatches away chairs, and carries off everything which is not secured with marine cables.
To Ferragut this famous avenue of Marseilles was a reminder of the antechamber of Salonica.

The same types from the army of the East crowded its sidewalks,--English dressed in khaki, Canadians and Australians in hats with up-turned brims, tall, slender Hindoos with coppery complexion and thick fan-shaped beards, Senegalese sharpshooters of a glistening black, and Anammite marksmen with round yellow countenance and eyes forming a triangle.

There was a continual procession of dark trucks driven by soldiers, automobiles full of officers, droves of mules coming from Spain that were going to be shipped to the Orient, leaving behind their quick-trotting hoofs a pungent and penetrating smell of the stable.
The old harbor attracted Ferragut because of its antiquity which was almost as remote as that of the first Mediterranean navigations.

On passing before the Palace of the Bourse he shot a glance at the statue of the two great Marseillaise navigators,--Eutymenes and Pytas,--the most remote ancestors of Mediterranean navigators.

One had explored the coast of Senegambia, the other had gone further up to Ireland and the Orkney Islands.
The ancient Greek colony had been, during long centuries, supplanted by others,--Venice, Genoa and Barcelona having held it in humble subjection.