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Read Ebook: A Book of the Riviera by Baring Gould S Sabine
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Ebook has 1138 lines and 98942 words, and 23 pages
A PASSAGE IN THE GORGE DU LOUP " 4 From a photograph by Neurdein fr?res.
PALMS AT CANNES " 7 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
LA RADE, MARSEILLES " 39 From a photograph by Neurdein fr?res.
KING R?N? " 63 From the triptych of the Burning Bush, at Aix.
OLIVE TREES " 85 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
PINES NEAR HY?RES " 89 From a photograph by Neurdein fr?res.
A CAROB TREE " 97 From a photograph by Neurdein fr?res.
GRIMAUD " 109 From a photograph by Neurdein fr?res.
AN UMBRELLA PINE, S. RAPHAEL " 113 From a photograph by Neurdein fr?res.
LE LION DE TERRE, S. RAPHAEL " 115 From a photograph by A. Bandieri.
TH?OULE " 147 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
L'EST?REL FROM CANNES " 153 From a photograph by G. Richard.
GRASSE, LES BLANCHISEUSES " 157 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
CARROS " 167 From a photograph by Neurdein fr?res.
THE CASCADE OF THE LOUP " 172 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
FALL IN THE GORGE OF THE LOUP " 173 From a photograph by Neurdein fr?res.
INTERIOR OF THE CH?TEAU SAINT HONORAT " 180 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE PRISON OF THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK " 190 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE CASTLE OF S. HONORAT " 195 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
LA NAPOULE " 203 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE CASCADE OF THE CH?TEAU, NICE " 205 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
VILLEFRANCHE " 225 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE THEATRE, MONTE CARLO " 237 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
POSTCARDS PROHIBITED AT MONACO " 244
THE GAMING SALOON, MONTE CARLO " 248 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE CONCERT HALL, MONTE CARLO " 252 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
DOLCE ACQUA " 273 From a photograph by Alinari.
SAN AMPELIO, BORDIGHERA " 274 From a photograph by Alinari.
ARCHES IN STREET, BORDIGHERA " 276 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
CERIANA " 279 From a photograph by G. Brogi.
BUSSANA " 280 From a photograph by J. Giletta.
ALBENGA " 293 From a photograph by Alinari.
SAVONA " 301 From a photograph by Alinari.
PREFACE THIS little book has for its object to interest the many winter visitors to the Ligurian coast in the places that they see.
A consecutive history of Provence and Genoese Liguria was out of the question; it would be long and tedious. I have taken a few of the most prominent incidents in the history of the coast, and have given short biographies of interesting personages connected with it. The English visitor calls the entire coast--from Marseilles to Genoa--the Riviera; but the French distinguish their portion as the C?te d'Azur, and the Italians distinguish theirs as the Riviera di Ponente. I have not included the whole of this latter, so as not to make the book too bulky, but have stayed my pen at Savona.
THE RIVIERA
PROVENCE
WHEN a gambler has become bankrupt at the tables of Monte Carlo, the Company that owns these tables furnish him with a railway ticket that will take him home, or to any distance he likes, the further the better, that he may hang or shoot himself anywhere else save in the gardens of the Casino. On much the same principle, at the beginning of last century, the physicians of England recommended their consumptive patients to go to Montpellier, where they might die out of sight, and not bring discredit on their doctors. As Murray well puts it:--
The discovery of a better place, with equable temperature, and protection from the winds, was due to an accident.
In 1831, Lord Brougham, flying from the fogs and cold of England in winter, was on his way to Italy, the classic land of sunshine, when he was delayed on the French coast of the Mediterranean by the fussiness of the Sardinian police, which would not suffer him to pass the frontier without undergoing quarantine, lest he should be the means of introducing cholera into Piedmont. As he was obliged to remain for a considerable time on the coast, he spent it in rambling along the Gulf of Napoule. This was to him a veritable revelation. He found the sunshine, the climate, the flowers he was seeking at Naples where he then was, at Napoule. He went no farther; he bought an estate at Cannes, and there built for himself a winter residence. He talked about his discovery. It was written about in the papers. Eventually it was heard of by the physicians, and they ceased to recommend their patients to go to Montpellier, but rather to try Cannes. When Lord Brougham settled there, it was but a fishing village; in thirty years it was transformed; and from Cannes stretches a veritable rosary of winter resorts to Hy?res on one side to Alassio on the other; as white grains threaded on the line from Marseilles to Genoa. As this chain of villas, hotels, casinos, and shops has sprung up so recently, the whole looks extremely modern, and devoid of historic interest. That it is not so, I hope to show. This modern fringe is but a fringe on an ancient garment; but a superficial sprinkling over beds of remote antiquity rich in story.
Among the Montagnes des Maures, on a height are the cisterns and foundations of the stronghold of the Saracens, their last stronghold on this side of the Pyrenees, whence they swept the country, burning and slaying, till dislodged in 972 by William, Count of Provence. Again, the house at Draguignan of Queen Joanna, recalls her tragic story; the wife of four husbands, the murderess of the first, she for whose delectation Boccaccio collected his merry, immoral tales; she, who sold Avignon to the Popes, and so brought about their migration from Rome, the Babylonish captivity of near a hundred years; she--strangled finally whilst at her prayers.
Marseilles recalls the horrors of the Revolution, and the roar of that song, smelling of blood, to which it gave its name. At Toulon, Napoleon first drew attention to his military abilities; at S. Raphael he landed on his return from Egypt, on his way to Paris, to the 18th Brumaire, to the Consulate, to the Empire; and here also he embarked for Elba after the battle of Leipzig.
But leaving history, let us look at what Nature affords of interest. Geologically that coast is a great picture book of successions of deposits and of convulsions. There are to be found recent conglomerates, chalk, limestone, porphyry, new red sandstone, mica schist, granite. The Est?rel porphyry is red as if on fire, seen in the evening sun. The mica schist of the Montagnes des Maures strews about its dust, so shining, so golden, that in 1792 a representative of the Department went up to Paris with a handful, to exhibit to the Convention as a token of the ineptitude of the Administration of Var, that trampled under foot treasures sufficient to defray the cost of a war against all the kings of the earth.
Consider what the variety of geologic formation implies: an almost infinite variety of plants; moreover, owing to the difference of altitudes, the flora reaches in a chromatic scale from the fringe of the Alpine snows to the burning sands by the seas. In one little commune, it is estimated that there are more varieties to be found than in the whole of Ireland.
But the visitor to the seaboard--the French C?te d'azur and the Italian Riviera--returns home after a winter sojourn there with his mind stored with pictures of palms, lemons, oranges, agaves, aloes, umbrella pines, eucalyptus, mimosa, carob-trees, and olives. This is the vegetation that characterises the Riviera, that distinguishes it from vegetation elsewhere; but, although these trees and shrubs abound, and do form a dominant feature in the scenery, yet every one of them is a foreign importation, and the indigenous plants must be sought in mountain districts, away from towns, and high-roads, and railways.
These strangers from Africa, Asia, Australia and South America have occupied the best land and the warmest corners, just as of old the Greek and Roman colonists shouldered out the native tribes, and forced them to withdraw amidst the mountains.
When this period was passed, the rivers relaxed their force, and repented of the waste they had made, and proceeded to chew into mud the pebbles they rolled along, and, rambling over the level stretches of rubble, to deposit upon it a fertilising epidermis. Then, in modern times, the engineers came and banked in the Rhone, to restrain its vagaries, so that now it pours its precious mud into the sea, and yearly projects its ugly muzzle further forwards. When we passed the rocky portal, we passed also from the climate of the North into that of the South, but not to that climate without hesitations. For the sun beating on the level land heats the pebble bed, so that the air above it quivers as over a lime-kiln, and, rising, is replaced by a rush of icy winds from the Alps. This downrush is the dreaded Mistral. It was a saying of old:--
"Parlement, Mistral, et Durance Sont les trois fl?aux de Provence."
The Parliament is gone, but the Mistral still rages, and the Durance still overflows and devastates.
The plain, where cultivated, is lined and cross-lined as with Indian ink. These lines, and cross-lines, are formed of cypress, veritable walls of defence, thrown up against the wind. When the Mistral rages, they bow as whips, and the water of the lagoons is licked up and spat at the walls of the sparsely scattered villages. Here and there rises the olive, like smoke from a lowly cottage. It shrinks from the bite of the frost and the lash of the wind, and attains its proper height and vigour only as we near the sea; and is in the utmost luxuriance between Solli?s Pont and Le Luc, growing on the rich new red sandstone, that skirts the Montagnes des Maures.
Presently we come on the lemon, the orange, glowing golden, oleanders in every gully, aloes , figs, mulberries, pines with outspread heads, like extended umbrellas, as the cypress represents one folded; cork trees, palms with tufted heads; all seen through an atmosphere of marvellous clearness, over-arched by a sky as blue as that of Italy, and with--as horizon--the deeper, the indigo blue, of the sea.
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