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At Le Cannet is the Villa Sardou, where the great actress Rachel spent the last days of her life and died in 1858. Near Le Cannet, too,is a most strangely built edifice known as the “Maison du Brigand.” It is the chief sight of the neighbourhood for the curious and speculative, though what its uncanny design really means no one seems to know. It is a spudgy, square tower with an overhanging roof of tiles and four queer corbels at the corners. The entrance doorway is three metres, at least, from the ground, and leads immediately to the second story. From this one descends to the ground floor, not by a stairway, but through a trap-door. This curious structure is supposed to date from the sixteenth century.
Vallauris is what one might call a manufacturing suburb of Cannes, a town of potteries and potters. The potteries of the Golfe Jouan, of which Vallauris is the headquarters, are famous, and their product is known by connoisseurs the world over.
One notes the smoke and fumes from the furnaces where the pottery is baked, and likens the aspect to that of a great industrial town, though Vallauris is, as a matter of fact, more daintily environed than any other of its class in the known world. Not all of its six thousand inhabitants are engaged at the potteries; but by far the greater portion are; enough to make the town rank as a city of workmen, for suchit really is, though it would take but little thought or care to make of it the ideal “garden city.”
Artist-travellers have long remarked the qualities of the plastic clay found here, and by their suggestions and aid have enabled the manufacturers to develop a high expression of the artistic sense among their workmen. Most of these workers are engaged, in the first instance, as mere moulders of ordinary pots and jugs; but, as they acquire skill and the art sense, they are advanced to more important and lucrative positions.
The establishment of Clément Massier is famous for the quality and excellent design of its product. The proprietor in the early days, by his natural taste and studies, brought his work to the attention of such masters in art as Gérôme, Cabanal, Berne-Bellecour, and Puvis de Chavannes, all of whom encouraged him to develop his abilities still further.
Study of antique forms and processes threw a new light upon the art, or at least a newly reflected light, and at last were produced those wonderful iridescent effects and enamels which were a revelation to lovers of modern pottery. Their success was achieved at the great Paris Exposition of 1889, since which time they havebeen the vogue among the “clientèle élégante du littoral,” as the cicerone who takes you over the Ceramic Musée tells you.
Vallauris is noted also for its production of orange-water, or, rather, orange-flower water, with which the French flavour all kinds of subtle warm drinks of which they are so fond. Thetisaneof the French takes the place of the tea of the English, and they make it of all sorts of things,—a stewed concoction of verbena leaves, of mint, and even pounded apricot stones,—and always with a dash of orange-flower water. It is not an unpleasant drink thus made, but wofully insipid.
The orange-trees of the neighbourhood of Cannes and Vallauris prosper exceedingly, though it is not for their fruit that they are so carefully tended. It is the blossoming flowers that are in demand, partly for enhancing the charms of brides, but more particularly for making orange essence. There are numerous distilleries devoted to this at Vallauris, and, when the season of gathering the orange-flower crop arrives, a couple of thousand women and children engage in the pleasant task. A million kilogrammes of the flower are gathered in a good season, from which is produced as much as seventy-five thousand kilos of essence.
BEYONDCannes, on the eastern shore of the Golfe Jouan, before one comes to the peninsula’s neck, is a newly founded station known as Jouan-les-Pins. It is little more than a hamlet, though there are villas and hotels and a water-front with wind-shelters and all the appointments which one expects to find in such places.
Jouan-les-Pins really is a delightful place, the rock-pines coming well down to the shore and half-burying themselves in the yellow sands. A boulevard, bordered by a balustrade, extends along the water’s edge and forms that blend of artificiality and nature which, of all places on the Riviera, is seen at its best at Monte Carlo.
Undoubtedly there is some sort of a great future awaiting Jouan-les-Pins, for it is already regarded as a suburb of Antibes, and it is but a few years since Antibes itself was but a narrow-alleyed, high-walled little town,reminiscent of the mediæval fortress that it once was. To-day the bastions of Antibes have nearly disappeared under the picks of the industrious workmen.
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Jouan-les-Pins
The chief event of historic moment in the vicinity was the landing of Napoleon here on his return from Elba, on March 1, 1815. Every one feared the time when the “Corsican ogre” should break loose, and when the ambitious Napoleon set foot upon the shores of the Golfe Jouan, there was no doubt but that his sole object was to regain the throne which he had lost. Provence, Languedoc, and Dauphiné were supposed to be faithful to the reigning Louis, hence there was little fear that Napoleon’s march would extend beyond their confines. How well the emotions of a people were to be judged in those days is best recalled by the fact that it was but a mere promenade from Jouan-les-Pins, via Grasse, Gap, and Sisteron, to Lyons. The opinions of the advisers of Louis XVIII. were decidedly wrong, for, while the Provençaux remained faithful to the Bourbon, the mountaineers of Dauphiné were only too ready and willing to give Napoleon the aid he wished.
In the early ages the shores of the Golfe Jouan were well known and beloved by Phœnicians, Greeks, Romans, barbarians, and Moors alike. The name Jouan, which comes down from the Saracens, has by some geographers been changed to Juan. Since, however, the old Provençal spelling and pronunciation was Jouan (oubeing the Provençal accent of the Frenchu), it is still so written by the best authorities.
Never has the word incomparable been more suitably applied than to the Golfe Jouan and the monuments of the past civilization that surround it. Together with the Golfe de la Napoule it forms one vast expanse of bay, the most ample and, perhaps, the most beautiful on the whole Riviera. To the south is the opensea, and to the north the varied background of the Alpes-Maritimes.
Antibes has itself much charm of situation, though it is mostly known to English-speaking people as a sort of rest-house on the way to the more gay attractions of Monte Carlo and about there.
Antibes is, however, of great antiquity, having been the Antipolis of the Romans. It has the usual attractions of the Riviera towns and, in addition, the proximity of the great peninsula of Antibes, locally called the Cap.
This peninsula is a rare combination of trees and rocks and winding roads, almost surrounded by the pulsing Mediterranean, always cool and comfortable, even in summer, and scarcely ever troubled by the blowing of the mistral. Villas, almost without end, occupy the Cap, tree-hidden, and all brilliantly stuccoed with a tint which so well harmonizes with the surrounding subtropical flora that the effect is as of fairy-land.
The Jardin Thuret is a great botanical collection, covering an area of over seven hectares, a gift to the nation by the sister of the great botanist of the same name. The Villa Eilen-Roc has also wonderful gardens, laid out with exotic plants, and open to visitors.
Offshore, to the westward, are the Iles de Lerins and the Golfe de la Napoule, while eastward lie the Baie des Anges and the mountains back of Nice. Northward are the snow-clad summits of the Alpine range, while to the south is the sea, where one sees the filmy smoke of great steamers bound for Genoa or Marseilles, while nearer at hand are the white-wingedbalancellesandtartanes. Truly it is a ravishing picture which is here spread out before one, and therein lies the great charm of Antibes.
There is a weird combination of things devout and secular at Antibes,—Notre Dame d’Antibes, with its hermitage; the lighthouse; and the semaphore. Of the utility of the two latter there can be no doubt, while the tiny chapel of the hermitage forms a link which binds the sailor-folk at sea with their friends on shore. It is a sort ofex-votoshrine, like Notre Dame de la Garde at Marseilles, where one may register his vows upon his departure or return from the sea.
When the river Var was the boundary between France and Piedmont, this Chapelle de Notre Dame was a place of pilgrimage for the seafarers on both sides of the river, and passports were freely given to permit the Italiansto worship here at this seaside shrine of Our Lady.
Antibes has much of historic reminiscence about it, though to-day its monuments are neither very numerous nor magnificent.
The old town was, for military reasons, surrounded with walls, and thus the sea was some distance from the centre of the town. Then, as to-day, to get a whiff of the sea, one had to leave the narrow tortuous picturesqueness of the old town behind and saunter on the quays of the little port, with its narrow entrance to the open sea.
There is little traffic of importance going on in the port of Antibes; mostly the shipping of the product of the potteries at Vallauris and neighbouring towns. Still, by no means is it an abandoned port; it is a popular haven for Mediterranean yachtsmen, and fishermen find it a suitable base for their operations in the open sea; so there is a constant going and coming such as gives a picturesque liveliness which is lacking at a mere resort or watering-place. Antibes is, moreover, a torpedo-boat station of the French navy, being safely sheltered by a line of rocks which parallel the coast-line for some distance just beyond the harbour’s mouth, and which are marked by agreat iron buoy, known locally by the name of “Cinq Cent Francs.”
In the days of the Romans Antibes was probably the military port of Cimiez, and in a later day it came into the favour of both Henri IV. and Richelieu as a strongly fortified place. Later, Vauban came on the scene and surrounded its harbour with a great circular mole with considerable architectural pretensions. To-day the place is practically ignored as a military stronghold in favour of Villefranche and Toulon and the many intermediate batteries which have been erected.
The origin of the name of the town comes from the colony of Massaliotes who came here in the fifth century. Its modern name is a derivation from its earlier nomenclature, which became successively Antibon, Antibolus, and then Antiboul,—the Provençal name for the Antibes of the later French.
To-day one may see the remains of two ancient towers built by the Romans, and there are still evidences of the substructure of the antique theatre, built into the lower courses of some modern houses. In the walls of the Hôtel de Ville is a tablet reading as follows:
D. M.PVERI SEPTENTRIONIS ANNORXI QUIANTIPOLI IN THEATROBIDVO SALTAVIT ET PLACVIT.
D. M.
PVERI SEPTENTRI
ONIS ANNORXI QUI
ANTIPOLI IN THEATRO
BIDVO SALTAVIT ET PLACVIT.
According to Michelet this was a memorial to “the child Septentrion, who, at the age of twelve years, appeared two days at the theatre of Antipolis; doubtless one of the slaves who were let out to managers of spectacles.”
Inland from Antibes, on the banks of a little streamlet, the Brague, lies Biot, once a settlement of the Templars, and later, in the fourteenth century, a possession of the Genoese, or at least peopled by a colony of them.
It is a remarkable little place, generally over-looked by travellers in the rush to the show-places of the Riviera, and the suggestion is here made that any who are seeking for a real exotic could not do better than hunt it here. The manners and customs, and even the speech, of many of the old people of the town are as Italian as those of the Genoese themselves. The tiny bourg possesses a series of arcades surrounding a tiny square, a product of the fourteenth century, and is as “foreign” tothese parts as would be the wigwam of an Indian. There are also remains of the old ramparts of the town still visible, and the whole ensemble is as a page torn from a book which had been closed for centuries.
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One need not fear undue discomfort here in this little old-world spot, where things go on much the same as they have for centuries.There is nothing of the allurements of the great hotels of the resorts about the two modest inns at Biot, but for all that there is a bountiful and excellent fare to be had amid entirely charming surroundings, and, if one is minded, he can easily put in a month at the retreat, and only descend to the super-refinements of Cannes or Nice—each perhaps a dozen miles away—whenever he feels the pangs which prompt him to get in touch with a daily paper and the delights of asphalt pavements and “dressy” society.
Not all Riviera tourists know the Iles de Lerins as well as they might, though it is a popular enough excursion from Cannes.
These isles give the distinct note which lends charm to the waters of the Mediterranean just offshore from Cannes, forming, as they do, a sort of a jetty, or breakwater, between the Golfe de la Napoule and the Golfe Jouan.
There are but two islands in the group, St. Honorat and Ste. Marguerite, the latter separated from the Pointe de la Croisette at Cannes by a little over a kilometre. It costs a franc to cover this by boat, and another franc to pass between Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat.
The Ile Ste. Marguerite and its prison areredolent of much of history, from the days of the “Iron Mask” up to those of the miserable Bazaine. Much has been hazarded from time to time as to the real identity of the “Man in the Iron Mask,” but the annals of Provence dealing with Ste. Marguerite seem to point to the fact that he was Count Mattioli, the minister of the Duke of Mantua, who had agreed to betray his master into the hands of the French, and then for some unaccountable reason—no one knows why—repented, with the result that he was entrapped and thrown into prison. One sees still the walls of the dungeon where twenty-seven years of his unhappy life were spent.
Bazaine, the unfortunate Maréchal de France who capitulated at Metz during the Franco-Prussian war, was also confined here, from December, 1873, to August, 1874, when by some unexplained means, he was able to escape to Italy.
The islands take their collective name from the memory of a pirate of the heroic age, Lero by name, to whom a temple was erected on the larger isle.
The Ile St. Honorat has perhaps a greater interest than that of Ste. Marguerite. St. Honorat established himself here in retreat in thefifth century, and his abode was afterward visited by Erin’s St. Patrick.
A religious foundation, known as the Monastery of Lerins, took shape here in the sixth century, and became one of the most celebrated in all Christendom.
Barbarians, fanatics, and pirates attacked the isle from time to time, but they could not disturb the faith upon which the religious establishment was built, and it was only in 1778, when it was desecularized by the Pope, that its influence waned.
In 1791, Mlle. Alziary de Roquefort, an actress of fame in her day, acquired the isle and made it her residence. To-day it is in the possession of a community of Benedictines of Citeaux, who cultivate a great portion of its soil for the benefit of the Bishop of Fréjus.
The modern conventual buildings are on the site of the old establishment, now completely disappeared, but the community is well worth the visiting, if only to bring away with one a bottle of the Liqueur Lerina, which, in the opinion of many, is the equal of the popular “Benedictine” and “Chartreuse.”
There is a fragment of the old fortress-château still left to view, bathing the foot of its crenelated donjon in the sea, a reminder of thedays when the monks fought valiantly against pirate invasion.
Legend accounts for the names borne by both the Iles de Lerins. Two orphans of high degree, brother and sister, left their home in the Vosges and came to Provence, which they adopted as their future home.
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Marguerite took up her residence on the isle nearest the shore, and her brother on the farthermost. Disconsolate at being left alone, themaid supplicated her brother to come to her, and this he promised to do each year when the cherry-trees were in bloom. Marguerite prayed to God that her brother, who had become areligieux, would come more often; at once the cherry-trees about her habitation burst into bloom, a miracle which occurred each month thereafter, and her brother, true to his promise, came promptly the first of each month, and thus broke the lonely vigil of his sister.
ACCORDINGto the French geographers, Grasse occupies a commanding site on a “montagne à pic,” and this describes its situation exactly.
On the flanks of this great hill sits the town, its back yards, almost without exception, set out with olive and orange trees, to say nothing of the more extended plantations of the same sort seen as one reaches the outskirts.
The whole note of Grasse is of flowers, trees, and shrubs, and the perfume-laden air announces the fact from afar.
Above rises the “pic,” and, farther away, the northern boundary of the horizon is circumscribed with an amphitheatre of wooded mountains severe and imposing in outline.
Grasse is but a short eighteen kilometres from the Mediterranean, but the whole topographical aspect of the country has changed. The panorama seaward is the only intimation of the characteristics which have come to be recognized as the special belongings of theFrench Riviera. The foot-hills slope gently down to the blue “nappe,” which is the only word which describes the Mediterranean when it is all of a tranquil blue. It is an incomparable view that one has over this eighteen kilometres of country southward, and a strong contrast to the lively suburbs of the coast towns. Its charm and beauty are all its own, and there is little of the modern note to be heard as one threads the highways and byways, through the valleys and down the ravines to sea-level. Without doubt it was a fortunate choice of the Romans when they set their Castrum Crassense on this verdure-crowned height.
In the middle ages Grasse developed rapidly, and became the seat of a bishop and a place dominant in the commerce of the region. The inhabitants were reputed to be possessed of wonderful energies, and the fact that they were twice able to repel the Moorish invaders, though their town was practically destroyed, seems to prove this beyond a doubt.
Richelieu gave the bishopric of this proud city to Antoine Godeau, who, it seems, possessed hardly any qualifications for the post except family influence and the flatteries he had showered upon the cardinal. Because of his small stature this prelate became known asthe “Nain de Julie,” but in time he came to develop a real aptitude for his calling, and governed his diocese with care, prudence, and judgment, and became an Académicien through having written a history of the Church in France during the eighteenth century.
The ecclesiastical monuments of Grasse are not many or as beautiful as might be expected of a bishop’s seat, and at the Revolution the see was suppressed. The old-time cathedral, as it exists to-day, is an ungracious thing, with aperron, a sort of horseshoe staircase, before it, built by Vauban, who, judging from this work, was far more of a success as a fortress-builder than as a designer of churches.
Formerly Grasse was the seat of the Préfecture of the Département du Var, but, with the inclusion of the Comté de Nice within the limits of France, the honour was given to Draguignan, while that of the newly made Département des Alpes-Maritimes was given to Nice, and Grasse became simply asous-préfecture. Shorn of its official dignities, and never having arisen to the notoriety of being a fashionable resort, Grasse “buckled down to business,” as one might say, and acquired a preëminence in the manufacture of perfumes, candied fruits, andconfituresunequalled elsewhere in thesouth of France. The manufacture of soaps, wax, oil products, and candles also form a considerable industry, and the general aspect of Grasse is quite as prosperous, indeed more so, than if it were dependent on the butterfly tourists of the coast towns.
The streets of the town rise and fall in bewildering fashion. They are badly laid out, in many cases, and dark and gloomy, but they are nevertheless picturesque to a high degree; a sort of négligé picturesqueness, which does not necessarily mean dirty or squalid. There are no remarkable architectural splendours in all the town, and there are none of those archæological surprises such as one comes upon at Aix or Fréjus.
Grasse has a fine library, containing numerous rare manuscripts and deeds and the archives of the ancient Abbey of Lerins. In the Hôpital is an early work of Rubens, which ranks as one of the world’s great art treasures, and there is a further interest in the city for art-lovers from the fact that it was the birthplace of Fragonard, to whom a fine bust in marble has been erected in the Jardin Publique.
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Flower Market, Grasse
As before mentioned, the height above is the chief point of interest at Grasse. It culminatesin the significantly named promenade known as the “Jeu de Ballon.” A sea of tree-tops surges about one on all sides, with here and there a glimpse of the red roof-tops of the town below.
Between the town and the sea is an immense rocky wall known as Les Ribbes, with a picturesque cascade rippling down its flank. From its apex Napoleon, escaping from Elba, arrested his flight long enough to turn and—in the words of his best-known historian—“contemplate the immense panorama which unrolled before his eyes, and salute for the last time the Mediterranean and the mountains of La Corse, which he was never again to see.”
The assertion “voir La Corse,” in the original, was not a figure of speech, for under certain conditions of wind and weather the same is possible to-day.
A half a dozen kilometres to the eastward of Grasse the highroad crosses the river Loup, and one sees a semicircular town before him known as Villeneuve-Loubet. The town has hotels and all the faint echoes of the watering-places of the coast. This is a pity, for it is delightful, or was, before all this up-to-dateness came. Its château, still proudly rearing itshead above the town, was built in the twelfth century by the Comtes de Provence.
The primitive town was called Loubet, a corruption of the name of the river which bathes its walls. Before even the days of the occupation of the Comtes de Provence, as early as the seventh century, there was a monastery here known by the name of Notre Dame la Dorée, of which scanty remains are visible even to-day. Owing to various Mussulman incursions, the occupants of the monastery were forced to flee to the protection of the château, and soon the “Ville-neuve” was created, ultimately forming the hyphenated name by which the place is known to-day.
Still onward, on the road to Nice, is Cagnes, a sort of economical overflow from the more aristocratic resort, with few advantages to-day as an abiding-place, and most of the disadvantages of the larger city. There are tooting trams, automobile garages, and shops for the sale of many of the minor wants of life, which in former times one had to walk the ten or a dozen kilometres into Nice to get. The automobile is a very good thing for touring, but, as a perambulator in which to “run down to the village,” it is much overrated and a confirmed nuisance to every one; and Cannes suffersfrom this more than any other place in France, unless it be Giverny on the Seine, the most overautomobiled town in the world,—one to every score of inhabitants.
Once Cagnes bid fair to become an artists’ resort, but it became overrun with “tea and toast” tourists, and so it just missed becoming a Pont Aven or a Barbizon. For all that, it is a picturesque enough place to-day; indeed, it is delightful, and if it were not for the automobiles everywhere about, and that awful tram, it would be even more so. However, its little artists’ hotel was, and is, able to make up for a good deal that is otherwise lacking, and the sawmills, brick-works, and distilleries of the neighbourhood are not offensive enough to take away all of its sylvan charm.
In earlier times Cagnes was both a place of military importance and a sort of a city of pleasure, something after the Pompeiian order, one fancies, from the Roman remains which have been found here.
There is an ancient château of the Grimaldi family, still very much in evidence, though it has become the property of a German. In many respects it is a beautiful Renaissance work and is accordingly an architectural monument of rank.
Directly inland from Cagnes is Vence, an ancient episcopal city which was shorn of its ecclesiastical rights at the Revolution. In spite of this the memories and the very substantial reminders of other days, still to be seen within the precincts of the one-time cathedral, give it rank as an ecclesiastical shrine quite out of the ordinary. The church itself is built upon the site, and in part out of, an ancient temple to Cybele, and the fortifications, erected when the Saracens had possession of the city, are still readily traced. It is a most picturesquely disposed little city, and well worth more attention than is generally bestowed upon it.
Between Grasse and Nice lies the valley of the Loup, a stream of some sixty kilometres in length emptying into the Mediterranean, and which has the reputation of being the most torrential waterway in France, in this respect far exceeding the more important streams, such as the Rhône, the Durance, and the Touloubre. Its course is so sinuous, as it comes down from its source in the Alpes-Maritimes, that it is known locally as “le serpent.” With all violence it rolls down its rapidly sloping bed, amid rock-cut gorges and wooded ravines, in quite the manner of the scenic waterfallsof the geographies that one scans at school. It does not resemble Niagara in any manner, nor is it a slim, narrow cascade at any point; but throughout its whole length it is a series of tiny waterfalls which, in a photograph, do indeed look like miniature Niagaras. All along its course are numerous centres of population, though none of them reach to the dignity of a town and hardly that of a village, if one excepts Le Bar, the chief point of departure for excursions in the gorges.
Le Bar is reminiscent of the Saracens, who were for long masters of the neighbouring country. The walls of the houses and barriers are of that warm, rosy, mud-baked tint that one associates mostly with the Orient, and no artist’s palette is too rich in colour to depict them as they are. The Saracens called the place “Al-Bar,” which came later, by an easy process of evolution, toAlbarnum, and finally Le Bar.
It was an important place under the Roman domination, and, in time, when the town came to be a valued possession of the Comtés de Provence, the cross succeeded the crescent. In the tiny church of the town there is a remarkable ancient painting picturing a “danse macabre,” supposed to be of the fifteenth century.
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Gourdon
Above Le Bar is the aerial village of Gourdon, fantastic in name, situation, and all its elements. At its feet rushes the restless Loup, and tears its way through one of those curious rock-walls which one only sees in these parts. To the westward is the curious and imposingoutline of Grasse, the metropolis of the neighbourhood.
Near by the railway crosses the ravine on an imposing and really beautiful modern viaduct of seven arches, each twelve metres in height—nearly forty feet.
Up the ravine toward the source, or downward to the sea, the charms multiply themselves like the glasses of the kaleidoscope until one, as a result of a first visit to this much neglected scenic spectacle, is quite of the mind that it resembles nothing so much as a miniature Yellowstone.
WHENone crosses the Var he crosses the ancient frontier between France and the Comté de Nice. The old-time French inhabitants of the Comté ever considered it an alien land, and invariably expressed the wish to be buried in the Cemetery of St. Laurent du Var, just over the border in the royal domain.
The present Pont du Var, which one crosses as he comes from the westward, from Cagnes or Antibes, is the successor of another flung across the same stream by Vauban, much against his will, it would seem, for he said boldly that it was so foolish a project as never to be worth a hundredth part of its cost. How poorly he reckoned can be judged by the hundreds of thousands of travellers—millions doubtless—who, in later years, have made use of it. He evidently did not foresee the tide of tourist travel, whatever may have been his genius as a military engineer.
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Nice to Vintimille
The Var is not a very formidable-lookingriver at first glance, and has not the tempestuous flood of the Rhône and the Durance in actual volume, but the excess of water which it carries to the sea, at certain seasons, is proportionately very much greater. The Rhône increases its bulk but thirty times, the Durance a hundred times, but the Var throws into the Mediterranean, in time of flood, a hundred and forty times its usual flow, a fact which ranks it as one of the most fickle waterways of Europe, if not of the world.
So important a place as Nice of course has a legendary account of the origin of its name. It is claimed by some historians, and disputed by others, that it was a colony founded by the Massaliotes three hundred years before the beginning of the Christian era, and, in consequence of a signal success against the Ligurians, the place received the glorious name of Victory,—Nicæa, a name which with but little alteration has come down to to-day.
Long before the French came into possession of the Comté de Nice and its capital there was a friendship, and a sort of union, between the two peoples. When the little state became a part of modern France, it became simply more French than it was before. This was the only change to be remarked until the era ofits great prosperity as a winter resort, for the world’s idlers made it what it is,—the best-known winter station in all the world.
Nice used to be called “Nizza la Bella,” but, since the arrival of the French (1860), and the English, and the Americans, and the Germans (the Russian grand dukes, be it recalled, have made Cannes their own), “Nizza la Bella” has become “Nice la Belle,” for it is beautiful in spite of its drawbacks for the lover of sylvan and unartificial charms.
There is not in Africa a spot more African in appearance than the railway station at Nice; such at all events is the impression that it makes upon one when he views the enormous palms that surround the station.
Up to this time the traveller from the north, by rail, has got some glimpses of the southland from the windows of his railway car; has seen some palms, perhaps, and other specimens of a subtropical flora; but, since the railway does not make its way through the palm avenues of Hyères or Cannes, the sudden apparition of Nice is as of something new.
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Many have sung the praises of “Nice la Belle” in prose and verse; in times past, Dupatay, Lalande, and Delille; and, in our own day, Alphonse Karr, Dumas père, De Banville,Mistral, Jacques Normand, Bourget, Nadaud, and a host of others too numerous to mention.
Nice is a marvellous blend of the old and the new; the old quarter of the Niçois, with narrow streets of stairs, overhanging balconies, and all the accessories of the life of the Latins as they have been pictured for ages past; the new, with broad boulevards, straight tree-bordered avenues flanked with gay shops, hotels, kiosks, automobile cabs, and all the rest of what we have come unwisely to regard as the necessities of the age. The curtain of trees flanking these great modern thoroughfares is the only thing that saves them from becoming monotonous; as it is, they are as attractive as any of their kind in Paris, Lyons, or Marseilles.
The Promenade des Anglais is the finest of these thoroughfares. With its yuccas, and its garden, and its sea-wall, and its fringe of white-crested, lapping waves, it is all very entrancing,—all except the inartistic thing of glass roofs and iron struts, known the world over as a pier, and which, in spite of its utility,—if it really is useful,—is an abomination. Artificiality is all very well in its place, but out of place it is as indigestible as thenougatof Montélimar.
The Nice of to-day bears little resemblanceto the Nice of half a century ago, as one learns from recorded history and a gossip with an old inhabitant. Then it was simply a collection ofmaisons groupées, with narrow, crooked streets between, huddled around the flanks of the old château.
In those days the railway ended at Genoa on the east and at Toulon on the west, and the space between was only covered by diligence, horse or donkey back, or by boat. The “high life,” as the French have come themselves to term listlessness and indolence, had not yet arrived, in spite of the fact that its outpost had already been planted at Cannes by England’s chancellor.
Those were parlous times for Monte Carlo. There was but one table for “trente et quarante” and one for “roulette,” and the opening of the game waited upon the arrival of a score of persons who came from Nice daily byvoiture publique, via La Turbie, or by the cranky little steamer which took an hour and forty minutes in good weather, and which in bad did not start out at all. On these occasions there was little or nothing “doing” at Monte Carlo, but the new régime saw to it that transportation facilities were increased and improved, and immediately everything prospered.
However much one may deplore the advent of the railway along picturesque travel routes, and it certainly does detract not a little from several charming Riviera panoramas, there is no question but that it is a necessary evil. Perhaps after all it isn’t an evil, for one can be very comfortable in any of the great and luxurious expresses which deposit their hordes all along the Riviera during the winter season. The new thirteen-hour train from Paris, the “Côte d’Azur Rapide,” has already become one of the world’s wonders for speed, taking less than three-quarters of an hour in making the nine stops between Paris and Nice. Then there are the “London-Riviera Express,” the “Vienne-Cannes Express,” the “Calais-Nice Express,” and the Nord-Sud-Brenner (Cannes, Nice, Vintimille to Berlin), with sleeping-cars and dining-cars, but not yet with bathrooms, barber-shops, or stenographers and typewriters, which have already arrived in America, where business is combined with the joy of living.
From the very fact of its past history and of its geographical location, Nice is the most cosmopolitan of all the cities of the Riviera, if we except Monte Carlo.
To the stranger, English, French, and Italiansseem to be about on a par at Nice, with a liberal addition of Germans and Russians, though naturally French are really in the majority. There are many Italian-speaking people in the old town of Nice, away from the frankly tourist quarters, but it is a strange Italian that one hears, and in many cases is not Italian at all, but the Niçois patois, which sounds quite as much like the real Provençal tongue as it does Italian, though in reality it is not a very near approach to either.
Nice is the true centre of the catalogued beauties of the Riviera, and in consequence it has become the truly popular resort of the region. In spite of this it is not the most lovable, for garish hotels,—no matter how fine their “rosbif” may be,—chalets coquets, and sky-scraping apartment houses have a way of intruding themselves on one’s view in a most distressing manner until one is well out into the foot-hills of the Alpes-Maritimes and away from the tooting, humming electric trams.
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Nice
The port of Nice is not a great one, as those of the maritime world go, but it is sufficient to the needs of the city, and there is a considerable coastwise traffic going on. The basin is purely artificial and was cut practically from the solid rock. With its sheltering mountainbackground it is exceedingly picturesque and well disposed. The tiny river Paillon runs into it from the north, a rivulet which in its own small way apes the torrents of the Var in times of flood. At other seasons it runs drily through the town and bares its pebbles to the blazing southern sun. It serves its purpose well though, in that its thin stream of water forms the washing-place of the washerwomen of Nice, and, from their numbers, one might think of the whole Riviera. The process of pounding and strangling one’s linen into a semblance of whiteness does not differ greatly here from that of other parts of France. There are the same energetic swoops of the paddle, the thrashings on a flat stone, the swishings and swashings in the running water of the stream, and finally the spreading on the ground to dry. Here, though, the linen is spread on the smooth, clean pebbles of the river-bed and the southern sun speedily dries it to a stiffness (and yellowness) which grass-spread linen does not acquire. In other respects the washing process seems quite as efficacious as elsewhere, and there are quite as many small round holes (in the most impossible places), which will give one hours of speculation as to how they were made. It’s all very simple, when you come tothink of it. Things are simply rolled or twisted into a wad and pounded on the flat stone. Where nothing but linen intervenes between the paddle and the stone, a certain flatness is produced in the mass, and the dirt meanwhile is supposed to have sifted, or to have been driven, through and out. Where there are buttons—well, that is where the little round holes come from, and meanwhile the buttons have been broken and have disappeared. The process has its disadvantages—decidedly.
The old château of Nice and its immediate confines sound the most dominant old-time note of the entire city, for, in spite of the old streets and houses of the older part of the city, the quarters of the Niçois and the Italians, there is over all a certain reflex of the modernity which radiates from the great hotels, cafés, and shops of the newer boulevards and avenues.
To be sure, the “château,” so called to-day, is no château at all, and is in fact nothing more than a sort of garden, or park, wherein are some scanty remains of the château which existed in the time of Louis XIV. The hill on which it sat is still the dominant feature of the place, although, according to the exaggerated draughtsmanship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the château and its dependenciesmust have been a marvellous array of spectacular architecture. The summit of this eminence, hanging high above the port on one side and the Quai du Midi and the valley of the Paillon on the other, is reached by a winding road, doubling back and forth up its flank, but the only thing that would prompt one to make the ascent would be the exercise or the altogether surprising view which one has of the city and its immediate surroundings.
The sea mirrors the sails of the shipping (mostly to-day it is funnels and masts, however) and the distant promontories of Cap d’Antibes on the one side and Cap Ferrat on the other. Beyond the former the sun sets gloriously at night, amidst a ravishing burst of red, gold, and purple, quite unequalled elsewhere along the Riviera. Of course itisas glorious elsewhere, but the combination of scenic effects is not quite the same, and here, at least, Nice leads all the other Riviera tourist points.
To the north are the lacelike snowy peaks of the Alps, cutting the horizon with that far-away brilliance and crispness which only a snow-capped mountain possesses. The contrast is to be remarked in other lands quite as emphatically, at Riverside, in California, forinstance, where you may have orange-blossoms one hour and deep snow in the next, if you will only climb the mountain to get it; but there is a historic atmosphere and local colour here on the Riviera whose places are not adequately filled by anything which ever existed in California.
Nice is surrounded by a triple defence of mountains which, supporting one another, have all but closed the route to Italy from the north. This mountain barrier serves another purpose, and that is as a sort of shelter from the rigours of the Alps in winter. The wind-shield is not wholly effectual, for there is one break through which it howls in most distressing fashion most of the time. This is at the extremity of the port, where the wall is broken between the hill of the château and Mont Boron. Formerly this gap bore the old Provençal nomenclature of “Raoubo Capeou,” which, literally translated, may be called the “hat-lifter,” and which the French themselves call “Dérobe Chapeau.”
Above all, one should see Nice in the height of the flower season, when the stalls of the flower merchants are literally buried under a harvest of flowers and perfumed fruits.
Nice’s distractions are too numerous to be mentioned in detail. The Mi-Carême and MardiGras festivals are nowhere on the Riviera more brilliant than here, and now that in these progressive days they have added “Batailles de Fleurs” and “Courses d’Automobiles,” and “Horse-Races” and “Tennis” and “Golf Tournaments,” the significance of the merry-making is quite different from the original interpretation given it by the Latins. Sooner or later “Baseball” and “Shoe-blacking Contests” may be expected to be introduced, and then what will be one’s recollections of “Nizza la Bella?”
The business of Nice consists almost entirely of the catering to her almost inexhaustible stream of winter visitors. This, and the traffic in garden vegetables and fruits, a trade of some proportions in olive-oil, and the manufacture and sale of crystallized fruit, make up the chief industrial life of the town.
One other industry may be mentioned, though it is of little real worth, in spite of the business having reached large figures,—the trade in olive-wood souvenirs. Every one knows the sort of thing: penholders, napkin-rings, and card-cases. They are found at resorts all over the world, and the manufacturers of Nice have spread their product, throughout Europe, before the eyes of the tourists who like to buysuch “souvenirs,” whether they are at Brighton, Mont St. Michel, or Vichy.
The region between Nice and Menton seems particularly favourable to the growth of a much grander species of olive-tree than is to be seen in the otherdépartementsof the south, and the olive-oil of Nice, because of its peculiar perfume, is greatly in demand among those who think they have an exquisite taste in this sort of thing. As most of this aromatic oil is exported, the statement need be no reflection on the product of other parts. One hundred establishments, of all ranks, are engaged in this traffic at Nice.
The horticultural trade plays its part, and the roses and violets of Nice are found throughout the flower-markets of Europe. There are three great rose-growing centres in western Europe, Lyons, Paris, and Ghent (Belgium), and mostly their flowers are grown from plants obtained at Nice.
The cut-flower traffic is also considerable locally, and Nice, Beaulieu, Monaco, and Monte Carlo are themselves large consumers.
Four kilometres only separate Nice from Cimiez, the latter comparatively as flourishing and important a town in the days of the Romans as Nice is to-day.