A PIECE OF THE OLD ROMAN ROAD.
A PIECE OF THE OLD ROMAN ROAD.
XXXVGALLOWS HILL
THE hills that overshadow the coast road between Cap d’Ail and Roquebrune are perhaps as diligently traversed by the winter visitor as any along the Riviera, because in this area level roads are rare and those who would walk far afield must of necessity climb up hill.
The hill-side is of interest on account of the number of pre-historic walled camps which are to be found on its slopes. These camps form a series of strongholds which extends from Cap d’Ail to Roquebrune. There are some seven of these forts within this range. The one furthest to the west is Le Castellar de la Brasca in the St. Laurent valley on the Nice side of Cap d’Ail. Then come L’Abeglio just above the Cap d’Ail church, the Bautucan on the site of the old signal station above the Mid-Corniche, the Castellaretto over the Boulevard de l’Observatoire, Le Cros near the mule-path to La Turbie and lastly Mont des Mules and Le Ricard near Roquebrune.
Of these the camp most easily viewed—but by no means the most easy to visit—is that of the Mont des Mules, on the way up to La Turbie. This is a bare hill of rough rocks upon the eastern eminence of which is a camp surrounded by a very massive wall built up of hugeunchiselled stones. It is fitly called a “camp of the giants,” for no weaklings ever handled such masses of rock as these. The Romans who first penetrated into the country must have viewed these military works with amazement, for competent writers affirm that they date from about 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.
Along this hill-side also are traces of the old Roman road, fragments which have been but little disturbed and which, perhaps, are still paved with the very stones over which have marched the legions from the Imperial City. To the east of La Turbie and just below La Grande Corniche are two Roman milestones, side by side, in excellent preservation. There are two, because they have been placed in position by two different surveyors.
They stand by the ancient way and show clearly enough the mileage—603. The next milestone (604) stood on the Aurelian Way just outside La Turbie, at the point where the road is crossed by the railway, but only the base of it remains. Between it and the previous milestone is a Roman wayside fountain under a rounded arch. It is still used as a water supply by the cottagers and the conduit that leads to it can be traced for some distance up the hill.
The first Roman milestone to the west of La Turbie (No. 605) is on the side of the Roman road as it turns down towards Laghet.[49]This milestone is the finest in the district and is remarkably well preserved. Those who comment on the closeness of thesemilliairesmustremember that the Roman mile was 142 yards shorter than the English.
THE ROMAN FOUNTAIN NEAR LA TURBIE.
THE ROMAN FOUNTAIN NEAR LA TURBIE.
Above the Mont des Mules is Mont Justicier. It is a hill so bleak and so desolate that it is little more than a wind-swept pile of stones. It has been used for centuries as a quarry and much of the material employed in the building of the Roman trophy at La Turbie came from its barren sides. Its dreariness is rendered more dismal by its history and by the memories that cloud its past. These memories do not recall a busy throng of quarrymen who roared out chanties as they worked at their cranes and whose chatter could be heard above the thud of the pick and the clink of the chisel. They recall the time when this dread mound was the Hill of Death and a terror in the land.
On the summit of Mont Justicier is a tall, solitary column. It appears, at a distance, to be a shaft of marble; but it is made up of small pieces of white stone cemented together. It is a large column nearly three feet in diameter and some fifteen feet in height. Near it is the base of a second column of identical proportions to the first. The distance between the two pillars is twelve feet and they stand on a platform which faces southwards across the sea. These columns were the posts of a gigantic gallows. Their summits were connected by a cross beam and from that beam at least six ropes could dangle. This is why the mound is named Mont Justicier, or, as it would be called in England, Gallows Hill.
The Mount became a place of execution in the Middle Ages and towards the end of the seventeenth century there would never be a time when bodies couldnot be seen swinging from the beam of the great gallows, since it was here that the brigands known as the Barbets were hanged.
The term “Barbet” has a somewhat curious history. It was originally a nickname given by the Catholics to the Protestant Vaudois and later to the Protestants of the Cevennes and elsewhere. The name had origin in the circumstance that the Vaudois called their ministers “barbes” or “uncles,” in somewhat the same way that the Catholics call their priests “fathers.”
The term was later applied to Protestant heretics generally and notably to the Albigensians who held to the mountains of Piedmont and Dauphiné. They refused baptism, the Mass, the adoration of the Cross, the traffic in indulgences. “What was originally a logical revolt of pure reason against dogmatic authority soon took unfortunately varying forms, and then reached unpardonable extremes.”[50]These men were outlawed, were hunted down and massacred and treated as rogues and vagabonds of a pernicious type. For their ill name they were themselves not a little to blame. They kept to the mountains from which great efforts were made to dislodge them about the end of the seventeenth century.
The term Barbets was subsequently given to the inhabitants of the valleys of the Alps who lived by plunder and contraband and finally to any brigands or robbers who had their lairs among the mountains. “In the year 1792,” writes Rosio,[51]“irregular bands were formed, under the name of Barbets, which were trained and commandedby military officers devoted to Sardinia. These bands of men harassed the French army, pillaged the camps and held up convoys. When the House of Savoy lost its hold on the Continent the Barbets divided into smaller companies and gave themselves up to open brigandage. Their habitat was in the mountains of Levens, of L’Escarene, Eze and La Turbie. Near Levens the unfortunates who fell into their hands were hurled into the Vesubie from a rock 300 metres high which is still called Le Saut des Français.”
GALLOWS HILL.
GALLOWS HILL.
MONT JUSTICIER: THE TWO PILLARS OF THE GALLOWS.
MONT JUSTICIER: THE TWO PILLARS OF THE GALLOWS.
At the foot of Mont Justicier, near to the gallows and by the side of the actual Roman road, is the little chapel of St. Roch. It is a very ancient chapel and its years weigh heavily upon it, for it has nearly come to the end of its days. It is built of rough stones beneath a coating of plaster and has a cove roof covered with red tiles. The base of the altar still stands, traces of frescoes can be seen on the walls and on one side of the altar is an ambry or small, square wall-press. It was in this sorrowful little chapel that criminals about to be executed made confession and received the last offices of the Church.
A sadder place than this in which to die could hardly be realised. The land around is so harsh, the hill so heartless, the spot so lonely. And yet many troubled souls have here bid farewell to life and have started hence on their flight into the unknown. Before the eyes of the dying men would stretch the everlasting sea. On the West—where the day comes to an end—the world is shut out by the vast bastion of the Tête de Chien; but on the East, as far as the eye can reach, all is open and welcoming and full of pity. It is to the East that theclosing eyes would turn, to the East where the dawn would break and where would glow, in kindly tints of rose and gold, the promise of another day.
There is one lonely tree on this Hill of Death—a shivering pine; while, as if to show the kindliness of little things, some daisies and a bush of wild thyme have taken up their place at the foot of the gallows.
[49]The ancient road lies above and to the west of the modern road to the convent.
[49]
The ancient road lies above and to the west of the modern road to the convent.
[50]“Old Provence,” by T. A. Cook, Vol. 2, p. 169.
[50]
“Old Provence,” by T. A. Cook, Vol. 2, p. 169.
[51]“Les Alpes Maritimes,” 1902.
[51]
“Les Alpes Maritimes,” 1902.
THE CHAPEL OF ST. ROCH.
THE CHAPEL OF ST. ROCH.
XXXVIMENTONE
MENTONE is a popular and quite modern resort on the Riviera much frequented by the English on account of its admirable climate. Placed on the edge of the Italian frontier it is the last Mediterranean town in France. It lies between the sea and a semicircle of green hills upon a wide flat which is traversed by four rough torrents. It is, on the whole, a pleasant looking place although it is not so brilliant in colour as the posters in railway stations would make it. It is seen at its best from a distance, for then its many dull streets, its prosaic boulevards and its tramlines are hidden by bright villas and luxuriant gardens, by ruddy roofs and comfortable trees. Standing up in its midst is the old town which gives to it a faint suggestion of some antiquity.
This old town, together with the port, divides Mentone into two parts—the West and the East Bays. The inhabitants also are divided into two sections—the Westbayers and the Eastbayers, and these two can never agree as to which side of the town is the more agreeable. They have fought over this question ever since houses have appeared in the two disputed districts and they are fighting on the matter still. The Westbayer wonders that the residents on the East can find any delight in living,while the Eastbayer is surprised that his acquaintance in the other bay is still unnumbered with the dead. I had formed the opinion that the Western Bay was the more pleasant and the more healthy but Augustus Hare crushes me to the ground for he writes, “English doctors—seldom acquainted with the place—are apt to recommend the Western Bay as more bracing; but it is exposed to mistral and dust, and its shabby suburbs have none of the beauty of the Eastern Bay.” So I stand corrected, but hold to my opinion still.
Hare is a little hard on Mentone by reason of its being so painfully modern. “Up to 1860,” he says, “it was a picturesque fishing town, with a few scattered villas let to strangers in the neighbouring olive groves, and all its surroundings were most beautiful and attractive; now much of its two lovely bays is filled with hideous and stuccoed villas in the worst taste. The curious old walls are destroyed, and pretentious paved promenades have taken the place of the beautiful walks under tamarisk groves by the sea-shore. Artistically, Mentone is vulgarised and ruined, but its dry, sunny climate is delicious, its flowers exquisite and its excursions—for good walkers—are inexhaustible and full of interest.”[52]
There can be few who will not admit that the modern town of Mentone is commonplace and rather characterless, but, at the same time, it must be insisted that a large proportion of the Mentone villas are—from every point of view—charming and free from the charge of being vulgar.
Some indeed, with their glorious gardens, are serenely beautiful. With one observation by Mr. Hareevery visitor will agree—that in which he speaks of the country with which Mentone is surrounded. It is magnificent and so full of interest and variety that it can claim, I think, to have no parallel in any part of the French Riviera.
MENTONE: THE OLD TOWN.
MENTONE: THE OLD TOWN.
Mentone is a quiet place that appears to take its pleasure demurely, if not sadly. It is marked too by a respectability which is commendable, but at the same time almost awe-inspiring. Perhaps its nearness to Monte Carlo makes this characteristic more prominent. If Monte Carlo be a town of scarlet silks, short skirts and high-heeled shoes Mentone is a town of alpaca and cotton gloves and of skirts so long that they almost hide the elastic-side boots.
There is a class of English lady—elderly, dour and unattached—that is comprised under the not unkindly term of “aunt.” They are propriety personified. They are spoken of as “worthy.” Although not personally attractive they are eminent by reason of their intimate knowledge of the economics of life abroad. To them those human mysteries, the keeper of thepension, the petty trader and the laundress are as an open book. They fill the frivolous bachelor with reverential alarm, but their acquaintance with the rate of exchange, the price of butter and the cheap shop is supreme in its intricacy. These “aunts” are to be found in larger numbers in Mentone than in any other resort of the English in France.
The old town of Mentone is small and circumscribed. It stands in the centre of the place as a low hillock or promontory. In relation to the rest of Mentone it is like the brown body of a butterfly whose gaudy wings arespread over the West Bay on the one side and the East Bay on the other.
The history of Mentone is meagre and of little interest. Compared with neighbouring towns it is of no great antiquity. The Romans passed by the site on which it stands without a halt. The Lombards and the Saracens left the spot alone for it offered no attractions to the neediest robber. According to Dr. Müller, whose work on Mentone is above praise, there is no mention of the town in the old chronicles until the commencement of the thirteenth century. It was a small place but poorly fortified and therefore little able to protect itself. It became in consequence the victim of any tyrant in the country round and its experience of tyranny must have been long-enduring and acute.
It seems to have belonged first to Ventimiglia and then to have been the property of the Vento family of Genoa. Later it came under the rule of the Counts of Provence and in 1346 was purchased by Carlo Grimaldi of Monaco for sixteen thousand gold florins. It remained a part of the principality of Monaco for some hundreds of years. It was but slightly disturbed by the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because it was so little worth fighting about. In 1848 the whole population of Mentone, under the leadership of the Chevalier Trenca, rose against the oppression of the Grimaldi and the town became, with Roquebrune, a republic. Finally it was sold by Monaco to France in 1861 for the sum of four million francs and there its story ends.
MENTONE: THE EAST BAY.
MENTONE: THE EAST BAY.
The best general view of Mentone is to be obtained from the pier. Between the East Bay and the Weststands the old town, a heap of drab houses and red roofs, piled up in the form of a mound on the summit of which are St. Michael’s Church and the plume-like cypresses of the old cemetery. Behind this drab town are two green hills, round and low—St. Vincent and Les Chappes; and beyond again—shutting out the world—are the ash-grey slopes of the Maritime Alps. To the west is themassifof Mont Agel and the crag of St. Agnes; while to the east is the towering height of the Berceau.
The old town is small, but it has the merit—rare in these parts—of being clean and free from “the evil smell” of which Mr. Hare has complained. It is Italian in character and, owing to its place on a hill, is made up of steep lanes and many stairs, of headlong passages and vaulted ways. The numerous arches that cross the streets are the outcome of an experience of earthquakes painfully acquired in years gone by. At the foot of the town is the Place du Cap out of which certain undecided old lanes ramble to the sea, with the rolling gait of unsteady mariners. Among these the Ruelle Giapetta and the Rue du Bastion are notable by their picturesqueness.
The way up to the old town is by the steps of the Rue des Logettes. The first street encountered is the Rue de Bréa. It is a mean street, but it is occupied by houses which have been, at one time, among the most pretentious in Mentone. At No. 3 Napoleon lodged during the Italian campaign. It is a large building of four stories with a fine doorway in white stone. It is now given up to poor tenants who hang their washing out of the windows. At No. 2, a privatehouse in comfortable state, General Bréa was born in 1790. He was one of Napoleon’s generals, was at Leipzig and Waterloo and was assassinated in Paris on June 24th, 1848. On the wall of a garden in the Rue Bréa is a marble tablet to commemorate the visit of Pius VII in 1814. The Pope was returning to Rome after his long exile in France and it was from the terrace of this garden that he blessed the people crowding in the street. While dealing with famous people it may be noted that in the Rue St. Michel (No. 19) is the house in which the Chevalier Carlo Trenca was born, the president of the short-lived Republic of Mentone.
The most important and most interesting street of old Mentone is the Rue Longue. It runs athwart the east side of the hill, mounting very easily to the St. Julien Gate which is just below the old cemetery. The street is paved, is some twelve feet in width and is entered from the Logettes by a dim passage. The street is a little dark, because the houses on both sides of it are tall. This Rue Longue follows the route of the old Roman road. Until 1810 it was the only carriageable street between the East and the West Bays and the only coast road between Italy and Provence.
It was the Park Lane of Mentone, the fashionable street in which were the palaces of the nobles and the houses of the rich. The humbler dweller in Mentone would hardly dare put foot in it, because it was so grand and so exclusive. Here “before the great Revolution, the ladies of Mentone used to sit out and work in the open air, just as the peasants do now, before the doors of the houses or (one is expected to say) palaces. A letter of the last century describes theanimated appearance which this gave to the place in those days, the gentlemen stopping to chat with each group as they passed . . . while the nights were enlivened by frequent serenades, which were given under the windows of pretty girls by their admirers.”[53]
This picture is very difficult to realise for the Rue Longue is now a humble street that the fastidious would probably call a slum. There are one or two little shops in it, but the houses are, for the most part turned into tenements for a very densely packed population. The buildings are of stone covered unhappily with plaster; but they nearly all show traces of an exalted past. There are many fine entries of stone with either a pointed or a rounded arch and a few windows which recall better days. The typical house has an arched doorway from which ascends a stone stair whose summit is lost in darkness. It leads obviously to the door of the dwelling, the ground floor being devoted, in old days, to stables or offices. There is in the Rue Longue a shop of the mediæval type, such as has been described in the account of St. Paul du Var (page101). Over the portal of one house is the date 1542 and over another that of 1543. The house No. 123 was the palace of the princes of Monaco. It bears the initials of Honorius II and the date 1650. Within is a fine stone stair with a vaulted ceiling. Among the more picturesque streets of the town may be mentioned the Rue du Vieux Château, the Rue de la Côte and the Rue Lampedouze.
The Rue Longue ends at the main gate of the town—the Porte St. Julien. The gate itself has beenmodernised and is represented only by an archway of a quite unassuming type. Leading up from this portal to the old cemetery is a wall in which are traces of theenceinteof the old fortress. The stronghold, built (Dr. Müller states) between 1492 and 1505, occupied the summit of the hill on which the old cemetery now stands. Here can be seen portions of the castle wall which have become incorporated with the structure of this strangely placed burial ground.
A flight of steps from the Rue Longue leads to St. Michael’s Church. The original church was built in 1619, but was almost entirely destroyed by the great earthquake of 1887, after which date the present church was constructed. It is an ambitious building in an indefinite “classic” style and presents no features of interest. The same may be said of the two other churches in the old town—those of the Pénitents Blancs and of the Pénitents Noirs.
The gallant old fort that, in the seventeenth century, guarded Mentone on the side of the sea has been almost engulfed in the building of the new pier. It is now merely a grey, patched-up ruin, standing on the rocks by the water’s edge and ignominiously held up behind by the officious pier. Its little barred windows are curious, while on its summit can still be seen some traces of its sentry towers.
[52]“The Rivieras,” London, 1897, p. 82.
[52]
“The Rivieras,” London, 1897, p. 82.
[53]“A Winter at Mentone.”
[53]
“A Winter at Mentone.”
MENTONE: RUE LONGUE.
MENTONE: RUE LONGUE.
XXXVIITHE FIRST VISITORS TO THE RIVIERA
THERE is great fascination about a very ancient human dwelling-place. It stands out among the blank shadows of the past as a warm reality, a lingering spark still aglow among the ashes of things that once had been. There is about it the charm of a memory that is partly real and partly only dreamed about. Strange as the venerable place may be it comes quite naturally into the story of our common ancestry. It seems, in some indefinite way, to be a family possession which we can regard with a personal interest and a legitimate curiosity. Amidst the changes and upheavals of everyday life there is about the old house a comfortable assurance of the continuity of human existence and of our individual claim upon those who have trod before us the great highway.
Such an ancient abode of men is to be found at Mentone, at a spot called, in the local speech, the Baoussé-Roussé. The English would term the place the Red Cliff. The Red Cliff is just beyond the tragical looking chasm, with its babyish stream, that marks the frontier of France. It stands, therefore, in Italy. It is a formidable cliff of great height, as erect as a wall, as defiant as a Titanic bastion. It rises sheer from the rugged beach and is as old as the sea. It has beenscraped smooth by the wind of a million years, and may have been once scoured clean by the rain of Noah’s deluge. It is bare of vegetation, except that, here and there, a pitying weed, lavish with yellow blossoms, clings tenderly to its scarred surface. About its foot are a few palms, a tall aloe, and some bushes with scarlet flowers. The colour of the cliff is a tawny grey, stained with red of the tint of ancient rust. There are long seams, too, on its surface which suggest the wrinkles of extreme old age.
At the bottom of the precipice are certain caverns which were once the abodes of men. These caves are about nine in number; so that at one time the Red Cliff must have been quite a little town, for the caverns are capacious. The entrances to the caves are, for the most part, in the form of huge clefts in the rock from twenty feet to sixty feet high. They face towards the south, so that at noon a streak of light can penetrate into the vast stone hall and illumine its floor. When the sun has passed each portal becomes no more than a black gap in the precipice, very mysterious to look upon.
The people who inhabited these caves belong to our earliest known ancestors. They stand at the root of the family tree. They represent the Adam and Eve of human history. Behind these people stretches the void of the unknown. It is in their likeness that the first human being steps out of the everlasting darkness into the light of the present world.
MENTONE: A DOORWAY IN THE RUE LONGUE.
MENTONE: A DOORWAY IN THE RUE LONGUE.
They are known as the Palæolithic folk—the cavern people, the men and women of the rough Stone Age. Their finest implements and most cunning weapons wereof unpolished flint. They had a knowledge of fire. These two possessions express the meagre progress they had made in the march of civilisation.
There are certain skeletons of these cliff-folk in the Museum at Monaco. It is a memorable moment when one first has sight of men who were alive some 50,000 years ago, and who, after interminable centuries, have just come again into the light of day and the company of their kind. It is at least—in the records of the human family—a curious meeting, a meeting rendered almost dramatic when one sees a dainty French lady in the mode of 1920 peering through a glass case into the face of an ancestor who walked the shores of France in an age so remote as to be almost mythical.
There is an impression with some that these people of long ago were brutish creatures, ape-like and uncouth, being little more, in fact, than gorillas with a leaven of human craft. The Red Cliff skeletons, however, are not the skeletons of brutes. They show, on the contrary, the characteristic features of the bones of the man and woman of modern times. Such differences as exist are slight. There are the same straight back, the broad shoulders, the well-balanced head, the finely proportioned limbs, the delicate feet and hands. This skeleton of a Red Cliff man might have been that of a modern athlete, but with a muscular development that the modern would envy; while this shapely woman, from the depths of a cave, might have graced in life the enclosure at Ascot. There are some peculiarities in the shinbone, but I doubt if they would be noticeable even through a silk stocking. The skull is different, the face is flat, the nose broad, the forehead low, the jawsprominent. From the Ascot standpoint it must be allowed that the cave folk had ugly faces, coarse and unintellectual no doubt, but not the aspect of the gorilla.
Among the skeletons from the colony at Mentone is one of especial interest. It is that of an old woman whose body was found in the deepest part of the cavern, and who, therefore, may be assumed to have belonged to the earliest or most ancient of the inhabitants. She is perfectly and, indeed, finely formed. Her age would be about seventy. It is to be noted incidentally that the bones show no evidences of gross rheumatic changes nor of other disabling trouble. That an old lady could live for seventy years in a damp cave, in a chilly climate, and escape such inconveniences is a sign of her time and of ours.
It is not known at what age Eve died, but if she reached the term of three score years and ten these perfect and undisturbed bones may be imagined to be those of the Mother of Men. Eve is generally depicted by the sculptor as an elegant lady with a noble Greek face, in which is realised the extreme of refinement. It would probably be more exact if our first mother were shown in the form of a stalwart woman with the countenance of the Australian aborigines or of a Hottentot.
A SIDE STREET IN MENTONE.
A SIDE STREET IN MENTONE.
The lady of Mentone has around her forearm two bracelets. They are made of sea shells and are just such as an ingenious child might make while sitting on the beach in an idle summer. One might suppose that the wearer was proud of them, and it may be that vanity in woman and love of dress—or, at least, ofjewellery—are born with her. If this be so, it is a pity that the wearer of the bracelets could not have known, in her lifetime, that her cherished ornaments would still be on her arm and would still be gazed upon by men 50,000 years after she had ceased to be.
It is a matter of interest and indeed of present envy to note how perfect are the teeth of these early folk, how strong they are, how solidly they are ground down. They must have gnawed the bones of the mammoth, of the cave bear, and of the woolly rhinoceros, for the remains of such animals are abundant in the dust heaps of these caverns. The standard of comfort in the commune of Red Cliff was low, for it has to be recognised that not only did whole families occupy one apartment, but in that apartment they cooked their food, deposited their refuse, and buried their dead.
In looking at these very venerable ancestors it is the face that naturally attracts the greater attention. There is some expression in a skull, an expression of melancholy and surprise, with a suggestion of ferocity. Conspicuous, especially, is the look of wonder, the open mouth, the staring teeth, the solemn, hollow eye sockets. What images must have been formed within those sunken orbits! Upon what a world must the vanished eyes once have gazed, upon what strange beasts, upon what fantastic glades and woods!
When the Red Cliff was inhabited the sea was probably at some distance. From the entry to the cave one would have looked, at one age, over a luxurious subtropical country, glaring with heat, and at another era over a land chilled with ice and deep in snow. During the lifetime of the old lady of the bracelets the climateis assumed to have been cold and damp, the climate, indeed, of England at its worst. There must be, therefore, a bond of sympathy between the aged dame and the present day migrant, who has fled to the Riviera to escape a British winter.
The dwelling places of these very early Riviera visitors are still practically unchanged. We enter by the same portal as they did; we tread the floor they trod, and, looking up, we see the very roof of rock that sheltered them and that they knew so well.
The great cave—the Barma-Grande—has a fine entry, sixty-five feet in height and some thirteen feet in breadth. The cave is still deep, although its length has been curtailed by the callous quarryman, who has cut away much of the outer face of the cliff to find stone for villas, railway bridges, and motor garages. The cave narrows down to a smooth-sided cleft a few feet wide. This must have been a favourite spot, a cosy corner, an easy lounge after a day’s hunting.
The sun passes over the cavern wall as over the face of a dial, moving inch by inch just as it has moved, day by day, for unknown thousands of years. The creeping light serves to record on the rock the passing of time. The cave-wife, busy with flint scraper and unwieldy lumps of mammoth flesh, would note, perhaps with concern, that the sun had already reached a certain grey boss on the wall which told that the height of the day was near and yet that the daily meal was not ready. The sun still falls on the same spot on the wall at the same moment of time, for neither the sun nor the cave has changed.
A SIDE STREET IN MENTONE.
A SIDE STREET IN MENTONE.
MENTONE: RUE MATTONI.
MENTONE: RUE MATTONI.
Just in front of the caves of the Baoussé-Roussé,between their entries and the sea, runs the old Roman road. Compared with the colony of Red Cliff it is a modern affair, for it is only a little more than two thousand years old. It ran from the Forum of Rome to Arles, a distance, it is said, of 797 miles. It carried the Roman legions into Gaul. It carried the merchant adventurers from the East, together with as miscellaneous a crowd of wanderers as any road in Europe bears witness of. Many a Roman centurion must have rested in these caves, many an Oriental pedlar laden with strange wares, many a man of arms seeking his fortune in the West, with perhaps a troubadour or two, a jester bound to other Courts, or the aimless man who followed the Wandering Jew. Pirates have used these caves for their tragic affairs, as well as wreckers and honest fishermen. In more recent times smugglers found hereabout convenient depots from which to run their goods across the border; while frontier guards have been posted in these shadows with flintlocks to watch for the unwary buccaneer. Still nearer to the present day one can imagine that the dolorous lover has carved his lady’s name upon the wall of the cave by means of a flint implement which his uneasy foot had unearthed from among the ancient dust of the deserted dwelling-place. Could the life and times of the occupants of the Red Cliff be written, from the days of the first inhabitant to the period of to-day, a history of Europe would be provided which could never be excelled for picturesqueness nor for vivid detail.
The environment of the old colony is at the moment singularly incongruous. The entrance to the principal cave is walled up and admission thereto can only beobtained by the payment of 2f. per person. A small museum, full of precious bones, stands on the Roman road; a railway tunnel penetrates the very heart of the cliff, so that the rumble of express trains disturbs the peace of the dead who still lie on the very spot where their bodies were laid long centuries ago. There is a fashionable hotel on the summit of the cliff, and at its foot a popular restaurant. From the depths of the cave the sound of music can be heard when the restaurant is very exuberant and is offering especial cheer.
If the old lady with the bracelets were now to stand at the door of her cave on a starry night she could see, beyond Mentone, a strange glow in the sky, the glow from the thousand lights of the gaming-rooms of Monte Carlo.
CASTILLON (IN THE SNOW).
CASTILLON (IN THE SNOW).
CASTILLON: THE ENTRY TO THE TOWN.
CASTILLON: THE ENTRY TO THE TOWN.
XXXVIIICASTILLON
AMONG the mountains behind Mentone is a saddle of rock wedged in between two heights and named the Col de la Garde. If a Colossus sat astride of this saddle one leg would be in the Valley of the Careï, leading towards Mentone, and the other in the Merlanson Valley which descends to Sospel. The col or ridge of the saddle is 2,527 feet above the level of the sea. On a cone of rock in the centre of this ridge is the ghostly town of Castillon. The distance from Mentone to Castillon is four miles, if measured by the flight of a bird, and nine and a half miles if reckoned by the ingenious road. From Castillon to Sospel by road is four and a half miles, but the descent is not great for Sospel is still 1,148 feet above the Mediterranean.
The Valley of the Careï is picturesque and of no little grandeur. It is a prodigious V-shaped gash in the earth, some half a mile wide where it opens to the heavens, some few feet wide at its deepest depth where the torrent cuts its way. The colouring of its walls is beautiful in its simplicity. Below the blue of the sky is a cinder-grey slope of bare cliff that dips into the faded green of the olive belt and the sprightlier green of the pines; then comes a strip of claret-red tinged with yellow, which marks the terrace of the autumn vines,and at the very foot are the deep shadows by the banks of the stream.
The Careï follows the valley all the way. It begins among the vast silence of the everlasting hills and ends by running under the tramlines and the bandstand at Mentone. The road mounts up the west bank of the valley by spasmodic turns and twists. These are so repeated and so abrupt as to render any who live where paths are straight dazed and despairing.
As the col is approached Castillon stands up against the sky line like a piece of dead bone sticking out of the mound of a grave. Few habitations of man occupy a position quite so surprising as this silent and deserted village. It is the village of a nightmare, of a fairy story, of the country of the impossible. “The town,” writes the author of “A Winter at Mentone”, “is as unlike a town as possible . . . so that we should scarcely believe it to be a town at all.” It stands on the summit of a pinnacle of stone which is, in turn, balanced on the knife edge of a dizzy col. From this isolated crag a horrible ridge of rock trails down the valley towards Sospel like the backbone of some awful reptile.
It is a very ancient place for it was occupied in the time of the Romans. People have lived in Castillon for over 2,000 years and yet on a certain day not long ago it was suddenly deserted and not a human being has ever returned to make a home in it since that dire occasion.
CASTILLON: THE MAIN STREET.
CASTILLON: THE MAIN STREET.
On February 23rd, 1887, Castillon was shaken by an earthquake and reduced in great part to ruin. No one appears to have been killed in the crash, but such was the terror of the inhabitants that they fled down the cliff sideand never came back to the town again. It has remained ever since as empty as a skull.
In the Middle Ages Castillon was maintained as a fortified place by the governor of Sospel. It guarded the pass that led to the town and stood in the way of Sospel’s most restless enemy, the Count of Ventimiglia. During the wars of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines the fortress of Castillon suffered much. It was a woeful day when Charles of Anjou obtained possession of it in 1261 and a still more dismal day when he sold it to that detested ruffian, Pierre Balbo of Ventimiglia, since, in the eyes of Sospel, Castillon was the keeper of the pass, the angel with the flaming sword that stood in the way. For no vain reason did the ridge gain the name of the Col de la Garde.
Castillon did not remain long in the hands of Ventimiglia. It shared in the vicissitudes of endless conflicts, was in due course taken by the Genoese and then retaken by the redoubtable seneschal of Provence. Castillon was ever a sturdy little place; for even in its earliest days, when it was captured by the Saracens, the hardy natives turned upon the invaders, cast them out and threw them headlong down the hill. It was not always so very little, since there was a time when it could boast of no fewer than seventy-five houses and five churches. Where these buildings found a foothold it is hard to say. They must have clung to one another with linked arms, like a crowd of men caught by a rising tide on a steep and very meagre rock.
The old Castillon is approached from the present village by a steep cart-road which winds round the rock, or by a still steeper mule-path which labours up withmany zigzags. Both road and path are overgrown with grass. They lead to a flight of wide steps which ascends to the town. It forms quite a ceremonial entry. There is but a single street. It is a sorrowful street, because it is so forlorn and so still. It is as green with grass as a lane in a wood and around the doorsteps of the houses and in every court and alley nettles and brambles flourish with heartless luxuriance.
Half way along the street is the church. It is small and plain with a roof of tiles and a bell gable that lacks a bell. Over the door is the date 1712. The church is locked; but so far as can be judged from the outer walls it has escaped damage. The “pointed campanile,” however, which is described and figured in older accounts is now no longer to be seen. At the end of the street, on the point that looks towards Sospel, are the ruins of the castle. Only some vaults and some crumbling walls remain; but a gateway of stone with a pointed arch still stands unmoved amidst the chaos of destruction. Many houses are little more than a shell of bricks, but the greater number seem to have suffered little. They are closed. The doors, the window frames and the sun-shutters are grey, because in thirty-three years every trace of paint has vanished. Many of the windows are still glazed.
To one house clings a precarious balcony of wood with half of its rail intact. A few of the dwellings are doorless and it is possible to mount stairs laden with débris, to enter rooms which seem to have been but recently left and to climb down into hollow chambers echoing with mystery and suspicion. One front door has a slit for letters—open as if awaiting thepostman. It is a trivial feature and yet it seems the most pitiable mockery in the whole of this street of dead things.