Part 6

You are to remember that I have promised nothing but the gleanings that are to be had after the harvests gathered by those who have gone before me. My task, therefore, is less one of minute and close description, than of desultory findings. This peculiarity may cause occasional meagreness of facts, and some apparent eccentricities of thought; for while I pretend to have gathered no more of what has been left by others than has come in my way, most of what I have actually seen is necessarily unrecorded, and on matters of opinion are commonly uttered when I have found reason to differ from the multitude.

At Genoa I remained two days. To the peculiar attractions of a port, and that too a port of the Mediterranean, where added the magnificence and glories of a capital. Every one has read of the palaces of this town, the _Strada Balbi_ probably having no equal, in its way, in any other European capital. It is not wide, is without side walks, and but for the structures that line its two sides, would offer nothing remarkable. For more than a mile, however, it is a succession of edifices, that, in any other country but Italy, would be deemed fit for royalty. The Faubourg St. Germain has more large hotels, certainly; but the architecture is better here, and the material much superior to that in use in France. I should think that in the material point of gardens, the French capital has greatly the advantage. I entered several of these fine houses, which were generally remarkable for their marbles, staircases, and paintings. That of Sava is known all over Europe for a saloon that is covered with mirrors which reflect its half columns in a way to give it the air of a fairy palace. This room, when well lighted, must present an extraordinary sight; though it is rather small for its style of ornament. I have seen many rooms decorated in this mode, but never one with the blended magnificence and simplicity that are to be observed here. Generally the effect has been that of a toy,--a sort of German prettiness, or German conceit; but there was none of this in the Sava palace. The master of this noble house is not _compos mentis_, though quiet and harmless. He was seated over a brazier, in an ante-chamber, in the company of the ladies, as I passed through; and he rose politely to return my bow, muttering some words of compliment. It may be that he has a simple satisfaction in this amusement, but it struck me painfully. The antics of the carnival were acting in this fine street.

I saw the palace of the king, and some of the pictures; that of the Feast of Cana in particular. But the town, the scenery, and the port most attracted me. Genoa lies at the base of a hill, around the head of a large cove, which has been converted into a fine harbour by means of two moles. One quarter of the town actually stands on low cliffs that are washed by the sea, which must sometimes throw its spray into the streets. Its position consequently unites the several beauties of a gorgeous capital with all its works of art, the movement and bustle of a port, the view of a sea with passing ships and its varying aspects of calms and tempests, with a background of stupendous hills; for at this point the Alps send out those grand accessories to their magnificence, the Apennines. The place is fortified, and the nature of the ground requiring that the adjacent hill should be included, the _enceinte_ is large enough to contain all Paris. On the side of the cliffs and at the moles, are water batteries; the entire port is separated from the town by a high wall, which, while it does little more in the way of defence than protect the revenue, offers a peculiarly beautiful promenade, which overlooks the busy and picturesque little haven. Towards the land the works are more regular, and are intended for defence. The ascent is rapid after one is out of the streets; and the walls, flanked by forts, follow the line of a ridge, that is shaped like an irregular triangle, which by falling off precipitously towards the country, supersedes the necessity of ditches.

I took a horse and made the circuit of the walls. The day was mild, but had passing clouds; and some of the views towards the interior were of an extraordinary character. A deep valley separated us from the district around the works; and there were several fine glimpses, in a sort of wild perspective, among the recesses of the mountains.--I scarcely remember a scene of more peculiar wildness blended with beauty, than some of these glimpses offered; though the passing clouds and the season perhaps contributed to the effect. The inland views resembled some of the backgrounds of the pictures of Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed, it is only in Italy, and among its romantic heights with their castle-resembling village and towns, that one first gets an accurate notion of the models that the older masters painted.

Seaward, the prospect from the apex of the triangle was truly glorious. The day was mild, and twenty sail was loitering along, quaint in their rig, as usual, and wallowing to the heavy ground swell. Here I got almost a bird’s-eye view of the town, port, and offing, with the noble range of coast southward, and a pile of purple mountains whose feet were lined with villages. I scarcely remember a day in Switzerland that was more fruitful of delight than this. As I descended to the highway, one of the royal equipages, a coach and six, with scarlet liveries, went by at a stately pace, followed by another with four, and several outriders. It added to the brilliancy of the foreground of the picture.

The large space between the town and the walls was nearly waste; though there stands a citadel, overlooking the former in a way to suggest the idea of offence, rather than of defence.--The streets in general are Moorish in width, many of them positively not being more than eight or ten feet in breadth. I had one or two encounters with donkeys loaded with panniers, a passage being frequently quite a Scylla-and-Charybdis matter. As the houses are six or seven stories high, it is like walking in the fissures of a mountain to walk in these streets. Of course carriages never attempt them. Still Genoa has many fine avenues besides the Strada Balbi.

I saw more street devotion in Genoa than I had previously witnessed in Italy, men on their knees in the streets being rather an unusual sight in Florence. The gambols of the carnival were much as usual; though Italian humour is both richer and stronger than that of France. This is in favour of the people, and shows that they have had a place in the world; for I take it the French are wanting in this peculiar quality of the mind from the all-absorbing moral as well as political superiority of the court.

The humour of France is nearly all military, as might be expected; and in this they are unequalled.

LETTER VIII.

The Maritime Alps.--A precocious region.--The Prince of Monaco’s Country-house.--Picturesque Coast--Magnificent Panoramas.--Villa Franca.--Nice.--Antibes.--Amphitheatre at Fréjus.--Draguinan.--Aix.--Marseilles.--Passage taken in an English Brig.--Abuse of America--Leisurely Seamanship.--Corsica.--Opulence of English Nobility.--An unfavourable Breeze.--Moorings in the port of Leghorn.

I believe I fancied business called me to Paris, as much as to make the passage of the Maritime Alps, as from any real necessity; for here I am back again at Florence, after an absence of less than three weeks, the journey unaccomplished.

I took the _malle-poste_, again, on the afternoon of the third day, and left Genoa for Nice, with no other companion than the _conducteur_. As we whirled round the cliff that forms the western point of the port, I looked back with longing eyes at _Genova la Superba_, and thought that it well deserved the title.

Now commenced one of the most extraordinary roads it was ever my good fortune to travel. It ran for a long distance on the very margin of the sea, the carriage literally rolling along the beach in places. I cannot recount the names of all the pretty little fishing and trading hamlets that we galloped through in this manner; but they were numberless, and now and then we had a town.--The shore was fairly lined with them; while the mountains, inland, soon began to tower upward to an Alpine magnitude. This was the commencement of the Maritime Alps; and the following day we were to turn their flank along what is aptly enough termed the _corniche_ road.

Imagination cannot portray bits of scenery more picturesque than some that offered on the beach. Wild ravines, down which broad and rapid torrents poured their contributions, opened towards the hills; and bridges of a singular construction and of great antiquity frequently spanned them in bold and imposing flights. Many of those wide arches were half ruined, adding the aid of association to their other charms. As for the beach, it was principally of sand; and wherever a hamlet occurred, it was certain to be lined with boats and feluccas, some lying on their bilges, and others shored up on their keels, with perhaps a sail spread to dry. How some of these crafts, vessels of forty or fifty tons, in the absence of tides, were got there, or how they were to be got off again, exceeded my skill at conjecture; though the _conducteur_ affirmed that they sailed upon the sands, and would sail off again when they wished to put to sea!

Here and there a prettily-modelled felucca was on the ways. Altogether it was an extraordinary passage, differing entirely from any I had ever before made. Night overtook us a little before we reached Savona, and for several hours we travelled in darkness. We had left Noli before the day dawned; and when it came, it opened on an entirely different scene. The beach was deserted,--or rather, there was no longer a beach, but the coast had become rocky and broken.--The land was heaving itself up in gigantic forms, and on our right appeared a peak that bears the name of _Monte Finale_. It was the last summit of the Alps!

The huge background of mountains protects all this coast from the north winds, and the sun of a low latitude beating against it, joined to the bland airs of this miraculous sea, conspire to render all this region precocious. Even the palm was growing in one or two places; and though only in the first days of March, we felt all the symptoms of a young spring. This harmony between the weather and the views contributed largely to my pleasures.

Although the coast had become so broken we occasionally descended to the margin of the sea. At Ventimiglia we passed a torrent of some width; and this was a point that the King of Sardinia was fortifying extensively, as it completely covered one flank of his Italian possessions. Farther on, we passed a small town called Mentone, which is in the principality of Monaco. This little state lies _enclavé_ in those of Sardinia, contains some six or eight thousand souls, and has passed into the possession of the French family of Valentinois. Why it was preserved through the eventful period of the late wars, I cannot tell you; but three or four of these pigmy governments have shared its fate, let it be for good or for evil.--Among them are Lichtenstein, St. Marino, Knyphausen, and Monaco. The last, however, is not strictly independent, but is under the protection of Sardinia, and is without foreign relations; or it is an independent and sovereign state _á la mode de nullification_.

A little distance from the town we passed a new building, erected by the prince for a country house. It was not much larger than an American dwelling of the same sort, and, barring the Grecian monstrosities and the shingle palaces, not more respectable. The grounds were small and naked of trees, and altogether it was the most comfortless and unpretending abode of the sort I have seen in Europe. But the Prince of Monaco resides chiefly in France, cannot properly be considered royal, and, I dare say, values his French peerage as highly as his Italian states. We passed barracks that were said to contain an army of twenty men.

Soon after quitting Mentone, the road began to wind its way across the broad and naked breast of a huge mountain. This was, in truth, the point where we crossed the Maritime Alps, the rest of our mounting and descending being merely coquetting on their skirts. The town of Monaco appeared in the distance, seated on a low rocky promontory, with the sea having one of its sides, and the other opening towards a pretty and secluded port. The whole of this coast is as picturesque and glorious, however, as the imagination can paint: and then the associations, which are Oriental, and sometimes even Scriptural, come in to throw a hue over all. I observed to-day, while we were traversing one of the heights or promontories of the coast, a polacre rolling at her anchor, while boats were carrying off to her oil and olives, from the spot where the latter had grown. To give you a still juster notion of the nature of this region, as I sat leaning back in the carriage this afternoon, the line of sight, by clearing the bottom of the carriage window, struck another vessel under her canvass, at the distance of half a league from the shore. We might have been, at the moment, a thousand feet above the sea.--Some of the panoramas, seen from these advanced eminences, were as magnificent as land and water could form; and this the more so from the hue of the Mediterranean, a tint that is eminently beautiful. Indeed, one who has seen no other sea but that which is visible from the American coast, can scarcely form a notion of the beauty of the ocean; for there the tint is a dull green, while in most other parts of the world it is a marine blue. The difference, I think, is owing to the shallowness of our own seas, and the depth of those of this hemisphere,--and, perhaps, also to the magnitude and number of the American rivers.

After climbing a league we reached the summit of the pass, which was a sort of shoulder of the range, and had a short distance of tolerably level route. From this elevation we caught a glimpse of a deep bay, with a town at its head called Villa Franca; and one of the most extraordinary of all the wasp-nest-looking villages I had yet seen presented itself. It literally capped the apex of a cone, whose sides were so steep as to render ascending and descending a work of toil, and even of risk. I should think that a child that fell from the verge of the village must roll down two hundred feet. On this extraordinary pinnacle were perched some fifty or sixty houses built of stone, and resembling, as usual, one single and quaint edifice, from the manner in which they were compressed together. The _conducteur_ deemed this village the most extraordinary thing on his route, and when I asked him what could have induced men to select such a position for a town, he answered, “The bears!” Protection was unquestionably the motive, and the village is probably very ancient. My companion thought there must be a well of great depth to furnish water, and he added, that the inhabitants were chiefly shepherds. It is necessary to see a landscape embellished by towns, convents, castles and churches, occupying sites like this, to form any accurate notion of the manner in which they render it quaint and remarkable.

We now began to descend, and for a long distance the road wound down the breast of the mountain; though it was far from being remarkable as an Alpine pass. At length we reached a sort of basin on a level with the sea, which held the city of Nice; the county of that name lying on both sides of the Alps, and having been entered near Mentone.

A good supper and a bed were the first requisites; but, finding that the _malle-poste_ did not proceed until the next afternoon, the following morning I set about examining the exterior of this celebrated refuge of the valetudinarian. The town is of some size and well built, being divided into two parts by a high bit of table-land, or a low mountain, which is near the sea. I ascended this eminence, and got a bird’s-eye view of its _entourage_. The port is small, and, I should think, in part artificial, for it is like a dock, with a narrow entrance, from a coast that was a perfectly unbroken and regular curvature. The vessels lie as in a basin, though within a few yards of the open sea, from which they are separated by a low beach. There were a good many crafts in port, partaking of all the picturesque beauties of the polacre, latine-rig, felucca, Lombard, &c. &c.--Among the rest, I was struck with a beautiful little schooner, that had so much of a ship-shape and knowing air about her, that I was just about to inquire whence she came, as an English ensign was set on board her. She was the yacht of an English naval captain, in which he is in the habit of making short excursions in this glorious sea.--If there is a man on earth I envy, it is he! This craft was about thirty tons burthen, well found, and as neat as a marine’s musket.

I walked across the port, and thence around the nearest headland, by a winding footpath, and came out at the mouth of the harbour of Villa Franca, which, I was told, is a haven much used by the Sardinian men-of-war. To me the place seemed stagnant and deserted, and I returned to Nice by the same path. Strolling along the quays of the latter, I found more of those signs of Oriental life, which never fail to transport me in spirit to the regions of a fabulous antiquity. Among other things, I saw a great number of large jars, intended to hold oil, which at once explained the manner in which the forty thieves were secreted,--a difficulty that always destroyed the illusion of the tale. Many of these jars were quite large enough to hold a man; though the attitude he would be compelled to assume might be none of the most agreeable for an ambuscade.

The orange-trees in this vicinity were covered with fruit; but the oranges themselves were sour and unpalatable. On the whole, the situation of Nice, which is almost entirely sheltered by mountains towards the north, must render the climate generally mild; and the proximity of the Mediterranean, no doubt, lends a blandness to the air. But, on the other hand, the sudden changes and cold blasts that certainly do occur among all mountains, cannot but make it a little precarious for consumptive people. If the scirocco, the greatest drawback of this region, blows home at this remote point, it will be an additional objection. I believe that the present condition of the world, and the great facilities for travelling, are bringing other places more into notice, and Nice and Montpelier are in less request than formerly. Still, judging only from my own hasty and imperfect surveys of both, I should recommend Nice much sooner than Pisa.

After dinner, which, for the first time since I came to Europe, was made at a _table d’hote_ filled by men in trade,--a set that struck me as singularly professional on so long an abstinence from the luxury of the craft,--we left Nice for Antibes. The road ran along a level and fertile country, among orange-groves and olive-trees, until we reached a broad and straggling river called the Var, across which was thrown a rude, long, wooden bridge. Near the middle of this bridge was a gate that marked the frontier of France.--At the opposite side of the river, we encountered a custom-house, where my luggage was examined. This was done in a very civil and _pro formá_ manner; and the _douceur_ that was offered, as an acknowledgment of this favour, was declined.--The circumstance deserves to be recorded.

It was dark when we reached Antibes, a walled and garrisoned town, that occupies a low promontory which forms a pretty little haven. This place is known in the history of Napoleon, who landed in a meadow about a league from it, where he encamped for the night, in the celebrated expedition of 1815. An officer, with a few men, was sent to summon Antibes; but they were captured and confined in the town. The moments were too precious to be lost in discussing the matter, and the next day the Emperor moved on, leaving his agent, as the lawyers say, “to abide the event of the suit.” The coast is generally low in this vicinity, and the brigs found good anchorage in an open roadstead. The descent was made at an unprotected point, and as we passed it next morning the _conducteur_ showed me a tree under which Napoleon passed the night. It is now generally understood that his arrival was expected, and that the army was in a great measure prepared to receive him. “_Le Petit Caporal._”

From Antibes to Cannes we were at no time far from the coast. The latter is a small town on the strand, and the harbour is little more than a roadstead. As we approached Fréjus, the ruins of an ancient aqueduct were seen on the adjacent plain; and as this is a place of great antiquity, I could gladly have passed a few hours in it. But the _malle-poste_ stops for nothing, except at designated points; not even to eat. To supply the place of a breakfast, however, I ran into a shop and bought a famous _biscuit de Savoie_, fancying that one ought to get a cake of such a name good so near the frontiers of Savoy itself. At the first mouthful it crumbled into dust, and I discovered that the good woman of the shop had sold me her sign! Swallowing a little water at a fountain to wash away the _débris_, I ran ahead and examined an amphitheatre that is still standing in the skirts of the place. It is small, but far from being a total ruin, most of the seats being still to be traced quite distinctly. _Feste, Farina et Forche_,[2] seems to be a political maxim as old as Italy itself; for wherever any traces of ancient Rome are to be found, one usually meets with a theatre or an amphitheatre. These noble traces of a remote civilization, in a retired place like this, had far more interest for me than the personal adventures of Napoleon.