Only three good carriage roads will be found at Nice, one leading to the Var, another to Turin, and the third to Genoa; there is also one to Villa Franca, but so steep, that many do not like to venture up it; the preferable way of visiting this latter place, is to row there in a boat or felucca, and return on foot.
Villa Franca is a small, but strongly fortified town, distant about two miles from Nice, built at the extremity of a fine harbour, in a situation admirably adapted for the site of a more important place. It consists of very indifferent buildings, and its streets are narrow, and wretchedly paved.
Nice and its environs do not offer a very extensive field to the naturalist. The surrounding mountains are, however, covered with a great variety of plants during the whole year; and, of course, the botanist will find ample amusement. The mineralogy of the neighbourhood is but limited, the whole of the hills around the city consisting chiefly of limestone, with some few beds of gypsum. In the beds of the mountain torrents, portions are occasionally found of granite, gneiss, clay-slate, flinty-slate, serpentine and feltspar; but these specimens so small and so much weathered, that it is often difficult to distinguish them.
The geology of Nice is more interesting; the calcareous rocks afford many specimens of what the French call the breche osseuse, in which small fragments of bones are cemented together by argillaceous matter, which has acquired a reddish colour from the presence of iron. Near Villa Franca some of the limestone contains a great number of shells, the species of many of which still exist in the Mediterranean. The rising grounds near the Var are wholly formed of a coarse breccia, the cement of which is argillaceous, impregnated with iron; extensive excavations have here been made to procure clay for the manufacture of tiles, in which great numbers of shells are found imbedded, with occasional vegetable remains.
I believe the sea-shore produces a number of shells which would be interesting to the conchologist.
I shall now make some remarks respecting the state of society at Nice. There were English residents enough to form sufficiently large circles amongst themselves, besides numerous others who visited the place, en passant, to and from Italy. A few German, and Russian, families were also spending their winter here, who associated largely with the English. These visited each other, and gave dinner, and evening parties, and balls occasionally. The natives, however, were not excluded from this society, although the incomes of few would permit their returning the invitation in equal stile. The hospitality, however, of the governor, made amends for the deficiency. This officer, only gave dinner parties to the gentlemen; but had balls for the ladies once a week during the Carnival; and evening parties, in the same way, throughout the remainder of the winter, paying both by himself, and his aid-de-camps, the greatest possible attention to his visitors. He had, however, no regular government-house, and the one which he occupied was scarcely large enough for the accommodation of his numerous guests. The only ceremony necessary to enable a stranger to receive his attentions, was to leave his card, which the governor always acknowledged in person.
The nobility of Nice, never think of visiting their countrymen who have not titles, notwithstanding many of them are people of great respectability, as professional men, merchants, &c.; at the same time, they have no objection to meet them at the houses of strangers. It might have been conceived that the experience of the French revolution would have taught them differently; besides, it is a matter of no difficulty to procure a title, for I am informed that it only costs sixty louis to purchase that of a count, and twenty-five to become a baron. But let me not be mistaken for a leveller of distinctions, no one has a greater respect for the Patrician order than myself, when its dignities have been the meed of talent or of virtue.
“Order is Heaven’s first law, and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest.”